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The best phone UX experiences I've ever had was swiping/multitasking on BlackBerry 10 OS. I wish Android liberated it. - Swipe from bottom to wake. - Swipe fro

by Lorin 6y ago

The best phone UX experiences I've ever had was swiping/multitasking on BlackBerry 10 OS. I wish Android liberated it. - Swipe from bottom to wake. - Swipe from bottom whilst inside an app, peaks all open apps, once let go it fully minimizes the app. During a peek you also see the number of unread notifications on the left. - Swipe from left to go back. - Swipe from bottom, then to the right to access the BlackBerry hub, which aggregates ALL emails/IMs/notifications in a single list (can be customized into groups). - Swipe from bottom left corner towards center hides on-screen-keyboard. - Top swipe displays app specific option/help/misc links. - 2-finger swipe from top revealed quick settings (wifi, flashlight, etc). No notifications here (they're in the hub)! - Not swiping, but it had a clean, single unified location for all app notification/permissions/etc which feels much easier than Android. I feel if BlackBerry released the Q10 2-3 years earlier we would have had a totally different phone ecosystem today. I still miss it.

thom 6y ago
It doesn’t sound like most of those gestures are particularly discoverable though, which is sort of what the parent comment is complaining about when highlighting widgets that don’t look like widgets. There are lifesaving bits of UI in iOS for example that I didn’t know about for years, like holding the space bar to get directional control of the cursor. I like that it exists but I don’t feel that good UI can be something you not only have to be told how to use, but didn’t even know it existed.
- fakedang 6y ago
  They had a nice tutorial on first use that explains all the gestures.
  - Firadeoclus 6y ago
    A tutorial on first use is probably not enough to have most users remember the gestures or even just which options there are. Maybe spaced repetition would be a better approach.
    - frosted-flakes 6y ago
      There were really only two gestures you had to learn: swipe up to go home, and down for settings, and these are fundamental to using the device (so very hard to forget). Pretty much everything else came naturally. On the home screen, swiping down gave you the system quick settings, and in an app it gave you the app's settings, so the two-finger gesture was just a power-user shortcut to the system quick settings while in an app. Swipe left to go back was very discoverable, and worked differently than iOS or Android, because the entire OS was built around the idea of stacks of pages. Swiping left was just pulling a page off the stack (fluidly animated and cancellable, and you could start anywhere on the screen). There was also a back button on the left-side of the toolbar that you could tap to do the same thing. Swipe up and to the right to go to the notifications Hub was also discoverable. The Hub was the left-most page on the home screen, so "up-right" simply combined the gestures into one fluid gesture; it was also totally optional.
- frosted-flakes 6y ago
  They were discoverable, though. It boiled down to "swipe up from the bottom to go home, swipe down from the top for settings", and at first start-up it forced you to perform these two actions before setting you free. Swipe left to go back worked anywhere (you didn't have to start from the edge of the screen) and dynamically showed the page being pulled off the stack, so it was super discoverable. All of the swipe gestures worked this way—"peek" was core to the interaction model because it made users feel in control, and let them cancel an action by just dragging back to where they started. The two-finger swipe from top was only to bring the system quick settings while in an app (the two-finger gesture was also only added late in the OS's life, at the behest of power users); the quick settings were available on the home screen with a single swipe. While in an app, a single swipe brings up the app's settings. The only non-discoverable gesture was swiping the corner of the keyboard to dismiss it, and it was also totally useless. The advertised way to dismiss the keyboard was by long-pressing the space bar (there was an icon showing this).
  - thom 6y ago
    I suppose it was this bottom left swipe I was really picturing, and I will admit my experience of iOS colours my enthusiasm for invisible bits of UI in general. I can accept it's possible to have a small pool of gestures and still allow users to build a strong, consistent mental model of how to interact with a device.
Springtime 6y ago
> The best phone UX experiences I've ever had was swiping/multitasking on BlackBerry 10 OS It's a pity more haven't experienced the useful aspects of BB10's interface (10.3.2 IIRC was when it received a much appreciated UI appearance update, fwiw). I've tried Android, iOS, Windows Phone and BB10 is still my favorite. Windows Phone in particular was surprising in how unintuitive various of the gestures were in comparison. As a side note, on their phones with a physical keyboard (which featured touch detection on the surface of the entire key array) text interactions were much improved. Finessing text selections was particularly easy compared to using the touch-screen. Double-tapping the keys (without depressing them) brings up the loupe and from there one can hold down Shift while gliding around the keys to adjust the selection, much like a laptop with a touchpad.

