So I am currently developing an UI for Windows which is working pretty well.
However I would love to hear your opinions about it! What’s good? What’s not that good about it? Something I’ve missed?
This interface isn’t supposed to cover all features of my system, it’s more like a simple interface for the most common features that I use. I like to keep it simple.
As you might’ve noticed by the big buttons it’s designed for touch screens, currently running pretty well on a HP slate 2.
There is an image with brief explanations of the UI components attached.
Quick explanation fo the fundamentals:
Holding and pressing a button in the Main menu will change the Subwindow to its own subwindow with settings/buttons related to that button. As seen in the attached image the subwindow for the light is currently active. A quick tap on the buttons in the main menu will however either turn on/off the devices attached to that button. I might agree that there should be some kind of feedback on which subwindow that is active, I will work on that.
If I understand correctly, you associate multiple devices (like lights) to a room, and when you press the button for that room, all lights go on or off. Is that how it works? It’s an interesting idea.
The important bit is the subwindow, i.e. where you show the devices for a single room. Do you have screenshots of that as well?
I think I’d want the main/subwindow to remain in the same “mode” when using the main menu, so if I am looking at the living room and switch from lights to fans, I expect to see the fans for the living room (rather than being bumped back to the overview of the rooms).
Also, does the app follow the division into rooms as Vera does, or are we free to put controls anywhere we want? Personally I do not want to slice up my house into rooms in all cases; in my own app I have certain stuff like lights grouped by rooms, but certain other things like heating I have together in a single screen, even though the individual devices are assigned to their correct rooms in Vera.
Overall this interface could work well for tablets
