‹ Ideal UX

A desktop environment experience that doesn't exist (yet?)

Draft sketches

A sketch titled, System gestures v1. Swipe down to grab current app. Quick swipe and release to show title bar. Swipe up on the bottom-left for launcher. Swipe up from bottom-right for action center. The bottom bar has back and app launcher buttons on the left and system icons and clock on the right. A sketch titled, Launcher v1. The launcher has tiles like Windows 10, but rounded. Widgets are fit to the same grid and have the same rounded corners. A button at the top-left or a swipe opens the list of all apps. An edit button is at the top-right. A search box with a microphone icon is at the bottom. The voice assistant can be set to auto-activate when the launcher is opened, and hardware keyboard input defaults to typing into the search box unless the focus was already explicitly moved. I am not the biggest fan of forcing icons to all be the same shape, but I like the 2020 Windows approach of giving them a translucent area that they can then fill in if they want with an adaptive icon background. A sketch titled, Action center v1. At the bottom, quick settings are more tile-like, like Windows 10, and can be expanded with a button or up-swipe. Notifications appear above, and are aesthetically similar to Android and Chrome OS. The top has a notification history button at the left and clear all button at the right. The drag handle becomes a down caret that can be dragged or clicked to close the panel. The current app can be seen behind the panel, indicating it is just an overlay. A sketch titled, Action center v1 (large screen). The left half has the same expandable quick settings area and a calendar above it. The right half has notifications. I like the idea of including the calendar somehow, but I prefer that the Chrome OS and Windows action centers cover less of the screen. Reversing the sides might make more sense since the system icons are to the right, and then the notification side could collapse away when there are no notifications. A sketch titled, System gestures v2 - launcher. The status bar is now at the top. Swipe down from the top-left to pull a ripple down that expands into the launcher. I think I prefer the panel being pull out under the system bar to the system bar itself being stretched to become the panel. The latter makes the connection between the two more clear, but the former makes it possible to switch to the notification/QS panel without first closing the launcher. The bottom bar contains window controls, with back and optional forward button at the left, overview button in the middle, and close button at the right. A sketch titled, System gestures v2 - overview. Swiping up from the bottom opens the ovierview view, but you can also swipe completely bottom to top to instantly close. In overview, you can long-press and drag the title bar to close or move to split-screen target. An ellipsis menu or right-click contains options to access info, pin, or split-screen or close without dragging.