On Mar 30, 2009, at 12:50 PM, dave malouf wrote:
Ubiquity is a tremendous evolution of the CLI concept, but taking it
further in important ways. From the End User perspective it is what I
have been describing as CLI with GUI support. The other component is
the developer framework which makes creating ubiquity commands pretty
easy.
Agreed.
Another important concept that goes hand in hand with this is that
things like Ubiquity work because they embrace modality. That is, you
enter a mode to scope the context to deliver a certain set of
functions in specific ways. The mode doesn't have to be a locked out
mode, but can easily be more ephemeral, like with Ubiquity.
Modality in the past has often been thought of as a bad thing.
Unfortunate really because modality is actually a fairly important
interface concept in designing software and digital products. Knowing
when and where to use modality is the trick, and maybe its time for
folks to dive back into the old desktop app days to see what types of
modality worked and what didn't and start bringing those things back
into the general software design language again.
The biggest danger or hurdle Ubiquity has solve is basically the same
as a UNIX CLI or what Enso had to handle: The threshold where the
number of textual commands or services overwhelms one's ability to
remember the entire list of commands via text. Ubiquity will more than
likely have a better shot at this since it also has the benefit of
context (as defined by the URL in the browser) to create the first
level of scoping the problem.
--
Andrei Herasimchuk
Chief Design Officer, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world
e. [email protected]
c. +1 408 306 6422
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