What is keeping Sailfish OS alive

Image by Jolla

In my previous post, I used Windows phone as an example of how focusing too much on design can hurt your product. This post is a follow-up for it, focusing on the importance of design intentions and the overall reasons to do things in the first place.

Be realistically ambitiuos

For the sake of comparison, let's pretend that Jolla chose the strategy everyone expected it to choose: follow iOS and Android to join the mobile OS and smartphone business. Just close your eyes, and picture Jolla offering the same experience what Apple, Samsung and others already do.

Wonderful, here's the thing: that strategy has been perfected by Apple, Google (later Samsung et al.) since 2005. They will keep doing so in the future, without any intentions of slowing down. 7 years later Jolla was ready to compete against industry giants, with the announcement of Sailfish OS.

Enough pretending. Competing with this strategy, against these guys, is like trying to race against a bullet train, with a bicycle, without pedals. You will get nowhere; even if you pretend to. It's utterly silly to think you can beat them in their own game they've rigged beyond recovery.

You'll be spending all your time on things you can't compete with. And since everything you implement has a cost, it's more logical to find a simple solution for all those things that make your product a reality. Move through the mandatory feature list as fast as you can, so that you can save time and effort to use on what, in your vision, makes you relevant.

This is where Microsoft stumbled. WP tried to create value too close to competition, instead of building on top of and strengthening existing ones; those that made Microsoft relevant. In the end WP sabotaged Microsoft's opportunity to not limit its users to stationary computing. Their ambition to build a smartphone OS ended up instead limiting people also on the go. Looks like they're finally fixing this with Windows 10, so let's move on.

Be honest to what you exist for

Three years after the Windows phone launch, Sailfish OS rolled out as a very limited and rough experience. You were all set, if you had enough interest and patience to wade through tutorials, reviews and forum posts. It worked if you knew exactly what you were doing, but it didn't leave any room for user errors. There was hardly any guidance to help user. To be open about things, we shipped it with a beta stamp. Digital pioneers and average consumers alike received their copy, installed on the finest hardware we had access to; a mid-range phone on all accounts. A failure by industry standards.

But the thing is, we're not competing solely within industry standards; things what others already master. We have our minimal solutions for those, but our real business is where others cannot easily go. Either because they're too scared, lack the required vision, or don't really care as long as they can convince people buying their next wave of latest and greatest.

People deserve more natural and focused interfaces than current industry standards require. We need more openness, collaboration and sustainability =  a thorough value domain reset. Automation and computing in general are less about the technology, and more about finding a common direction to increase human potential; everyone deserves more time for things that are defining humanity.

What makes Jolla and Sailfish OS relevant, is our reasons to exist in the mobile space, and what our actions stand for in contrast to the competition. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what keeps Sailfish OS alive. Not what it can directly offer, because it's not much at the moment. There's a mountain of work remaining -- actually -- make that two mountains; the operating system alone is not what you need for your computing tasks. It's merely a start.

We still need apps, more supported services and other natural functionality integration points. They are paramount in making sure Sailfish OS also stays relevant. There's a big functionality debt we owe our community. It's through their passion and trust, that we've given this chance to make a difference.

Respecting that debt would not only be human, but also an exception that this industry sorely needs to change.


Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

The story of SailfishOS browser

Why on earth would someone start yet another browser project, when there's so many already out there? Well, because all mainstream browsers are more or less scaled down desktop browsers, than something designed with one handed mobile use in mind.

Looking at the image above, the two examples from the left are impossible to comfortably use without altering your hand grip. Also the reason for such design is obvious just by looking at desktop browser interfaces: they hardly need to be operated with one hand alone. I mean, try lifting your desktop/laptop with one hand, and enter a website address.

Even if you can somehow do it, it's not comfortable; and downscaling that interface design to 5" screens does not change that. You'll still need both hands to operate it, which is an unacceptable requirement for a simple tool that should increase your potential, not decrease it.

