6 ms·

SKreen: Human Centric Smartphones for Everyone

22 points by fabrice_d 5y ago

nynx 5y ago
This is very interesting. Is there any more information available about the smartphones?
jmercouris 5y ago
I would like to see some hard science behind these claims.
- fabrice_d 5y ago
  If you can read French you'll find some example of these neuroscience techniques applied to various web sites to enhance the user journey at https://sapiensux.com/ https://sapiensux.com/ . In most of these projects this was done to also improve some product metric (better conversion, more sales, less support), but these techniques apply to other contexts too.
- RamonR 5y ago
  There are exciting works on the load on brain activity when using tools such as smartphones. For example, this video shows the brain areas and functions activated when a user is asked to perform an action. It is shown that the load is high and the pleasure is low. Learning allows us to reduce this, but we can also imagine creating HMIs that are much more respectful of the way our brain actually works. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x81jew9 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x81jew9
kiba 5y ago
There's a complexity in UI feature? Don't get me wrong, some of the marketing material I like the sound of, but I can use my smartphone just fine. I would like more battery lifespan, phone hardware that I can easily fix, that the OS serves me not some megacorp. With a subscription business model, I am not sure why I would want it to run my phone.
- fabrice_d 5y ago
  Yes, many people think they can use their smartphone just fine. That doesn't mean that it's not a lot of learnt tolerance to less than ideal UX. It's fascinating to see brain activity involved when performing basic tasks.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    > That doesn't mean that it's not a lot of learnt tolerance to less than ideal UX. That's implying that there is "ideal UX" that would fit everyone and the current UX is not a series of compromises to try to be usable by anyone. I would personally think that's not the case.
    - wiml 5y ago
      I don't think it's implying anything like that — it's just implying that there is better UX somewhere out there in the design space.
      - fakedang 5y ago
        Considering the OP's other comments here, I can't help but think that they're trying to solve the problem with a "we know better than you what you need" attitude. Their UX is the best, their website UI is the best, their policy towards a subscription model is the best, Yada Yada.
smoldesu 5y ago
> sKreen pricing model relies on a subscription model: in exchange for a reasonable monthly fee, you will enjoy a sKreen device and its associated services. Nope. Give me an option to own it and host it's services myself, or it's not even an upgrade over the current landscape of devices. > Web based OS That's my exit. Good luck!
- wayneftw 5y ago
  I want an OS with a web based UI. I've never seen a native kit as flexible or easy to use as any modern web engine. What's your complaint?
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    Didn’t Apple has tried just that and had to go native?
    - KozmoNau7 5y ago
      They did, in 2007 on the original iPhone. A lot has happened since then to perhaps make PWAs a much more viable option.
    - colinstrickland 5y ago
      not really. They suggested it as a viable option for third party access, because they initially wanted to keep native apps as a first-party advantage, and not open the device unbundled software. It has been tried a few times though, particularly by Palm (WebOS, now living inside LG smart TVs), and of course Mozilla tried a smartphone firefox OS for a while.
    - wayneftw 5y ago
      No. Apple never ever planned on having only web apps on their iPhone. They were quite obviously saying that to hide their true intentions since they came out with an entire SDK very shortly after the iPhones release. WebOS was the one web based OS for mobile. I'd like that back please!
rudolfwinestock 5y ago
On the one hand, I'm glad that there's more public effort in developing user interfaces beyond what's 'standard,' today. It indicates that "the market" senses the need. I applaud this venture. On the other hand, they could start by not using such an eye-searing color scheme for their website.
- COGlory 5y ago
  Yes that didn't exactly instill confidence
  - fabrice_d 5y ago
    Don't judge a book by its cover! Also, lighthouse claims we're good with contrast / lisibility :)
    - teawrecks 5y ago
      What if it's a book about designing book covers ;)
    - TylerE 5y ago
      You are not. That page generated an immediate Back from me. I wouldn't read that site if you paid me to.
    - WaffleIronMaker 5y ago
      I understand the design might be quirky, but I'm not reading that.
    - marlor 5y ago
      It’s not judging a book by its cover. It’s judging a company that designs a smartphone UX experience by their website’s UX experience. My eyes. I hit back.
    - KozmoNau7 5y ago
      I like it a lot, it's bright and bold and has good contrast. More sites and apps need to ditch the ridiculous dark mode fad and go bright and vivid, and I'm guessing most people who complain (and probably most dark mode adherents) have their display brightness set way too high. (Open a new text document or anything else bright white, and hold a piece of new white paper up beside it. The white on your screen should be the same brightness and color temperature as the paper. If it's noticeably brighter, you need to turn down the brightness on your monitor and/or increase the amount of lighting in your room. Basic ergonomics.)
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
/e/ ?
- fabrice_d 5y ago
  /e/ is a very nice project. However I think they will always be tied a bit too much to what Android upstream will do. There's a limit to what you can do by layering on top of an existing humongous base.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    I've just been wondering about Normandy, Paris, Palo Alto on their twitter.
arduinomancer 5y ago
> A new smartphone usage made possible thanks to neuroscience Is there anything substantial here or some example of what they're building?
- fabrice_d 5y ago
  The people we work with on that have a site with examples of results at https://sapiensux.com/ https://sapiensux.com/
_carbyau_ 5y ago
Subscription model gets a hard nope from me.
naturalauction 5y ago
Maybe slightly different than this (which seems to be at an os level) but I would pay for new interfaces for social media apps/sites that make users less susceptible to social media addiction (or even interfaces that don’t explicitly optimize for maximizing the amount of time spent on a service).
khimaros 5y ago
still keeping an eye on https://mudita.com/products/pure https://mudita.com/products/pure and the open source mobile OS they've built https://mudita.com/products/pure/muditaos/ https://mudita.com/products/pure/muditaos/
- butz 5y ago
  Still waiting access for the "open source".
csande17 5y ago
Since this is based on KaiOS, I really hope they do a classic flip-phone style device. There's no better form factor for a phone you actually use to call people, and a lot of the current devices on the market are set to die off when carriers stop supporting 3G networks. There are a few 4G-compatible flip phones on the market, but many of them SUCK. Call reliability issues, awful janky Android forks, T9 without smart punctuation (so you can't type words with apostrophes)... it's a space ripe fpr a new player to come in and just, like, remember how we did good interfaces 10-20 years ago.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hermitsings 5y ago
I'd have liked see some pics(nudes)
tompazourek 5y ago
I'm on mobile, and the scrolling on the website is all weird.
sifar 5y ago
I fail to understand, how can something built on KaiOS have privacy at its core ? [1] "We also use your personal information to help us create, develop, operate, deliver, and improve our products, services, content, and advertising to improve your user experience continually." [1] https://www.kaiostech.com/privacy-policy/ https://www.kaiostech.com/privacy-policy/
- fabrice_d 5y ago
  You can use the same technical platform with a different privacy policy, to build a different product.

