Rethinking the desktop metaphor, or even improving it in any significant way, is a daunting task, and few dare to take the risk. The end result is that the desktop metaphor that we use today barely changed over the years – which is quite unique for the computing industry, as normally, things change very rapidly.
The problem seems to be that any proposed improvements or changes to the graphical user interface are either too evolutionary to be significant, or too radical to be practical. The key seems to be to strike a balance between offering genuine improvement, but at the same time, be recognisable enough so that ‘normal’ users can identify with it effortlessly. I rarely, if ever, encounter such an improvement – until a few days ago. Cue Grape.
Everyone uses their desktop differently. Personally, I tend to use the graphical desktop as I use my normal desktop: as a temporary location for the stuff I’m currently working on. In addition, when it’s Monday, and I need to publish a certain article by Thursday, I dump the corresponding file on my desktop as a sort of reminder. As soon as I’m done with a file, it’s moved away from the desktop – either trashed, or filed away in my OCD-inspired directory structure. Yann Le Coroller‘s Grape concept seems to be tailor-made for my kind of usage pattern.
The idea is that any file you drop onto the desktop automatically turns into a preview of that file – images, text documents, videos, and so on. You can then manipulate these previews by resizing them, moving them around, or flipping them over to edit their metadata and properties – this includes folders. You can ‘group’ these files by dragging a box around it (a ‘pile’); you can also name the pile, and colourise its ‘box’.
The key is zooming. When you zoom out of a pile, the previews in the pile will cuddle up together, and your desktop area will expand to reveal more space for more piles. When you zoom back in, the pile unravels so you can see the individual files. You can of course make one preview larger than the other if you so desire.
In Grape, you organise your desktop graphically and spatially: the more important a pile or individual file is, the larger and more prominent you make it. And can’t find a file? You can click the ‘find’ tool, and graphically find the file you need (using ‘highlights’, as Spotlight does in Mac OS X’ System Preferences application).
What makes Grape so appealing is that contrary to many other proposed improvements, it’s actually not a replacement; something like Grape can easily be an optional component draped over a traditional desktop, something that you may use – or not, at your own discretion. Addition, not substitution. However, seeing the stunningly good looking and elegant conceptual implementation by Yann Le Coroller, I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to try this out.
I can confidently say that this is one of the most impressive and elegant GUI concepts I have ever seen. I hope someone steps up and turns this into a reality – on Mac OS X, all the components to do so appear to be there (Spotlight, Quick Look, Core Animation, etc.).
I thought of this, except for the live previews, but I decided it was useless. Zooming in and out destroys your spatial memory with considerable force. So whole idea of remembering physically is vanishes into smoke, when things aren’t there any more. Well, they are, but the view is zoomed. And the human brain plain and simply isn’t constructed to remember where stuff is in a physically flat 3d space.
Another problem is that unless this can be the only file manager, the user has to learn two programs instead of one. And they have completely different interfaces. Which totally ruins this idea, whose purpose was to make stuff easier. (Making stuff easier isn’t done by adding complexity without removing any complexity.)
Of course, we can drop the normal file manager completely, and only use the desktop. As far as I can see, this will be a mess unless the zoom range is very big. But, if the zoom range is very big, then the spatial memory will not be cooperative, as shown by usability tests.
I don’t see the author mentioning anywhere that Grape is designed to work well with spatial memory. Maybe the reverse even is intended. Perhaps this concept will be a natural fit the day we stop thinking about where we put our files, and just search a flat space instead. Then it might make more sense to use a single full screen file manager, and only have windows for document contents. I know Thom claimed this to be an improved desktop only, and not a redesign of how to interact with the computer in general, plus Yann Le Coroller mentions “as soon as you drop files on it, it automatically generates a preview”, which implies a desktop, but still…
Infact, he said it was a improved desktop for the way he works with files. IE, only using a few distinct files each day.
In that sense, I see where he is coming from.
Sometimes, when programming I may be only looking at 5-10 files *ONLY* day in and day. People like my mom also does very few things on the computer and get confused the moment there are more than 20 twenty items in sight.