And that's where the third example on the right comes to play. Obviously, we're not doing everything by ourselves. We chose to build our web browsing experience on top of Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine, developed for the Firefox browser.

Then, let's look at the two major steps we took before ending up with the current SailfishOS browser design. There's some good things we learned along the way.

Version one

In addition to moving the toolbar down, the first design (click to enlarge) used separate pages for both tabs and website address. The aim was to avoid the performance hungry scenario, where some web content is rendered in the background, a virtual keyboard is open, and there's search suggestions on top of everything.

The toolbar had buttons for back, address field, tabs, reload/stop and forward. In the end, the design was discarded as too complicated to understand. The root cause was in the magnifying glass icon. People didn't associate it to searching the web.

Version two

The next image shows the design that actually shipped with the Jolla phone sales release (click to enlarge). It combined both tab and addres entry into a single page. And instead of a separate address eentering icon, it promoted easier bookmarking.

We got a lot of negative feedback for that design, as it added an extra step to searching something or entering page address, and also made tabs functionality unnecessarily complicated to understand, use and develop.

Version three

The current design brought back separated tabs and address entry points. Tabs still use a page, but the latter one behaves like a toolbar extension, so that you can still see a bit of the webpage underneath. Much more useful functionality was also added throught the expanding/collapsing toolbar.

The feedback has been really good, and although I'm not completely happy about two different gestures to get back to browsing (flick address overlay down to close it vs. flick tabs page right to close it), we're much closer to a modern mobile browser interface.

Something that supports the way your hand works, instead of how you moused around in desktop interfaces few decades ago.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Sailfish OS growing pains

A pain that either forbids you from falling asleep, or aprubtly cuts your awesome dream short during the night.

It's your your junior legs that are hurting from a reason neither your parents nor doctors really know. A painkiller, accompanied with some medical jargon, is all that you're administered with. Followed by reassuring words about things getting better over time. And they do, because such are growing pains.

The Sailfish OS 2.0 demo software made its debut in Barcelona, at the Mobile World Congress. It got amazing reception from both Jolla booth visitors and media. It even landed us an award for the best tablet in show. However, our community and early adopters are not your average group of enthusiasts. Not too long after first hands-on videos reached youtube, various social media threads about missing features were open for business.

It's no wonder. That's the risk of demoing unfinished software publicly. But there's a solid reason behind us doing so. When it's your turn to be in the showroom spotlight, in-between some billion dollar companies with their competing products, you need to make everyone experience the end result. And demo software has the exactly opposite emphasis compared to something you use on a daily basis.

The demo software had to piggyback on easy and familiar features people can immediately recognize, understand and remember. Not on groundbreaking things that reboot the mobile computing or touch interaction, because those things require time to materialize during actual use. For someone already familiar with Sailfish OS, the demo software lacked many features that really add to the long term user experience.

But at the end, we didn't go to MWC just to show another product we've made. We didn't go there to show what we've done so far. We were there to represent everyone who has ever supported us. To make sure your decisions and voices count. This is a movement instead of technology. It's more human than anything else out there, so it has all the potential to grow to the right direction.

Even if it hurst a little.

I'm going to end with reassuring words about things getting better over time. And they do, because such are growing pains.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

To evolve, or not to evolve?

That's not even a question.

Be it building shelters, gathering food or traveling long distances; people always had an innate desire to do things better and faster. It's been always possible to improve some part of an activity or a tool related to it. Even entire professions have been forgotten after becoming obsolete. Thanks to the increasing pace of technological advancements, our children won't anymore recognize objects their parents grew up with.

Except when it comes to user interfaces.

I grew up with computers around me, and my kids will grow up with even more computers around them. Over the years, they've gotten a lot smaller and immensely more powerful. What hasn't really changed, is the graphical user interface staring back at us. The desktop metaphor with windows, icons, menus and a pointer (WIMP) has stayed intact for over 40 years.

