Membranophonist’s Ramblings

In response to Robb Beal’s call for feedback (that is how I interpreted it) from some of the Mac UI nitpickers, I have some suggestions for Spring (based on version 1.3.3b1):

Initial User Experience/Licensing Suggestions

• A customized .DMG packaging (window background image, “drag this folder to your Applications folder” text, custom folder icon with the Spring flower overlayed) would make for a more professional out-of-the-box user experience. Karelia’s Watson is an example of application presentation well done.
• Very minor, but probably a quick fix: the e-mail message sent to users who have registered says to look for a field labeled “Activation Key” - a field which does not exist. The field is labeled “License.”
• A drag and drop-able license file received as an attachment when registering Spring (idea shamelessly stolen from the OmniGroup). A reworking of the License panel would be necessary to provide a single drag and drop target. Drag and drop everywhere!
• A blurb of explanatory text in the Spring -> Me -> Data tab might be necessary for some users to fully understand what the red and white locks mean. It is easily missed if one skips over the Intro tab.

UI Additions and Alterations

• Provide easier ways to create People and Place objects. The drag and drop creation of various objects from Watson is great, but does not currently provide a way to easily create the aforementioned two types. Being able to use the results of Watson Phone tool queries as starting places for these two types of objects is one possibility.
• Implement the Shift key+scroll wheel mouse behavior found in Safari and the 10.3 Finder among others. This adds a horizontal scrolling option for those who use a scroll wheel mouse and a hand on the keyboard for modifiers/command-tabbing, Expose, etc. It is a navigation method I use and imagine to be fairly common.
• Implement the Command+Option+Drag content movement capability found in the Panther Finder. This modifiers+drag combo is currently used for the in-progress 1-Drag Textual Web Page feature.
• Implement Page Up/Down key triggered vertical scrolling.
• Since the font and text alignment controls do not currently function, they add nothing but menu clutter. Of course, if they are going to work at some point (this is a beta release), they would be useful as a way of providing more personalization options.
• It is easy to drag an object off of a canvas’ visible area, but rather more difficult to get it back (using the Edit -> Undo command works). Setting a minimum portion of an object which must be visible (and therefore draggable) would allow people to temporarily move things to the very edge without losing sight of them altogether.
• The highlight halo around selected objects could stand to be a few pixels thicker.
• The window resizing could be changed to work better with the “zoom canvas to fit” function - if I zoom a canvas to fit, I’d like the green zoom widget to size the window to display just the canvas without the gray space around it.

Searching

• Add the input clearing ‘x’ button to the search field.
• Insert a “Search” label in the search box.
• The search/filter should consider the entire title of objects; it currently requires that users enter text in the order that it appears in the name. This is problematic for items with A or The at the beginning of their name.

New Feature Suggestions

• Off-canvas location indicator arcs
  

  To give users some idea where objects not visible on a canvas are located, something similar to the Halo arcs developed by Xerox PARC would be useful. The gist of my idea is to think of the screen seen in the iPaq and map graphic as a canvas and the As in the center of the circles as objects that are on the canvas, but not within view.

• For items available through Amazon, command-drag them to your own Spring person object to summon a contextual option to add them to your Amazon Wishlist. I know zilch about Amazon’s APIs, so it may not be technically possible.
• Also for Amazon merchandise, a “Search e-bay” contextual menu option would be useful.
• Command+Drag between person and movie object actions
  
  • Invite “insertnamehere” to “insertmoviename”
  • Recommend ” to “
• Command+Drag between person and book object actions
  
  • Recommend “bookname” to “person” via e-mail
  • …via IM

Important note regarding drag-betweens:

For all drag-between actions, it is important that all actions be available regardless of order of selection; some people think of an item/place to recommend to a person, some think of a person who would like an item/place - their Spring object selection order will most likely follow the same mental progression.

• Movie object contextual menus
  
  • Look Up at IMDB
  • Look Up at RottenTomatoes
• CD object contextual menus
  
  • Read RollingStone review
  • Look up at AllMusic Guide
• Ratings - out of five star ratings for places (clubs, restaurants) and things (books, websites, DVDs). These could be displayed in a manner similar to iPhoto 4, showing the stars beneath the name. Being able to display the rating without the name would also have potential uses, so the star display should not be dependent on name display.
• Support for drag and drop of CitySearch or DigitalCity URLs to canvases to create new Place objects. This could summon a New Place creation window with the dropped URL already placed appropriately, ready for the user to fill in the remaining details.
• Support for drag and drop of address book cards. Based on the dialog that appears when this is attempted, I assume this is in the works.
• Optional automatic importing and interval-based synchronization of address book contacts. This would leverage an existing data store and save users from having to enter contact information twice, which, even with a great UI for doing so, would be very tedious.

• Rendezvous-enabled Canvases: Users could select specific canvases to be available to others on their subnet using a checkbox selection interface similar to that found in the preferences of iTunes and iPhoto. Shared canvases would be accessible through the Community menu.