Windows carousel interface concept

On the last day at the Microsoft MIX08 event, Daniel Makoski from the Microsoft Surface team presented a session called “Beneath the Surface: The Natural Experience Vision”. During the presentation, Daniel briefly touched on the work they were doing in Windows surrounding natural user interfaces.

DSC_0029

Most of the presentation was focused around the Surface which is interesting enough in itself, but a few slides in regards to Windows caught my attention. It showed off a range of alternate user interfaces for people who may not have been familiar with the traditional computing paradigm, particularly in developing nations. These are some of the ideas they had.

DSC_0030DSC_0031

DSC_0032

DSC_0034

13 insightful thoughts

  1. Hmm, where’s my carousel reversal spray?
    Seems simular o sony’s XrossMediaBar

  2. Hmmm, a carousel interface seems to be the holy grail these days. Is this presentation available online?

    They have spent so much time in creating hundreds of different styles and on the other hand they couldn’t manage to create one complete icon set for their most important product…

  3. I always thought CoverFlow was just a fanicer zoom up of a carousel view. I’ve also thought that Microsoft would use a carousel view for a UI someday. I guess I was right.

  4. How will carousel work if there are hundreds of icons on display? Mac’s dock solved this by the magnifying effect although the concept breaks down when you have hundreds of tiny icons to go through.

  5. It will probably be organized into categories. For Example email might have Windows Mail, Yahoo Mail and links to the online sites of them in them and the Games category might be filled with thousand’s of different games (depending on how much you have 😉

    It seems pretty cool but with most cool stuff when will it be out or even will it be out

  6. What`s the use of carousel UIs? There is too much time wasted by spinning the carousel. Or, by selecting subcategories. I guess it may be useful for media center-like stuff, but nothing else. Anyone care to prove that wrong?

  7. I think people are getting it confused with the Pie menu system. You can see demos of that in the Microsoft CIW Prototype Demos – UXE. And on the “desk of the future” that they had a good demo of.

Comments are closed.