#glanceable

Kolejne miesiące mijają szybciej niż byśmy chcieli. Dlatego właśnie postanowiliśmy wybrać dla Was zjawiska, o których JWT Intelligence pisze jako o wyróżniających się w tym roku. Agencja zajmuje się śledzeniem trendów. Oto kilka zjawisk – związanych z dostępem do informacji i percepcją - wybranych z prezentacji „100 Things ToWatch in 2014”:

Czas na czytanie – wydawcy (np.: Slate) coraz częściej informują, ile minut/godzin zajmie przeczytanie wybranego artykułu. To oczywiście pewne uśrednione dane, ale dają czytelnikowi wyobrażanie o długości materiału jeszcze przed kliknięciem „czytaj dalej”.

Glanceable UI – tworzenie interfejsów, które pozwalają – nawet przy krótkim zerknięciu – dostrzec sens przekazywanej informacji.

Metadane – czyli nasze cyfrowe ślady: gdzie, kiedy i z kim się kontaktujemy mailowo, telefonicznie, nie zaś to, co nasze wiadomości i rozmowy zawierają. Część ekspertów twierdzi, że metadane mogą ujawniać więcej niż treść komunikatów. Użytkownicy mają zaś coraz większą świadomość jak wiele informacji o nich można z metadanych wyciągnąć dzięki algorytmom szukającym wzorów, schematów i korelacji.

Help get people the information they need to check often in an easy glance on Android by using the HTC Lockscreen API and Android Widget API. These APIs let an app offer the user UI controls that can be put on the homescreen and the lock screen. The lock screen is the first screen the user sees when they turn the phone on. Here is an example with information about an upcoming flight:

  A person may need to check this to figure out when to leave their home in the morning, check it to figure out where in the airport to go, check it for updates from the airline, check it to see if they can grab an extra sandwich or bathroom trip before boarding, etc.. Make it easy for the person by publishing frequent check data like this in easy to see places.

This next flight example was written for a company that we're working with. I've also published it on GitHub. When installed and run, users can set what reminder information they would like to be displayed:

Then they can hold down on their home screen and pick the app to show a home screen widget with this reminder information:

Or they can use the lock screen style chooser from the phone's personalize settings to show it on their lock screen:

The first time the app is run, or when the help button is pressed, it explains how this works and offers a button to quickly open the lock screen style chooser directly:

Implementation

Both lock screen and widget APIs require being declared in the AndroidManifest.xml of the Android app using them. This file specifies the components of the Android app. For the lock screen, these permissions are needed in the manifest element:

<uses-permission a:name="android.permission.WAKE_LOCK"/> <uses-permission a:name="com.htc.idlescreen.permission.IDLESCREEN_SERVICE" />

And these components are needed in the application element:

<uses-library a:name="com.htc.lockscreen.fusion" a:required="false" /> <uses-library a:name="com.htc.fusion.fx" a:required="false" /> <service a:name="com.htc.sample.nextflight.lockscreen.SampleService" a:enabled="false">   <intent-filter>     <action a:name="com.htc.lockscreen.idlescreen.IdleScreenService"/>   </intent-filter>   <meta-data a:name="com.htc.lockscreen.idlescreen" a:resource="@xml/idlescreen"/> </service>   <service a:name="com.htc.sample.nextflight.lockscreen.SampleServiceLegacy" a:enabled="false">   <intent-filter>     <action a:name="com.htc.lockscreen.idlescreen.IdleScreenService"/>   </intent-filter>   <meta-data a:name="com.htc.lockscreen.idlescreen" a:resource="@xml/idlescreen"/> </service>  

For the widget API this component is needed in the application element:

<receiver   a:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"   a:label="@string/widget_label"     a:name=".widget.WidgetProvider" >   <intent-filter >     <action a:name="android.appwidget.action.APPWIDGET_UPDATE" />   </intent-filter>      <meta-data     a:name="android.appwidget.provider"     a:resource="@xml/widget_info" /> </receiver>

The complete AndroidManifest.xml for the sample app is available on GitHub. Both of these components refer to another XML specifying settings, such as res/xml/idlescreen.xml for the lockscreen, and res/xml/widget_info.xml for the widget API.