22 points by fabrice_d 5y ago

nynx 5y ago

This is very interesting. Is there any more information available about the smartphones?

jmercouris 5y ago

I would like to see some hard science behind these claims.

fabrice_d 5y ago
If you can read French you'll find some example of these neuroscience techniques applied to various web sites to enhance the user journey at https://sapiensux.com/ https://sapiensux.com/ . In most of these projects this was done to also improve some product metric (better conversion, more sales, less support), but these techniques apply to other contexts too.
RamonR 5y ago
There are exciting works on the load on brain activity when using tools such as smartphones. For example, this video shows the brain areas and functions activated when a user is asked to perform an action. It is shown that the load is high and the pleasure is low. Learning allows us to reduce this, but we can also imagine creating HMIs that are much more respectful of the way our brain actually works. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x81jew9 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x81jew9

kiba 5y ago

There's a complexity in UI feature? Don't get me wrong, some of the marketing material I like the sound of, but I can use my smartphone just fine. I would like more battery lifespan, phone hardware that I can easily fix, that the OS serves me not some megacorp. With a subscription business model, I am not sure why I would want it to run my phone.

fabrice_d 5y ago
Yes, many people think they can use their smartphone just fine. That doesn't mean that it's not a lot of learnt tolerance to less than ideal UX. It's fascinating to see brain activity involved when performing basic tasks.
- Zababa 5y ago
  > That doesn't mean that it's not a lot of learnt tolerance to less than ideal UX. That's implying that there is "ideal UX" that would fit everyone and the current UX is not a series of compromises to try to be usable by anyone. I would personally think that's not the case.
  - wiml 5y ago
    I don't think it's implying anything like that — it's just implying that there is better UX somewhere out there in the design space.
    - fakedang 5y ago
      Considering the OP's other comments here, I can't help but think that they're trying to solve the problem with a "we know better than you what you need" attitude. Their UX is the best, their website UI is the best, their policy towards a subscription model is the best, Yada Yada.

smoldesu 5y ago

> sKreen pricing model relies on a subscription model: in exchange for a reasonable monthly fee, you will enjoy a sKreen device and its associated services. Nope. Give me an option to own it and host it's services myself, or it's not even an upgrade over the current landscape of devices. > Web based OS That's my exit. Good luck!

