Flashy Copenhagen UX concept, white paper made available
About a month ago, Cullen Dudas released a neat video detailing the conceptual Windows UI he’s been working on for months, shown below for those who haven’t seen it in crap wonderful Vimeo quality. While some may not agree with certain elements of the design, you should at least appreciate his detailed analysis on the decisions he made in his new white paper. Check it out, it’s worth a read on that Kindle DX you just bought.
Good job, but animation and effects is not everything (I personally hate this).
I love most of the things on his conceptual design (especially the way he has done the ’start’ button and sperated it from the taskbar; however, I really hate the way he has done the taskbar things for the simple fact he put text labels on it and it made it look very messy.
The taskbar doesn’t need text labels. At all. Not one bit. You know what a program is by its icon and if you don’t, you can see the name of the application in the tooltip by hovering over the application (it’s not very often at all that you won’t know which program an application icon is for, so this wouldn’t be an inconvenience at all). If you wish to know the title of a window, you can see that in the thumbnails and thumbnail tooltips.
There really is no logical reason to put text labels in the taskbar and I’m glad Microsoft finally figured that out with Windows 7 :)
I hate that music :P
Wow, he has taken his mockup really seriously. First time I’ve ever see a white paper for a UI mock up. I wonder if he’s trying to woo Microsoft for a place in the Windows UX team :)
Wow, if Copenhagen is perfected, it will be the KILLER OS!!! It will be at least 10x greater than the proposed Longhorn vision which was sadly never accomplished. Windows will become the undisputed king.
This to me looks almost exactly like the old Longhorn videos… sigh
Kinda boring. Old Longhorn videos were much more appealing.
That whitepaper has some crazy references with journal articles. Those social scienes are not real sciences.
I just watched this concept and i…. (I can’t bring myself to finish the song)
I like most of it, The ability to seperate all 3 parts of the taskbar would be extremely useful seeing as some people would love to have one part on one screen, and another on a second or third screen… I like the notification area’s design, looks nice to fit the rest of the OS mockup.
I don’t think the logon screen would be too useful though, it seems just a little too flashy… Mebbe that is just me though…
More frustration from Microsoft …why are we traveling all over the screen again??? If it wasn’t bad enough with Microsoft MOVING the “Show Desktop” icon amongst other things way way over the to the other side of the screen. Why? Why? Why?
I love it !!!
Can someone make it for real……(or release it)
It’s neat to look at but this screams, “look at what I can do with flash” more than, “here’s some real usability that would benefit Windows users.” While Cullen has indeed cooked up something flashy, I’m with Imran in that he’s probably just trying to woo Microsoft for a job on the WEX team. Either way, do what works!
-Stephen
@Spackie – This isn’t anything from Microsoft. They’ve had nothing to do with it. If you read up on it, it’s just a UI concept by an enthusiast.
I can’t seem to download the white paper. The “download” link gives me either 404 or “page cannot be displayed”. Rafael, any chance you could e-mail this to the e-mail address specified in this form?
Cool features, nicely done! Who cares what it looks like if the functionality is there.
Two elements are essential: 1) keep the smooth level of win7. 2) make the window frame thinner (large window frame only occupies the workspace and is not suitable for netbook).
Personally, to be honest, I don’t really like start-menu. But well done, and keep working!
Some bits of this look interesting but it’s not nearly as exciting as the old Longhorn videos were.
I liked the logon screen until the fast user switching bit.
At least uTorrent seems to work! :)
As a UX designer who has over 20 years experience in the field, these concepts don’t speak much to me.. I wonder why you are floating this around..
Lol uTorrent.
I like this and I don’t like this.
If I had the choice, I’d go back to progman. Each Windows version, while increasing usability and security, just adds another layer of confusion to the end user, even Windows enthusiasts…
I really like the idea of stacking stuff instead of creating folders all over the place! I also like the compact start menu. Personly i never use the “latest used programs” menu. If I need a program i’ll ether create a shortcut to the desktop or write the name in the seach-bar.
A lot of good ideas, the rest is just another skin.. Keep focusing on the actual using part rather than graphics.
All too much cluttering up the desktop!
I like the MAC OS X much better!
But there is still room for improvement.
I want smaller and much more sleak window frames and buttons, more neutral grey/silver look,
nicer and real rendered drop shadows and transperency etc.
More customizeable please.
But anyways, cool work copenhagen guys.
greetings
Jesper, Denmark
(Windows Vista SP2 user)
Uhhh, I’m all dizzy from the zoom-zomm wow!
Animations within the ui are not bad as such, the line between enhancing usability and being in the way however is very thin. In this case it was crossed miles ago.
As Jesper said os x is better, but even here it can clearly be discussed if the line of usability has been crossed. I’m looking forward to see what Apple will bring up in the next major revision of their ui (not Snow Leopard).
Great concept, push the envelope!
Greetings
Pilfinger, Denmark
(Hi Jesper)
Nice, but, why would you want to keep microsoft software running on every computer? Doesn’t MS have a big enough monopoly already, with what, 85% of the market or somesuch?
(I’m more or less a linux user that dabbles into windows whenever there’s a beta to try)
One word…. YUK!!
And DOUBLE YUK to OS X!!
i REALLY hope this becomes the final windows 8
if not, i’m still sure that windows 8 will have a lot of goodies
As long as there’s still an option to turn it off, I could really care less what bouncy cartoon crap they add to the UI. It won’t be showing on my screen. My Vista installations look and work as closely to the original Win95 setup as possible. I’m disappointed that they went and botched the explorer layout and renamed a bunch of the classic control panels in Vista and would like to change it back. Oh well. I’m kinda used to that now.