by Lorin 6y ago

thom 6y ago

It doesn’t sound like most of those gestures are particularly discoverable though, which is sort of what the parent comment is complaining about when highlighting widgets that don’t look like widgets. There are lifesaving bits of UI in iOS for example that I didn’t know about for years, like holding the space bar to get directional control of the cursor. I like that it exists but I don’t feel that good UI can be something you not only have to be told how to use, but didn’t even know it existed.

fakedang 6y ago
They had a nice tutorial on first use that explains all the gestures.
- Firadeoclus 6y ago
  A tutorial on first use is probably not enough to have most users remember the gestures or even just which options there are. Maybe spaced repetition would be a better approach.
  - frosted-flakes 6y ago
    There were really only two gestures you had to learn: swipe up to go home, and down for settings, and these are fundamental to using the device (so very hard to forget). Pretty much everything else came naturally. On the home screen, swiping down gave you the system quick settings, and in an app it gave you the app's settings, so the two-finger gesture was just a power-user shortcut to the system quick settings while in an app. Swipe left to go back was very discoverable, and worked differently than iOS or Android, because the entire OS was built around the idea of stacks of pages. Swiping left was just pulling a page off the stack (fluidly animated and cancellable, and you could start anywhere on the screen). There was also a back button on the left-side of the toolbar that you could tap to do the same thing. Swipe up and to the right to go to the notifications Hub was also discoverable. The Hub was the left-most page on the home screen, so "up-right" simply combined the gestures into one fluid gesture; it was also totally optional.
frosted-flakes 6y ago
They were discoverable, though. It boiled down to "swipe up from the bottom to go home, swipe down from the top for settings", and at first start-up it forced you to perform these two actions before setting you free. Swipe left to go back worked anywhere (you didn't have to start from the edge of the screen) and dynamically showed the page being pulled off the stack, so it was super discoverable. All of the swipe gestures worked this way—"peek" was core to the interaction model because it made users feel in control, and let them cancel an action by just dragging back to where they started. The two-finger swipe from top was only to bring the system quick settings while in an app (the two-finger gesture was also only added late in the OS's life, at the behest of power users); the quick settings were available on the home screen with a single swipe. While in an app, a single swipe brings up the app's settings. The only non-discoverable gesture was swiping the corner of the keyboard to dismiss it, and it was also totally useless. The advertised way to dismiss the keyboard was by long-pressing the space bar (there was an icon showing this).
- thom 6y ago
  I suppose it was this bottom left swipe I was really picturing, and I will admit my experience of iOS colours my enthusiasm for invisible bits of UI in general. I can accept it's possible to have a small pool of gestures and still allow users to build a strong, consistent mental model of how to interact with a device.

Springtime 6y ago

> The best phone UX experiences I've ever had was swiping/multitasking on BlackBerry 10 OS It's a pity more haven't experienced the useful aspects of BB10's interface (10.3.2 IIRC was when it received a much appreciated UI appearance update, fwiw). I've tried Android, iOS, Windows Phone and BB10 is still my favorite. Windows Phone in particular was surprising in how unintuitive various of the gestures were in comparison. As a side note, on their phones with a physical keyboard (which featured touch detection on the surface of the entire key array) text interactions were much improved. Finessing text selections was particularly easy compared to using the touch-screen. Double-tapping the keys (without depressing them) brings up the loupe and from there one can hold down Shift while gliding around the keys to adjust the selection, much like a laptop with a touchpad.