I think there are lots of people who’s daily work flow only involves a few files at a time. To those people, this could be a major improvement.
[q]Zooming in and out destroys your spatial memory with considerable force. And the human brain plain and simply isn’t constructed to remember where stuff is in a physically flat 3d space.
/q]
Says who ?
to my knowledge spacial memory is one of the best we have, we use it for millenaries and I am eager to read a study that say otherwise.
Spatial memory yes, 3D memory no. Maybe the human brain could handle it if we used it regularly, but in our real lives we are 2.5D. We move in a 2D space and manipulate local objects in 3D.
I doubt you remember your girlfriend’s room(the refrigerator, whatever) as relative 3D(x,y,z) coordinates. You have a 2D memory of the surfaces you have to cross. You going upstairs or using the elevator are just tricks, you aren’t really thinking in 3D. Go upstairs to reach surface A. Push “3” button to reach surface B.
Trivial 3D memory and abstract 3D thought problems such as the folded/unfolded dices present in IQ tests, leave at least 50% of the human population out, so even if YOU could remember random 3D locations and relative positions, I wouldn’t assume an interface based in real 3D to be usable by the general populace at all.
Edited 2008-05-14 08:31 UTC
Grape is exactly what you describe. It’s not a 3D space but A 2D space and stack of icons. You zoom in and out like everybody in the Graphic Industry do for years in any graphic package. So things are really located on a plane, you zoom by looking closer to the plane. I think the demos were clear on that point.
I couldn’t see the demos, so I relied in other people’s posts, but anyways.
Remember the Doom interface that came out for Windows 3.11(Maybe plain DOS)? It was intuitive and close to our real world. One could remember the way to Word, Qbasic, DOS… That was in the nineties. Why aren’t we using that interface by now?
The answer is that simple 2D I/O will always be easier to process by both the computer and the person operating it. A normal file browser(with nothing flying around) assuming an equally well thought arrangement, will always have the lead in terms of productivity, although I can imagine people eventually swearing by interfaces like grape if such interfaces became common. Just like people swear by 2D interfaces to find their programs when typing their name(OS/UNIX style), or telling the computer to open it(Star Trek TNG style) are obviously superior approaches. 2D adds some value over 1D, but I fail to see any benefit in 3D. The redundancy it adds, while cool, has no informative value.
Edited 2008-05-14 12:40 UTC
The reason why we don’t have the Doom interface is because the Doom interface was stupid. Who wants to walk down a virtual hall to get to our applications, when we can click on a QuickLaunch or Dock icon?
This isn’t a Doom-like 3D UI. It’s zooming, but that’s not the same thing. Just go to the link. It makes a lot more sense to just see the images. It’s not a file manager. Not a new system shell. Just a desktop augmentation. Current desktops already behave different than folders do. Desktops have widget engines, application launchers, multi-tasking management, system information, and so on. I don’t think this would be more or less difficult than learning conventional desktop behaviors.
As I said in a root reply, this would incorporate well into a Surface, tablet PC or other touch interface.
I think truly 3D UI will only come with truly usable VR. By VR, I don’t mean putting on cheesey goggle and gloves or 2nd Life crap; I mean sticking a thin wire into a socet behind my ear (today, a wifi connection of some sort but I like the old monofiliment deck wired interface idea).
Anything I’ve seen 3D on a screen so far has been a novelty item. Grape comes closest too usable 3D viewed through a purely 2D surface. It feels like a slimmed down version of whatever that last 3D “move files as big icon previews” desktop was; the one with the group objects lasoo and a few other gimicky “3D desktop space” tricks like watching icons bounce offthe endges when thrown across the surface.
When we can fully imerse ourselves in a digitally created 5 senses environment the 2D UI will be reduced to very limited use where applicable while the 3D UI will simply be the natural existance of anyone jacked in. That’s my random guess at it all due to too much Cyberpunk in my past anyhow.
Given the fact that you haven’t seen the demo I find your will to be always right astoungly discouraging…
I blame your collective lack of ability to describe it.
