Home Screen Widget 'Blocks' Imagined in New iOS Concept

[rtdunham]

he is unsure exactly how iOS would handle moving other home screen icons to accommodate a new Block on a full home screen...

why not have the blocks open on a single page or screen unique to them? if you've opened three or four you select that page as your home screen, and you're only a swipe away from the way things have always looked.

jrswizzle improved on this idea: "I want my dedicated widget page to the left of the main home screen and accessible from the lock screen"

 

[mytdave]

Good concept

1. I like it. Make sure it's optional, for those folks who don't like it, and everything is great.

2. Why share this publicly instead of communicating it to Apple privately?

 

[Nevaborn]

Looks great and would be a welcome feature.

two things though, would like a rectangle option as well and like others said the text should probably be centralised.

 

[winterspan]

This looks needlessly complicated. Not sure what this would add to the user experience.

How on earth do you find this "complicated" Its unbelievably simple and elegant. I love the idea of being able to leave certain icons small, while expanding others into a widget for more information.

I guarantee that apple will move in this direction..

 

[hansonjohn590]

Very interesting, I kind of like how its the same shape and fits nicely with other icons. I'd probably use it for some apps.

Just make it optional and no harm done.

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This looks needlessly complicated. Not sure what this would add to the user experience.

If you think that's complicated, I'd hate to see how you live your life.

 

[BaldiMac]

How on earth do you find this "complicated" Its unbelievably simple and elegant. I love the idea of being able to leave certain icons small, while expanding others into a widget for more information.

I guarantee that apple will move in this direction..

It's only simple and elegant in a limited demo. Too many use cases where it falls apart. Mostly when you consider icon movement and the dock. Not to mention resource usage.

 

[teme]

Maybe the haters are biased because it's the way Android or Windows phones works (no idea, I only know one person with an Android phone), but this is the first time I see something like that and frankly it looks amazing, apart from the non-centered text under the tiles.

It's always like that, all widget stuff is totally uncool until Apple decides to add them to iOS and then everyone thinks they're totally cool and thanks Apple!

 

[charlituna]

Not really a fan.
But that's just me, don't kill me.

I"m not either. Frankly I don't get this obsession with the notion that Apple simply MUST do live icons, widgets etc that jail breakers keep pushing out there. I say no. If someone just really has to have it then they can jailbreak and tweak it up. At their own risk on their battery etc of course

NOW, if you were to promote this as an accessibility idea of having larger icons even if it means having fewer on the screen then okay. I'll go with that. Now live ones just bigger ones. Especially on the iPad. (I can't take credit for the idea. it's one of my cousin's)

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Should have been this way by now. You don't go through 7 VERSIONS without changing the homescreen. And I don't mean the icons.

Sure you do. And can. After all the home screen is to get you into the apps, which is where you are really doing your work and play. The apps are what needs to dazzle, not the door that gets you into them.

 

[teejaysplace]

Please no. Don't give me the eye sore I have to look at on Windows 8 on work computers on my iPhone. I can't imagine Apple would put that anxiety-inducing multi-sized icon/widget feature on their devices.

The ability to size icons is anxiety inducing? You must have had trouble using every computer for the last 30 years.

 

[Paddle1]

How on earth do you find this "complicated" Its unbelievably simple and elegant. I love the idea of being able to leave certain icons small, while expanding others into a widget for more information.

I guarantee that apple will move in this direction..

You described Windows 8.

 

[iansilv]

This is brilliant.

And if you don't like it- don't use it! i would really like it if Apple implemented something like this.

 

[bataa]

like it

I really like it! Especially the weather app - you don't have to 1) open; 2) see; and 3) close just to see what the temperature and chance of rain. Just a glance on your home screen and you know this basic info. Sure it's nice to animation of thunderstorm and snow when you open the app, but you would see it anyway from the window.

 

[Keijo]

As a developer I find this very interesting. Hopefully Apple will make it look good (if they were to do something like this) and not any metro-android-****

 

[teejaysplace]

I"m not either. Frankly I don't get this obsession with the notion that Apple simply MUST do live icons, widgets etc that jail breakers keep pushing out there. I say no. If someone just really has to have it then they can jailbreak and tweak it up. At their own risk on their battery etc of course

NOW, if you were to promote this as an accessibility idea of having larger icons even if it means having fewer on the screen then okay. I'll go with that. Now live ones just bigger ones. Especially on the iPad. (I can't take credit for the idea. it's one of my cousin's)

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Sure you do. And can. After all the home screen is to get you into the apps, which is where you are really doing your work and play. The apps are what needs to dazzle, not the door that gets you into them.

Not even in the ballpark of truth. The reason Apple hasn't changed the home screen has nothing to do with an inability to innovate or a general disinterest in that area of their OS. If MSFT and Google have done it, you can bet that Apple's UI team has considered it. The reason, if any, is that the home screen has defined the look of iOS since day one and those rows of rounded squares have essentially become part of their branding. Recall the outcries of users when they changed the color of the icons in iOS 7. So the "door that gets you in" is exactly what Apple is trying to sell because their real money is in the hardware. They're not messing with it until they've got something they feel is better, both from technical and marketing standpoints. That may be on Monday and it may be never. The mockup above isn't bad, but I tend to doubt it's the direction Apple's looking for. Guess we'll find out soon.

