Stage Interaction for Mobile Device Icon Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Mobile devices face limitations in displaying a large number of icons due to limited screen size, requiring users to 'drill down' through multiple menus to find desired applications, which is inefficient.
Innovation Solution
A stage-based user interface that presents separate graphical windows that can be slid onto a display stage, allowing users to navigate through icons with minimal gestures, using horizontal and vertical touch gestures to switch between windows and scroll through lists, with a dynamic footer indicating the relative position of windows.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If multiple menu categories and sub-categories are used to organize icons, then the number of displayable applications increases, but the number of gestures required to access them increases
Solution Approach 1:
The interface is segmented into multiple independent windows that can be displayed simultaneously on the stage, rather than nesting applications in hierarchical menus. Each window represents a separate category or collection of icons, allowing users to access multiple groups without drilling down through levels.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transitions from a one-dimensional hierarchical menu structure to a two-dimensional stage layout where multiple windows are arranged spatially. Users can horizontally scroll through windows and vertically scroll through icons within each window, adding spatial dimensions to navigation.
2Area of stationary object
If the display screen size is increased to show more icons, then accessibility improves, but device portability and compactness deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple window contents are merged into a single stage display area, allowing numerous icons to be accessed without requiring proportional increases in physical screen size. The dynamic scrolling system consolidates navigation space.
Solution Approach 2:
The interface uses dynamic scrolling windows that can be adjusted and repositioned, allowing the display to adapt to different screen sizes and orientations. The stage-based layout dynamically manages the presentation of multiple icon sets within constrained physical dimensions.
3Ease of operation
If a single window displays all icons, then navigation is simplified, but the number of visible options at once is limited
Solution Approach 1:
The stage becomes a universal display area that can simultaneously present multiple windows, each serving different functions or categories. The footer bar provides universal navigation controls that work across all windows, maintaining simplicity while increasing visible options.
Solution Approach 2:
The footer bar acts as an intermediary element that provides consistent navigation controls across multiple windows. It mediates between the user and the multiple windows, offering a unified interface for switching between different icon collections without complicating the overall navigation model.
Data Source
AI summary
A device displays, on a screen, a graphical window from a sequence of graphical windows, where the graphical window includes a group of display elements. The device also receives a user input to the graphical window and identifies a type of the user input, where the type of the user input includes a horizontal input or a vertical input. The device displays, on the screen, another graphical window from the sequence of graphical windows when the type of user input is a horizontal input and scrolls through a stack of the display elements within the graphical window when the type of user input is a vertical input.