– Which is huge having finally seen the video(no video players in my dev box). I don’t see anything 3D at all.
How is this different to the MacOS task switcher? Even without any additional dimension I still believe it would be much less cluttered if it had been implemented in a eyecandy-less and b.l.o.a.t-less 2d interface.
And again…
Completly out of the point! There is absolutely no relation with the MacOS task Switcher!
Can’t you try to make a constructive comment for once or better just try to NOT say anything.
Please.
yann.
My how our penchant for equating newer with better skews our thinking. It couldn’t possibly be that the desktop metaphor, as it exists today, exists today because it works pretty well. New contenders need to prove that they are significantly better. Most never get past the “we’re better because we’ve rethought everything” argument. We don’t want to open our minds so far that our brains fall out.
Proposed improvements, sbergman27.
We’re still looking at a desktop here. Just a better one.
Edited 2008-05-13 19:02 UTC
Time will tell. How’s the OSAlert “Grape” category icon coming along?
Edited 2008-05-13 19:06 UTC
I don’t get it. Does that mean Thom creates a new category everytime he finds something interesting (which is not true, I do the category creation) or that OSAlert is pimping some software package (which obviously, with 1 article, can’t be)? I’m missing the joke.
Adam,
The only time I really get serious is when I council being nice, teaming up, and listening to what the other people are saying. The rest of the time you can safely assume that I am joking, even if the jokes aren’t that great.
Edit: The essence of my last post was: “Time will tell”.
Edited 2008-05-13 21:05 UTC
I was complaining, I just honestly missed the joke. I guess time will tell.
I fear that it really did fall flat. And where’s that Hari Kari blade when you need it?
-Steve
Edited 2008-05-13 21:32 UTC
no need to spill blood – I got your joke
I thought that was obvious. Guess not.
I’d say it’s far from being better than anything else, for starters. Then, I’d debate whether it’s any good at all. It’s nice, it’s got the looks, the “shiny factor”, it’s easily demoable, one can raise a few eyebrows with it, maybe write a few papers about it. But in the end, it’s all about usefulness. I put usefulness high above usability, since without it all we got is a shiny toy, which takes away more from one’s productivity then one had to begin with. While this idea seems elegant, and handy in a way, it’s absolutely unimaginable to use it for handling thousands of files without loosing track and control even after a few steps. It’s all nice and easy when you have 20 images and 2 videos to push around, anything beyond that and you’re screwed.
I can see it as an extension of a desktop, not a desktop replacement though. There are a lot of its aspects that can be useful, but not as an exclusive tool, no way.
You have thousands of files on your desktop?
This is for the files on your desktop. This is a new way of managing the files you’re CURRENTLY working on, as CLEARLY explained in the article. It is NOT a file manager replacement. This could be an ADDITION to the desktop, NOT a replacement.
I said all of the above in the item too. I’m sorry for my grumpiness, but I don’t understand how you could’ve missed almost everything said in the item.
Yes,
thanks tom to get back to the point.
Grape is a replacement or enhancement to the desktop, not a replacement for the file manager.
You put there a few temporary files abd once you’re ready to clean you use to file manager to archive them.
This is in NO way a tool to deal easily with more than a hundred files. It just allow you or let’s say it would allow ME to better organise the mess that MY desktop is.
yann, the creator.
It sounds as if you’re trying to make a combination of ToDo manager and Project manager and even a do-it-all database like DEVONthink, if you’ve seen that.
We all need to keep track of where we are and it’s a nice idea, though every time we make things more graphically intensive, I worry that I’m going to get less done waiting for the machine to finish being fancy.
I don’t know. It seems to me that if you put a little time and effort into organizing and keeping your desktop clean, you wouldn’t need this.