wayneftw 5y ago
I want an OS with a web based UI. I've never seen a native kit as flexible or easy to use as any modern web engine. What's your complaint?
- dogma1138 5y ago
  Didn’t Apple has tried just that and had to go native?
  - KozmoNau7 5y ago
    They did, in 2007 on the original iPhone. A lot has happened since then to perhaps make PWAs a much more viable option.
  - colinstrickland 5y ago
    not really. They suggested it as a viable option for third party access, because they initially wanted to keep native apps as a first-party advantage, and not open the device unbundled software. It has been tried a few times though, particularly by Palm (WebOS, now living inside LG smart TVs), and of course Mozilla tried a smartphone firefox OS for a while.
  - wayneftw 5y ago
    No. Apple never ever planned on having only web apps on their iPhone. They were quite obviously saying that to hide their true intentions since they came out with an entire SDK very shortly after the iPhones release. WebOS was the one web based OS for mobile. I'd like that back please!

rudolfwinestock 5y ago

On the one hand, I'm glad that there's more public effort in developing user interfaces beyond what's 'standard,' today. It indicates that "the market" senses the need. I applaud this venture. On the other hand, they could start by not using such an eye-searing color scheme for their website.

COGlory 5y ago
Yes that didn't exactly instill confidence
- fabrice_d 5y ago
  Don't judge a book by its cover! Also, lighthouse claims we're good with contrast / lisibility :)
  - teawrecks 5y ago
    What if it's a book about designing book covers ;)
  - TylerE 5y ago
    You are not. That page generated an immediate Back from me. I wouldn't read that site if you paid me to.
  - WaffleIronMaker 5y ago
    I understand the design might be quirky, but I'm not reading that.
  - marlor 5y ago
    It’s not judging a book by its cover. It’s judging a company that designs a smartphone UX experience by their website’s UX experience. My eyes. I hit back.
  - KozmoNau7 5y ago
    I like it a lot, it's bright and bold and has good contrast. More sites and apps need to ditch the ridiculous dark mode fad and go bright and vivid, and I'm guessing most people who complain (and probably most dark mode adherents) have their display brightness set way too high. (Open a new text document or anything else bright white, and hold a piece of new white paper up beside it. The white on your screen should be the same brightness and color temperature as the paper. If it's noticeably brighter, you need to turn down the brightness on your monitor and/or increase the amount of lighting in your room. Basic ergonomics.)

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

/e/ ?

fabrice_d 5y ago
/e/ is a very nice project. However I think they will always be tied a bit too much to what Android upstream will do. There's a limit to what you can do by layering on top of an existing humongous base.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  I've just been wondering about Normandy, Paris, Palo Alto on their twitter.

arduinomancer 5y ago

> A new smartphone usage made possible thanks to neuroscience Is there anything substantial here or some example of what they're building?

fabrice_d 5y ago
The people we work with on that have a site with examples of results at https://sapiensux.com/ https://sapiensux.com/

_carbyau_ 5y ago

Subscription model gets a hard nope from me.

naturalauction 5y ago

Maybe slightly different than this (which seems to be at an os level) but I would pay for new interfaces for social media apps/sites that make users less susceptible to social media addiction (or even interfaces that don’t explicitly optimize for maximizing the amount of time spent on a service).

khimaros 5y ago

still keeping an eye on https://mudita.com/products/pure https://mudita.com/products/pure and the open source mobile OS they've built https://mudita.com/products/pure/muditaos/ https://mudita.com/products/pure/muditaos/

butz 5y ago
Still waiting access for the "open source".

csande17 5y ago

Since this is based on KaiOS, I really hope they do a classic flip-phone style device. There's no better form factor for a phone you actually use to call people, and a lot of the current devices on the market are set to die off when carriers stop supporting 3G networks. There are a few 4G-compatible flip phones on the market, but many of them SUCK. Call reliability issues, awful janky Android forks, T9 without smart punctuation (so you can't type words with apostrophes)... it's a space ripe fpr a new player to come in and just, like, remember how we did good interfaces 10-20 years ago.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

hermitsings 5y ago

I'd have liked see some pics(nudes)

tompazourek 5y ago

I'm on mobile, and the scrolling on the website is all weird.

sifar 5y ago

I fail to understand, how can something built on KaiOS have privacy at its core ? [1] "We also use your personal information to help us create, develop, operate, deliver, and improve our products, services, content, and advertising to improve your user experience continually." [1] https://www.kaiostech.com/privacy-policy/ https://www.kaiostech.com/privacy-policy/

fabrice_d 5y ago
You can use the same technical platform with a different privacy policy, to build a different product.