The first mobile devices had no touch screens, and had to be navigated with either directional keys or a scroll wheel. It was logical to use the same approach for such a miniaturized desktop, but when touch screens became more popular, user could directly interact with things. This made controlling a pointer redundant.

After the mouse pointer was removed and touchable things made a bit bigger for suitable finger operation, everything was ready for profit-making. Nobody seemed to question, whether an interface paradigm originally designed to be operated with a keyboard and mouse (WIMP), was really applicable for a mobile touch screen use:

Unlike desktops, mobile devices

• are primarily used without a supporting surface (table or similar)
• are used in dynamic environments with disruptions
• can't assume user is constantly looking at the screen
• can't assume both hands are available for a basic operation
• can't assume equal amount of time is available to perform a task

Regardless, all mainstream mobile operating systems treat mobile use the same way as desktop use. The familiar button-based navigation model, dating back 40 years, does not really qualify for mobile use. It requires too much attention from it's user to be efficient. Too much precision to be comfortable. Too much time to be fast.

Replacing mouse and keyboard with touch alone, just decreases the speed user can control the system, making it actually worse than the desktop. It's been a wobbly decade of mobile user interface infancy. The only way it's gotten any better, is through nicer visuals and smoother transitions. But that's just surface - a better hardware clad in finer clothes.

At this rate, my grandchildren can still identify an Android phone, because baby steps were considered good enough. That's a valid strategy as long as everyone copies one another, and no alternatives exist: a family tree that looks like a ladder. It's an open invitation for smaller companies to deliver less inbred products, that are designed to adapt to your life, instead the other way around.

If you still think those archaic desktop conventions are enough to keep your massive software business afloat today, you're not the first one. The bad news is, that the only way a dinosaur could avoid extinction, was to stop being one, and evolve into something else.

Before it was too late.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

What if game controllers were designed like smartphones

Sometimes, we find products that are carefully designed with human body limitations in mind. And sometimes products go to market with utter disregard to how and where people use them.

I started wondering how would it look if, for example, a game controller would be designed without actually thinking how our hands interact with it. Here is an existing smartphone, next to a made-up game controller:

Click to enlarge

Obviously, that wouldn't really work out for any gamer, since your thumbs would be functioning on their movement range limits most of the time. It would be painful in two ways: one, your hands would be killing you even after a short session. Two, in an online game, everyone else would too. As a gamer, I'm glad we don't have such controllers, but sadly we have phones that are painful to use with one hand. And that's killing me.

Naturally, I'll just go ahead and flip that around. Here you can see the same focus to ergonomics that's applied to existing game controllers, going into a smartphone interface design. To most of you, it looks familiar:

Click to enlarge

Just like that, we can play games and use smartphones as much as we like without collateral thumb damage. And trust me when I say this, we clock in some impressive amounts per day on both. Something that smartphone interface designers in the past didn't take into consideration.

Or chose to ignore.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Follow-up: Why the status bar has to go

My earlier post, about calling a persistent status bar a ghost of desktop days, got somewhat mixed reception. I was mainly talking about individual details, and forgot to summarize the big picture.

I'd like to take another swing at the topic from a less technical angle, by asking why do we own smartphones?

Everyone uses them to communicate with people important to them. We use them to consume content through any channels available. We all have slightly different ways we use them. Others take things further, while the rest settle for less. But everyone has one thing in common;  we all do it on the go.

We pay money to carry a piece of technology around all day, to do all these things when we want to. The value comes from the device enabling communication, access to information and entertainment. It exists so that we don't have to be tethered to our grampa's box all the time.

I don't understand why are we required to babysit our devices all day, using that small bar at the top of the screen?

When facing a critical error, all smartphones have that "I just soiled my pants" -look of a small child on their faces. But children are much easier to debug, because all issues are local. With cellular reception woes, the catastrophe can occur in places you don't even know that exists. You're only left with the stink.