Pretty interesting stuff. Wasn’t there a guy who made stuff a bit like this a year ago? In video form I mean, I haven’t seen any code or implementations…
Does this guy do more than make fancy sites with interesting concepts and video’s? I’d love to have those speakers
Or get the code running here…
Anyway, I’ve seen some of these things in Plasma, like the zooming interface and overlaying buttons (also in Dolphin, see the video’s on my blog: nowwhatthe.blogspot.com/)
I wonder if this actually works as natural as it seems. Properly implementing it might take years, esp if you want to ensure it works with more than pictures
Aaah well. Other interfaces will probably steal some of the good ideas…
Edited 2008-05-13 19:21 UTC
I guess you mean MacSlow’s Lowfat. Comparing the two, Lowfat had slightly more bling, but less functionality, and was always demoed more or less as a fancy image viewer.
It’s available from the freedesktop.org git repository.
no, noo, lowfat is nice, but not what I meant. Some video showing physics, a desktop with physical objects you can throw around, pile etc. Zoom in and out, pretty nice.
You mean this? http://bumptop.com
Yup, that’s the one.
Yeah, that’s it.
I must say it’s all lovely technology, but imho way too detached from ‘the rest of the world’. I mean, how useful is just a desktop were you can throw around items? These concepts need a real desktop to integrate in. PPL will only really start to use these technologies when MS, Apple, KDE or Gnome will integrate them.
Of course, I hope the FOSS world can use it to their advantage and move faster than the proprietary world It is probably one of those area’s where Plasma will shine. They already have physics, 3D and the web integrated in their desktop… It just needs someone to write the applets.
I did rather like the bit about flipping the file over to write metadata on it’s back side. The grouping and organizing is pretty much the same as the last 3D desktop that made the rounds in video form though that one had more comprehensive organizational tools like fanning, stacking and other tricks.
It’s all a novelty item still but I’m glad to see UI baby steps continuing forward toward whatever eventually does change the desktop paradigm.
It looks interesting. But also, I must say, rather cluttered.
Also you say should be possible with OSX now, but I suspect this will be possible with KDE4 as well.
I would actually think Plasma would be the best place to do this – the easiest to do it in, I mean…
I thought Plasma was an integral part of KDE4? Or is that incorrect?
Isn’t this what Plasma is supposed to allow you to do when it’s all finished?
yes, it’s technology could do this. But it does still need someone to write it this way
I’d love to give it a test run. Looking through the website real quick, it didn’t look like there was anything to test out. Does anyone else see anything?
Unfortunately, his site is about GUI design, not implementation
BumpTop is much better.
…call me old-fashioned, but I’ve yet to find a better alternative than Openbox. It’s hands down the best piece of software I’ve ever used. Simple yet elegant, easy on system resources and absolutely bullet-proof. Too bad it isn’t available for Windows, which unfortunately is the platform I have to use most of the time.
http://icculus.org/openbox/index.php/Main_Page
Edited 2008-05-13 20:45 UTC
Actually, something very, very similar is indeed available for Windows. It’s called BBLean, and it seems to be a descendant of Blackbox. In fact, I was using this as my shell replacement on XP for years before I went to Linux full-time.
You can check it out at http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/
Edited 2008-05-14 03:51 UTC
your attempt to make us click read now to find the source link was successful this time, but in the long run it only serves to annoy and anger me at your behavior
Sounds like a great improvement over the current desktop.
Am I the only person out there who both never sees and never uses his desktop? It just seems to be a totally useless concept for to me. There’s folders in my home dir for reason, you know…
That’s is typically the kind of saying a UI designer would never have. You should never assume that other people are using the computer like you.
Grape is the answer to a User problem. The user is me and the problem is the mess on my desktop. And the solution do not impose to work differently for people obsesive with the cleaning of their computer. You want it you use it. You don’t no problem you will never hear of it. Both side wins.
yann.
I dont use the desktop for anything either but it’s obvious that a lot of people do. I find it cumbersome to access and it gets realy cluttered fast. To each their own.
This is exactly the way I work with my desktop. I group files together based on my current tasks and then when I’m finished I put them away in their own directory to make room for new tasks.
