On the other side - The Flow

In my quest for finding a usage of a double sided mobile device I have tried to be as exhaustive as I can. I have put a flashlight on the backside. I have even put a mirror there for the vain mobile users. Here's my third attempt to fill that empty space. I've been thinking of the possible yins and yangs of a mobile device. My first thought was content/applications on one side and communication on the other. It may not be possible to separate those entities since they might overlap. Why not put the Flow there which I tried to describe in my previous post? It would be like a digital diary of your life. You can go back in history of your Flow as long as you would like to. From the days when you were a kid (if you wish) until now. You would also have the possibility to bookmark certain dates or events in your flow, so that you'll find them easier later on.

In some of my first posts, I was hallucinating about "context sensitive time navigators" and proposed the turntable. I don't know if that's the best way to navigate in the Flow. But since I came up with that idea then, I thought it would be nice to squeeze that one in as well. So, what you see below is the backside of your future mobile device. All events in the Flow go in the first tab, while the other tabs filter specific types of events. The Flow will not be bound to your mobile device since all handhelds will use fingerprint biometrics for authorization. That means you can access your Flow in any mobile device or computer. The Flow will be stored on the net somewhere, somehow. Hehe, when thinking about it, the Flow will be ridiculously long when you have turned 86... :-)

Scratch it!

I've been thinking a little of the idea of a context sensitive time navigator. Is there any use for such a thing? Isn't the good old scroll bar sufficient for that purpose? Maybe so. To test the idea, here's an example of how a time navigator, the turntable, could work in order to move in time. Spinning the inner circle allows the user to move in time at a faster pace than the outer circle. In an e-mail application the inner circle could represent moving by weeks, whereas the outer could a represent a more fine-grained period such as days. I don't know if a round time navigator like this would take too much space inside the frames of a mobile device. Maybe it's better to put it at the outside frame of the device? To be investigated...

Time machines

You might know that Apple's operating system Mac OS X has a backup utility called "Time machine". It creates incremental backups of files which can be restored at a later date. It allows the user to restore the whole system, multiple files, or even a single file. For example photos, contacts or calendar events. That's awesome.

But what about the "time machines" in the applications we use every day? Take the web browser for example. I can give you an example: you’ve just visited Yahoo's home page and then clicked on a News header to read a certain story. Then you have the choice to go back where you came from (Yahoo home page) using the built-in "Back button" (arrow left). That's choosing to go back in time where you came from. Let's say you've clicked the "Back button". Then you're back to the Yahoo home page again. By clicking the "Forward button" (arrow right) you'll come back to the News story. That's choosing to go forward in your browser history to a page you've already been to. Back to the future, if you know what I mean.

Another example of going back and forth in time is in the media player (such as a movie clip from YouTube). The round indicator shows where in time the movie is right now. You can also stop the movie (and time) by clicking the "pause button". By dragging the indicator back and forth you can navigate over time in your movie.

In my first post I wrote that the inbox of an e-mail client uses a list – the stack, to order messages by time. The last message received comes at the top of the stack. To locate a message from two years ago you have to adjust the scrollbar position until you find it. Yeah of course, you can search for it as well, but that's another matter.

That's three examples which illustrate how to use "time machines" in our most popular applications. They might seem very obvious and natural since you're used to them. But think how nice it would be to reduce the number of ways to navigate over time. Maybe to a single one. A time navigator which is context sensitive and adapts to the current application and it's own time representation.

Shape - The round mobile device

I have to start somewhere. Why not explore shapes? So, in the name of being exhaustive, lets start with the circle. Why would you need a round mobile device? I don't know. It sounds ridiculous, I know. But think of it this way: If the human race faced extinction unless we all used round mobile devices, then what would we do? Create one of course! How would it work? Are there any advantages with a round mobile devices compared to a rectangular one? Let's see...What other things are round? Well, the clock of course. Lets take a look at the clock.

It measures time. It's a metaphor we're very used to. Time goes round and round. A day is a single rotation of earth with respect to the sun. How could we apply this metaphor to a round mobile device? Well, the obvious answer is the ordering of things by time. All of our applications today such as the e-mail inbox, the SMS messages received to our cell phone, uses a list. The last message received comes at the top of the list. It's a stack of messages. It works quite well. Can you beat the list? What if you could steer the circle somehow using your finger to move in time back and forth among your messages. On the outside frame of the device? Inside the device, like an Ipod? What if a certain span of the circle would represent a time unit such as a day or a week. So, in order to find all messages from one week ago, you would rotate the circle the same distance as you would to find other messages from one month ago. The circle would just be in different "period modes", such as the "week mode". Maybe this circle steering could produce narrower lists, such as all messages two weeks ago? But would that beat the list we're used to? I don't know. But it might work better for other types of messages we will receive everyday. Maybe the switching between "period modes" will be difficult to manage. But I guess it could be done. The idea of a round mobile device needs to mature in my head and explored even further . It may not be convenient to have a round thing in your pocket. But on the other hand, who says we have to carry our mobile devices in our pockets? To be continued...