 

[octothorpe8]

Love it. Not all apps are equal in importance, and if some of them can display information in the "icon", why not?

 

[ghost of jobs]

Except that widgets were on OS X before Android existed.....

I was referring to the app drawer... The main thing that give android devices the freedom to go wild with their home screens due to the apps all being in a neat little drawer one click away....
And anyway anything on the desktop is not really relevant to the mobile form.. they are 2 separate animals..
And good luck with 're writing widget history.. they wernt invented on OSX, as u allude to.. they were on Solaris workstations in the 90's...

 

[dai.hop]

When will people learn. Widgets aren't cool. They're terrible. If you're using widgets - you're doing it wrong!

 

[arkmannj]

Yes. In apps. And on my children's devices. If only I could disable the swipe down that shows notification center too. That thing is obnoxious in apps.

Makes Sense, particularly on the kids devices. Still, I think it would be nice to be able to have a quick launch from Control Center to Settings, it still feels like a natural place for it.

I have a couple friends with Otterbox cases and another with some other brand where the case stick up too far to even swipe up to access Control Center. Though, I think at least one of the cases was made for iPhone 5, as the home button cover makes it impossible to use Touch ID with the case on. My friend says the salesman at Future Shop told her it was for the 5S. Clearly wrong.

Why don't you just put the Settings icon in some junk folder?

What I wish they'd add to Control Center is a link to Safari settings, like clear cookies and data. I hate how Settings refreshes every minute. And Safari pages constantly reloading- bad for the data plan.

I get what you are saying about the case, but that really says more to me about the case designs than iOS. But As my proposed fix I mentioned that Control Center might not be the ONLY way to get to settings, it would just be a nice quick place to access settings from, and it fits in with the nature of options and settings already there.

I agree with you on Safari... a quicker option and less refreshes would be nice.

On top of that, until another couple generations come and go, tech will still be something that, for the vast majority of people with large amounts of money, struggle with. People 40+ aren't going to instinctively know to bring up this "control center" thingy to get to their settings. A nice icon on the homepage allows them to access it easily.

When the people currently in their 30's are in their 50's we can have a lot more of those types of designs. But unfortunately for the next 20 years we are stuck catering to the tech deficient populous. And sure, you can always market for the younger crowd. Hell a smartphone to begin with is doing that, but you still need to make it accessible to the broader scope of people, especially when the money typically resides with people 40+

By the time there are nothing but smartphones in another few years and even some of the older people are used to using them, could you get rid of a feature like the Settings icon on the home screen? Sure. Could you do it now and just deal with the confusion? Sure. But I believe that Apple STILL considers the user experience a top priority and therefore will always be on the "easy" side of the coin and not the "super cool" or "super functional" side of the coin. I can understand their reasons, but being someone who "gets" tech and was raised on it, I just wish it didn't always have to be that way.

Please see the below reply that I had posted in reponse to DDustiNN's question. Just because it would be available in Control Center doesn't mean that has to be the only option any more than it is the only option for getting to photo's or calculator, etc...

People Disable Control Center? I mean that as a real question I'm not trying to be snarky or anything. But to your question, perhaps if you have Control Center Disabled, then the App Icon reappears.

Or if we had a way to hide/show individual icons then any hidden apps (including settings in this case) could appear when someone does the "pull down" that brings up the search box as a default result set before the user has actually started entering a search.

Anyhow Just a few quick ideas off of the top of my head. But regardless, not having Settings launchable from Control-Center has always felt like a big omission to me.

 

[DoctorKrabs]

Every year there is the same hacky concept that will never happen because widgets are pointless.

 

[stevefeinstein]

It wouldn't work very well, here's why...

The concept demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of the human factors that make a good pinch/zoom target. If you look at how Apple has implemented the pinch/zoom, you never pinch an individual item. You pinch on the screen and the currently active item then is manipulated by the pinch.

Attempting to zoom a small icon on an iPhone screen with fat fingers that many of us have would never work.

What would work would be to long tap the icon, then pinch/zoom while it's wiggling. That would conform to the proper way to use pinch/zoom.

 

[nwcs]

Need to start somewhere. That must have been a fancy VT . All I've ever used were VT420 and VT320.

I think it was a VT1000 (if memory serves). At my university, of course.

 

[Goftrey]

Widgets are becoming less and less popular even in the Android world.

Now would be a bad time for Apple to introduce them. They missed the curve, and now it's in decline. Spend the effort on something else.

 

[stevefeinstein]

Yes. In apps. And on my children's devices. If only I could disable the swipe down that shows notification center too. That thing is obnoxious in apps.

You can, look at the Guided Access feature. It lets you lock down the device so that you can't leave the running app. Control center, and notification center get disabled, and you have options on disabling volume, sleep, and rotation sensor.

I never hand my phone to another human without locking them into only what they need access to.

 

[Heltik]

Should have been this way by now. You don't go through 7 VERSIONS without changing the homescreen. And I don't mean the icons.

How much has the Mac OS desktop changed since 10.0, or for that matter since 1984?

The only reason to change something is if there is something better to replace it with. Of course, I agree one should strive to continually seek better things to replace it with!

 

[peteullo]

The concept looks great on the iPhone.... I can't say the same for the iPad.