Mollerade

The death of the media center, and the rise of the next generation of operating systems.

Having dabbled with Windows Media Center from Microsoft, FrontRow from Apple and various alternatives, some which do very well in organising music, video and photos, these are just footsteps towards a new graphical user interface that covers all media. I consider the media center concept as a developmental stage of current operating systems towards improved content navigation.

Due to the lack of a concerted effort to vastly improve navigation I write about my hopes and dreams for future operating systems to come. If anyone knows about new content navigation techniques, experimental software, or cutting edge navigation design, please post the URLs and i’ll aim to summarize the work going on at the moment. however my initial searches have yealeded nothing.

Goodbye Desktop Wallpaper, it was fun but your services are no longer required.

So many computers have been sold on their use of desktop wallpaper, with beautiful swooping lines, or green fields and blue skies. The operating system may be a few years old, but if the desktop wallpaper is new then it must be worth upgrading right?

The next generation of operating systems will do away with a desktop wallpaper background, favouring instead screen savers when the computer is not in use which can still display images as slideshows or any other manner of informative information ( think educational based screen savers, quiz questions or national works of art) and applications that maximize the screen space available when in use. The desktop wall paper is a distraction that limits our ability to focus on navigation. The only time I see my wallpaper is when I’m not using my computer otherwise all my windows are maximized. Wallpaper should be relegated to the dustbin once and for all in favour of improved navigation.

Navigation must not be tied to a menu

Why click on a start button/icon etc which launches a list of apps when my starting page could be the full list of apps. Now that we don’t have wallpaper we can use that space for something more productive like a navigation system. I’ll expand on some ideas for new navigation in a moment.

Although Microsoft’s ribbon technology in its office suit looks promising, menus haven’t progressed much from simple lists. We need to see a radical overhaul of the traditional list menu which is inefficient and cumbersome. We need a single space and a new language to navigate our applications and the functionality within them.

The navigation of the future will make use of multiple senses including sight, touch, sound, and temperature, closing the gap that currently existing between how we sort through data in the real world versus in the digital world. We should also provide multiple ways of viewing the same data using a system called Multiview.

Multiview recognises that we don’t all reason the same way. During childhood a person can acquires a unique logic, based on environmental and genetic differences. Multiview addresses these differences by testing new users with a short list of questions that analyse the individual user’s ability and preference for navigating data, and then selects a default navigation view based on the user’s answers.

I’ve created some very rough mockups to give you an idea of new naviagation views;

The mass extinction of Applications goes hand in hand with the rise of the Function Widget.

Media Centres paved the way for this to happen. They created a single application that was able to play music, videos and display photos. How long is it going to take for someone to extend this functionality to encompass all functionality?

By using a single application engine to run all functionality, you would no longer have to close an application as you switch from one function to another.

The menu and the applications engine would probably be open source, developed in conjunction with each application developer. Improvements would be made together, and the costs would be spread out across all the application developers. However, the application would be designed to incorporate Function Widgets. The Function Widget is a way to bolt on additional functionality without developing its engine and menu system further. It is not a complete application in its own right; any basic common functionality is shared with and built into the application engine prior to the function widget being installed.

Function Widgets would be sold and proprietary, providing enhanced functionality to the application engine and menu. No longer will users need bloated software that does everything for everyone. Instead users will pick and choose which parts of the software they need by adding Function Widgets.

The application engine would by default be full screen maximizing the screen space available. If functionality is required side by side, then a single screen can be virtually split or spread across a second physical screen.