We must stop traveling a road, where you have to keep one eye on the status bar and one on the content. We can't live under a constant fear of our devices jumping off a cliff the moment we're not able to see the status bar. It's a UX shot so wide, that you could park Jupiter with its moons between it, and the "smartphone" target you we're aiming at.

Making better products and better software is not easy, and will only happen gradually. Nobody makes software that behaves badly on purpose. It's bad because we, as users, are holding on to certain things extremely tight. We're constantly demanding more features on top of the old ones, without understanding the complexity it invites. Complexity in the software is the same for bugs, what blood in the water is for sharks. An open invitation to ruin your pool party.

That's why rebooting the smartphone value domain is important to see what is really needed.

Look at any, big, companies, that are throwing thousands after thousands of developers and testers at their software products, to keep the quality on an acceptable level. Even they struggle to keep the water safe for swimming. They're not bad at software, but their products are simply unwieldy.

And they're complex because we demand them to be. So make sure you demand only what you really need, because it will affect with who you're sharing your swimming pool?

Is it with people important to you? Or with bunch of f*cking sharks?

The decision is yours.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Ambience: the story behind Sailfish OS looks, part 2

In the previous part, I went through the reason to not follow what other mobile operating systems do, and stay away from a static interface style. The main problem with themes, is that they just alleviate the real problem of interfaces being static, because someone wanted it to look the same for everyone.

Instead doing small things here and there, we wanted to build the personalization story around a single strong feature. The most used way to customize a device yourself, is to change the wallpaper. But we didn't want to stop there -  we wanted the wallpaper to signify how the device currently works.

To do that, it should affect also to how individual applications look. This naturally allows the image to carry more meaning to its owner than meets the eye of an outsider. The feature was named as Ambience, which means atmosphere, surrounding, mood or environment of a given place.

Here's some examples. These are screenshots of my lock screen, home screen and calculator app (click to enlarge them). In the first set, I have created an Ambience out of Orion nebula photo, and set the device to not emit any sounds when that Ambience is active. You can see the selected image being visible throughout the interface, from lock screen to the calculator.

Alright, unto the next set. This time I have selected an image that shows a circuit board as Ambience motif. More discrete ringtones and notification sounds are defined to fit my working mood and prevent disturbing others. It's easy for me to tell apart green and red interface as they carry added significance for me (both photos are personally relevant for me, and I have defined the behavior for each Ambience). Red is silent, green is discrete. No need to squint at tiny status bar icons.

Moving on to the third set, where I used an abstract macro photo to create my casual Ambience. When activated, ringtones and volumes reflect my preferences for events, going out with friends, or just idling at home. Again, it's trivial for the owner of the device to understand the device behavior through meaningful images and colors instead of minuscule status icons.

To create a new Ambience, all you need is a large enough image. Download one from web, use camera to capture something nice, or create a unique piece with your favorite illustration software. With a little bit of testing, anyone can do it. Results will often surprise you. It's an invitation to explore how different kind of images work and shape the appearance of your device. Use images relevant to you, don't follow but pave your own style. Be playful and try different things. Delete the bad ones and enjoy keepers.

Sailfish OS Ambience journey has just barely started and currently only includes partial sound settings. To get some idea what could be done with it in the future, take a look at what our community has already proposed. In short, it's like a visual umbrella for grouping any kind of behavior you might frequently need to change based on context.

How you make use of it, is up to you. After all, it's your personal device. And this time around, it really means it. The way your phone looks like, is not shared by anyone else.

