• Interaction | Interface | Web

  • Graphic | Information | Motion

  • Service

  • Experimental

Windows Next-gen User Interface

Client:Microsoft Corp

A Microsoft next generation's desktop user interface


About this project


When I worked in Microsoft Research Asia, my boss Dave Vroney(the creative director of Microsoft surface and the head of UI Lab in MSRA)had been talking about Microsoft's next generation UI design. When I worked in Microsoft Redmond, Windows Shell team, luckily I would be able to work with him directly. Back to that time he was in charge of Window's Vista's design, and this concept roots from his brilliant idea - a card based 3D UI, I was the designer who realized his idea into concrete concepts.


Product Main features


- Real 3D-based UI rendering(It largely enhanced the visual appearance of so-called traditional UI because it can changed dynamically according the environmental lighting)

- Contextual awareness - Respond to day-night lighting environment

- Informative Metadata visualization



Project Details


Project Duration: 3 months

Project Time:Summer 2006

Client: Microsoft Window Shell team

My Role: User experience designer(design from sketches to prototyping)


Team


Project Manager: Dave Vronay

Mentor:Yingzhao Liu

Co-worker:Steve


Skills involved


Modeling and texturing 3Ds Max 8

Programming in C++



I apologize that I haven't really got time recently to cut it down to a feature show, so this video contains part of my previous work. Here you see a main canvas with a bunch of random card-like interfaces, each card represents a single application. There're two categories of cards, noun cards(or data cards) and verb cards(app cards). They link each other in a programmable grammar, which facilitates an advanced personalized desktop search. Loading
A physical card can contain an app(verb card), or a folder(data card). You can customize it's interfaces. A new card will automatically show up on the computer screen when you point it to the computer, the graphic on the card will be visualized as a 3D object on screen. Other gestures are also explored, such as shuffling as searching, syncing and copying, etc., A very similar but smarter approach can be found in David Merrill's TED talk: Siftable.


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Experimental UI system. We rendered real 3D icons in our module with global lighting and normal mapping.


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This new desktop User interface has a whole a lot of features, such as lighting changing with daily time and weather.