To enable the lockscreen component and show the user a help dialog explaining the feature is available, this code is used in the main activity:

final boolean enabledLockScreen = LockScreenHelper.enable(this); if (enabledLockScreen) {   if (!mPrefs.getShowedLockScreenDialog()) {     new LockScreenDialog(this).show();     mPrefs.setShowedLockScreenDialog(true);   } }

To display the user's chosen reminder info on the lockscreen this code is used in LockScreenImple.java:

@Override public void onCreate(final SurfaceHolder holder) {   setContent(R.layout.lock_screen);   setShowLiveWallpaper(true);   mNextFlightName = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.next_flight_name);   mNextFlightDetails = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.next_flight_details); } @Override public void onResume() {   mNextFlightName.setText(mPrefs.getNextFlightName());   mNextFlightDetails.setText(mPrefs.getNextFlightDetails()); }

To show it in a widget, this code is used in WidgetProvider.java:

This week I was lucky enough to be away in Amsterdam for a few days.  Speaking at Picnic and then a weekend lay over.  My oldest son is now 8, and as well as missing his dad when I am away he is far more aware of where I am, always asking what I'm up to when I call/skype him.

This year I have been to Bangkok, Amsterdam, Paris, Eindhoven, and a tonne of places in London.  He doesn't care which cafe I am hiding in, or what is the name of the conference is but he does like to know roughly where I am.

I have never really fallen off the foursquare wagon, and I was thinking about giving him access to bits, but he looked at and said "it wasn't his cup of tea". 

I stream my check ins to a twitter account (Inspired by Phil Gyford and Russell Davies' life stream to somewhere that I can share or RSS) but I'm not sure Archie is ready for twitter.

He has access to a tonne of screens but not really in any personal way for him. My laptop/Em's laptop/Xbox/tv/our music iMac/iPads/mum's phone etc..

so...

In the shower on saturday I got to thinking about some of our glanceable apps, dashboards etc etc and can i produce something for him that was cheap, preferably something I could put on the wall (last.fm radiator, bus timetables etc), and roughly informative enough.

I am a bit obsessed with Split Flap displays.

If i could build one to leave in the kitchen/bedroom it would be perfect.

Pull city data, regions from foursquare and display on his flip destination.

The sound of the flips flapping would signify I had moved.  So not something he would need to consistently check, or refer back to. Sound in glanceables is an area I keep thinking about and Russell again has written about.

So flip destination board + arduino.  This is close to it.

A DIY split flap clock

Brilliant but not something I can do in a hotel in Amsterdam.

So I started chatting to Dan Williams about cheap screen alternatives. Kindles are so in now. Cheap monitors need machines, and it would be about 20 minutes before Archie realised he could play plants vs zombies in his bedroom. iPads seem to provide so much other noise it needs to be simple.

Dan let it slip that he was right then at a foursquare hack day as they are realising their apis's (well actually I knew he was but didn't want to let him know I was stalking him) so we started talking about foursquare to glanceable..

Simple.

Easy.

Quick to build. 

Let's start with an old iphone screen.

A flip destination board can be something we get to.

Sunday lunchtime as I sipped the last Dutch koffie before my flight home, and with a little CSS wrangling, Dann released version 0.9. 

There's more work to do.  

We need to be really careful not to add to much gumf ( we talked about dopplr city colours that could render the city text - This would be fun but probably pointless,  weather information (Wouldn't it be fun to show  "dads caught in a storm,  whilst we play in the garden" ) and maybe airport codes.  Everyone likes airport codes

 But I am really happy with it, and can't wait to show Archie.

We are also working on a larger screen one, an app that shows ALL of your friends locations, it clicks clacks when people move, and give you the opportunity for serendipity.

They both need work, but we are getting something good.

There is more on Dan's Blog

URL

http://arrivals.iamdanw.com/

Created 2011-09-17

Technologies: Sinatra, Heroku, Foursquare API

Screenshots & Videos Flickr & Vimeo

Coverage

Foursquare Blog

The Next Web

PSFK (twice)