Each Sailfish OS device is unique in that sense. Reflecting their users.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Ambience: the story behind Sailfish OS looks, part 1

As a part of our daunting task of creating a new mobile operating system, a visual story (theme) for the user interface was needed. What that usually meant in the past projects, was a ton of work containing:

• appearance for system UI (things that's part of the OS itself like home, lock etc.)
• appearance for each application UI building block (buttons, sliders and switches etc.)
• launcher icon style (how app icons stand out and represent the app itself)
• generic icon style (iconography used across the OS and apps) 
• creating graphical assets for actual implementation of system interface and application UI building blocks
• document how everything is implemented correctly (fonts, colors, geometry, transitions, interaction feedback etc..)
• continuously work on the documentation to fix mistakes, partial details and oversight
• add new features and update existing ones in your documentation

In most cases, one or two design teams are working on this huge pile of things. Team compositions are usually something like this:

• few chiefs for planning, leading, reviewing and managing the work
• some seniors for heading key areas
• a lot of designers to execute the design and deliver it to be implemented. Usually one per application. 

That easily means work for 15-25 people. At the time when we started, we had 2. We couldn't really continue the Nokia N9 style, due to both the amount of work required (see above) and it was still part of Nokia's brand. Same restriction applied for going for Android or iOS -copycat style. Too much to do. The amount of work needed to define, implement and maintain such an UI style, would've burnt us up in no time. Not to mention delivering something like that, understaffed, with a competitive quality. We went the opposite way, do as little design as possible.

The current Sailfish OS visual appearance was born out from the idea, that it's not the interface that matters, but what's around it; starting from the user. The more we could capture that, the less visual design would be required.

Let me open that up a bit more. The less a designer dictates how an interface looks like, the more one leaves room for personal expression. The less you try to control everything, the more the interface can become adaptive, and to resemble its owner.

We didn't want to control everything in Sailfish OS. That's not what personal is about. We wanted to make it adaptive, so that every device would look unique through portraying something that's dear to the user. As a designer, you cannot decide what that something is. You need to let go and trust the user.

And we did. We didn't end up defining everything like the competition. We almost completely eliminated documentation overhead (we're not shipping that, but a product), and instead worked with the actual software. We crafted a rule-set for adaptive interface, and continue improving and developing our own personal story.

The Ambience story.

In the next part, I'll dive deeper into how the visual style works (with example pictures).

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Why the status bar has to go

The small black stripe at the top of the smartphone of your choice. Home for various tiny icons. Through subtle changes in them, we can decipher what's going on under the hood.

To better understand the status bar we have today, we must look at the desktop computing environment where the convention came from. The following image illustrates how different common desktop environments have solved the status bar. Top or bottom, (left or right. Always visible by default.

That design somehow felt like the only possible solution that anyone could ever come up with. Whenever someone started to design an operating system, they first drew that familiar bar across one of the display edges. Just like small kids default drawing the sun into one of the top paper corners. Only with the difference that kids move on, discovering other possibilities for sun placement.

Then came the advent of smartphones. Everything we got used to in the desktop environment, had to be crammed down to a smaller screen. So that we wouldn't mistake it as something else than a desktop </sarcasm>. A ceremonial bar was again crafted across the top screen edge, to give permanent residence for status icons. And after repeating that design pattern countless times, we should realize that the advent is now gone. It's no more, and here's some further incentive:

• As a digital medium, software is dynamic in nature. A fixed or static layout is more a design decision, not a requirement. Displays also exist for dynamic content, and suffer from static one. If you haven't yet heard about screen burn-in, well now you have.
• A small bar is a compromise in legibility. To not waste screen space, the bar height is kept tiny. This results in uncomfortably tiny icons. Some have made the bar automatically hide, to not distract user, but have still kept the bar and icons tiny. Sigh.
• Lack of structure and meaning. On a small bar, all icons compete with each other for user attention. Since everything is visible all the time, a subtle change in one icon is easy to miss. All icons appear visually equal in importance, even if they rarely are.
• Technical overhead. This concerns mostly app developers, but they're users as well. No discrimination, please. Better developer experiences are needed as well. Controlling status bar visibility and behavior is yet another thing to be mindful when creating your application. Also the OS owner has to maintain such complexity. Both sides lose.
• Lost screen estate. Even if little, it all adds up. It's not really a full screen if something is reserving a slice of what would otherwise belong to your app. There is a dedicated full-screen mode in Android, further increasing the technical overhead and complexity, for both app developers and system maintainers.
• Information overload and "over-notifying". We're bad at focusing on multiple things at the same time. Status bar at the top is screaming for attention and every time you take a glimpse at it, you need to refocus back to the whatever you did before. It's important information no doubt, but user decides when.