If the Linux community would implement Grape I’d switch in a heartbeat.
http://rchi.raskincenter.org/demos/zoomdemo.swf
This would work very well with a touch computing interface like Surface or a tablet PC. An iPhone/PDA-size screen may be a bit small for practical use, but some variation on it might work out well.
The images on the Grape site seem conceptually related to the Surface demos, esp the 3 under “Pile.”
The Flipping detracts from usability like a lot of the Compiz Fusion junk or Flip 3D. If I want to see file properties, just show the file properties. There’s no reason to flip it over – everything doesn’t need to mimic physical objects.
Now that the monitor industry, including televisions are moving to FLAT LCD designs wouldn’t this overkill of rounded rectangles seem out-of-step. Ironic, if you think that the original Mac team GUI Engineer had to make them on Steve’s request, after they were shown that rounded rectangles were so common, in daily life.
Mmmm… This is exactly how I work on multiple current projects – group their files on the desktop then file the remaining files when the project is done. I used to keep them in folders, in a personal directory or right on the desktop, which is fine but I was always opening several file browser windows and juggling them. I used to do this because I thought the desktop should just be kept clean and show a pretty picture to you when all your windows are minimized. Then I realized the the desktop was like ocean front property – the hottest real estate on my computer! Yet nobody was building any houses there!
I realized that I had several file browser windows open all the time… which are kind of lame since all they do is list files… at least the desktop allowed you to group files spatially. Grape seems to be the next logical step… basically its turning your desktop into a really slick file browser for the three dozen files you are actively using during your week. That way you don’t spend so much time fiddling with file browser windows.
I love the metadata thing too, the less menus and dialog windows I have to open the better.
Thanks for this great comments, relevant and pleasing
I love the idea of real estate!
yann.
[quote]
However, seeing the stunningly good looking and elegant conceptual implementation by Yann Le Coroller, I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to try this out.
[/quote]
Exactly… So: where/how can I try this out ?
I like it a lot, finally a UI that eats CPU/GPU cycles that I can justify!
I have just one complaint…
The “info” button in the bottom left of an object spins the object around to show info. However the button to spin it back to the object is in the bottom right requiring a mouse movement. That in itself is not a problem but I’ve already associated bottom right with “resize”. Maybe the “spin” icon should be exactly where the “info” button is and the bottom right icon should remain “resize”. How does one resize once in “info” mode?
Anyway, it still looks fabulous. I hope it has a well featured keyboard interface though (maybe that’s just me).
Very good observation!
you are right the flip back button should be on the other side. I was a bit lazy and didn’t correct that!
Also once on the info side there is no resize allowed, the size is then only dictated by the content displayed.
Thanks for your comment,
yann.
That’s alright. I’ve an eye for this sort of detail. Ask my work mates. They hate it! ;-D
This project looks pretty good and seems to be something worth following.
I enjoy seeing attempts to create/re-create something new for the desktop interface. The Desktop itself has been such a debatable topic that something new (or seems new) can be intimidating.
Change? Who wants change? Change means things will be different! It won’t be what I’m used to! I’ll have to re-learn things. No! Go back! BACK, I say! Resist!
Unless it’s a change in the money we earn (an increase) there are many of us who resist any change that possibly upsets the apple cart or alters our perceptions of how we do things.
I’m guilty of being too resistant to change from time to time. Even over simple things. Just ask my wife. See?
When it comes to computers, this seems more prevelant with the average user mind-set. Jane & Joe Average can use their computers & s/w to do their jobs. What most know is only of a basic capacity/functionality.
Now toss in a wrench by upgrading the software they use (apps – not the OS) and many immediately panic, if even for a short time. Upgrading routinely used software applications often causes average users a lot of stress. Things are different; they’re not the same.
Change doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
My 2 cents.
may look pretty (that’s always discussable, IMO all the bubble-gum-drop-shadow-rounded things look bad and loose valuable screen space), but it doesn’t look as much innovative and featured as, say, Jeff Han’s stuff.
Besides it seems to only be for the desktop, not even other folders ?
Oh and btw, it is really bad to use identically-shaped icons (circles), they don’t distinguish enough, but that’s gui basic.