Longhorn Reading Notes

• Longhorn User Experience Articles
• Anoter interesting review: Longhorn task-based UI
• Data model
  • Longhorn data model allows attributes for Relationship Items

• Database Apps UX
  • Longhorn talks about 2 parts of database applications
    • Viewing data
    • Entering / editing detail view of a particular data item
    • There is no mention of "organizing data" or "organizing data taxonomies"

• Notifications
  • Activity-based notifications. Notifications behave based on:
    • What the user is doing at the time
    • How important is the notification

• Privacy and Security
  • Privacy and security settings should be set per "sphere of life"
  • ie. Trusted e-tailers used often by the user should be on a whitelist

Entourage Project Center 2004

• Multi-pane composite view approach to centralizing items related to a single project in one view
• VD looks elegant
• I think there are some serious workflow issues. Users must decide to start a project in order for the Project Center to work (whereas oftentimes, we don't realize something is a project until it has already ramped up, at which point, you would have to go back and collect all items related to the project from the past).
• It is also unclear which view the user should SIT in primarily, which means at any one time, in order to get the information you need, you must constantly switch views. In today's fast-paced work and home environment, it is unlikely that users will be sitting in any one Project view for long periods of time. Entourage views are still sliced wrt application silos (Email, Task, Calendar, Notes, Calendar) and now Projects. However, there is still no clear workflow-based path for the user to follow.

Case studies

• ZUIs or Zooming UIs: http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=100146
• Six degress: Relationship-based Finder: http://www2.creo.com/sixdegrees/tour/
• Professional tools: Maya, Solidworks, CAD, Photoshop, Sketch it up.

-- MimiYin - 25 Nov 2003