Even if mobile devices are almost identical to desktops as computer systems, smartphones are used in completely different way, than stationary desktops and laptops. Smartphone use is mainly happening in occasional brief bursts, instead of long sessions (desktop). User unlocks the device, goes into an app, locks it again and repeats.

It's important to understand that there's a reason for the user to do that. The device is not the center of your life, and is put aside all the time, just to be pulled out again when required.

And before the user reaches that app (or notification drawer/view), several opportunities present themselves to expose user to the system status without the need to make it persistently shown. Like making it part of the natural flow of things.

That is exactly what Sailfish OS does. It solves the aforementioned problem by showing important system information as part of the home screen content, resulting in:

• Dynamic screen usage, behavior designed for displays
• Superior legibility due to larger icons
• More meaningful icons are emphasized, more layout possibilities
• Less coding leads to faster app development
• Single behavior is simpler to maintain from the OS side
• All apps are full-screen by default
• Less clutter, information is showed on demand

Don't blindly embrace a legacy design as an absolute truth. Make sure you define first what is the problem it solves. Rapid advancements in both software technology and mobile context understanding, can provide you great insight in finding alternatives that didn't exist back then.

And keeping in mind that mobile != desktop will alone carry you a long way. Remember that natural interaction in mobile context needs solutions that desktop didn't have to solve. Use your head.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Just asking - a new image series launched

Just asked myself,

Why not to squeeze some of the points I make in this blog, into images that are.. say.. more approachable? I thought it would be a good idea. So I ran along with it and made a few over the weekend.

These two (just added 2 more) are just the beginning of a wider series of images, that either ask a simple question or challenge something in the current state of the smartphone industry. I really want to do this just to see if it's something worth continuing.

As always, the goal is to increase the awareness of more natural user interfaces, through the work we've already done for Sailfish OS at Jolla.

Here's the link in case the Picasa flash plugin crashed and burned.

Anyway, let me know how these work out for you. Any comments or image ideas are also very welcomed, so I can crank out more - or stop immediately. If you already haven't, this is the perfect time to visit the comment section.

Fantastic. Let's do this, since we don't try in Finland.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

What's wrong with multiple home screens

Quite a bit. Hold on to something.

If thinking critically, what does multiple home screens really add? Aside from multiple screens off course. Is there any explanation for their existence?

I hear this even in my sleep already: "Everyone thinks they're amazing / Everyone is used to them." But, that's just repeating an opinion. It doesn't explain why do people need them?

Another common one is: "Statistics tell us that people like products with multiple home screens in them." With that logic, you can say that statistically people also like seats with feces in them, because they use bathrooms several times a day. Sorry, people would be happier without the poo being involved if it would be possible.

This as well: "We have done extensive consumer studies to prove it's a must feature to have." Sigh. On paper, you can make people like poo just by asking them the right questions.

This comes up every now and then: "It's for everyone to personalize their devices." I'm pretty sure the device is already a personal one, and what user does with it, will make it even more so. Also, there's countless other ways to make the interface a personal one.

But the winner is: "What is this heresy I hear! From the beginning of time as we know it, home screen content has always been arranged in horizontal pages!" From the beginning of 2007. But then why is pretty much every other content browsed in vertical direction? Web pages, content streams, call histories, messages and gallery grids. All vertically arranged.

So really. Why does a smartphone need multiple horizontally arranged home screens? How do they make a smartphone smarter? What is the user need they fulfill?

Anyone?

I think it's actually the other way around. A smartphone would be smarter if it didn't have multiple home screens. The main issue is in the thinking that adding more, automatically equals a better product. And as usual, people are blind to the opposite.

It's a better product, that equals more. Let's try it out.

You give a user seven home screens, instead of five. Did it make a single home screen any better? Is it easier to move or find things between seven home screens? Are seven screens easier to decorate with widgets? Is it easier to find nice widgets that don't look horrible? Is it more personal solution? Did the product become smarter than before? Does it free system resources for actual user tasks?

Nope.

Then try removing all but one home screen. Make that single remaining home screen better. Make it smarter. So that it adapts better to what user is actually doing with the device, removing the need to juggle between multiple home screens. Because everything you did and worked on, is found from the same home screen, everything becomes much faster. You launched a music player, and suddenly the controls are also there. You arrived at work and your email account summary is greeting you on your home screen. Suddenly the behavior feels more helpful and smarter, since you can do more by actually doing less.

Do you spot a pattern? Better, equals more.

There's even the age-old saying about quality trumping quantity. Well, marketing was clearly invented as an counter-argument. Because smart is hard to do. Just adding more is easy. A hammer with three heads instead of a single good one: a great idea everyone can boldly stand behind of. And with a good marketing campaign, nobody notices it's heavy as hell and unbalanced beyond practical. The rendering looks amazing, though.

So compared to doing smart and meaningful things, marketing is dirt cheap. Guess which path big manufacturers favor?

So let's try one more time: Does adding more home screens make a product easier to sell?

Hell yes it does!

If I buy a hammer, I want a better hammer than I had before. One that allows me to work faster, more efficiently and comfortably, not to forget improved safety. I don't want to buy an inferior hammer, just because it's easier to sell to other people; who at the end of the day, would also prefer a better hammer with a single good head, instead of having the option for multiple ones.

That means the product was intentionally made to perform poorly, just to make it sell more. Since the modular-wonder-hammer has the option to add more heads to it, the potential to develop a single good head is lost for the sake of a nonsense feature.

If Sailfish OS would have multiple home screens next to each other, it wouldn't be possible to have cover actions as explained in my previous post. It would mean that the ability for user to interact with tasks would be reduced.

For the sake of having a modular-wonder-hammer, that's heavy as hell and unbalanced beyond practical.

To be honest with all of you. Making a better product is really hard and painful. It's because the industry around you keeps repeating how more equals better. Especially when the rendering looks awesome.

The dumbest thing I've heard.

In the smartphone industry.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Replacing widgets with minimized applications

One of the most unique aspects of Sailfish OS, are active application covers.

They're essentially small windows on your Home screen. Each one of them represents a minimized application (not currently in full-screen state). The same function is found from any desktop OS, in form of a task bar or an application dock, that show all your applications that are running in the background.

As you know, there's no separate task bar or switcher in Sailfish OS. Only one Home screen. These covers show relevant and legible information, and allow user to perform important actions directly from the home screen.

On the first encounter, they kind of come across like widgets. And it's no wonder, since they actually pull double duty. Primarily, they're used to maximize an application to full-screen, but also allow user to interact with common features without the need of entering the app.

When compared to for example Android home screen counterparts, similarities start to run shallow. Widgets on Android are not in the same place where active applications are shown, so there's no real connection between the two. Even if they also allow using common features, there's a problem with doing it with buttons. I made a simulated example below, about Sailfish OS having separate tappable areas.

Accurately clicking a correct physical location on the display is easy in a desktop environment, the birthplace of widgets. After all, mousing on a stable surface is a breeze. But when you're walking or otherwise active, the overall movement of your body easily transfers all the way to your hands, making it harder to tap the correct button. And just because this interaction method uses our fingers to emulate a mouse cursor, it's already by definition an inferior approach for mobile interfaces that are not used in stable environments.

Sailfish OS solves this by not using taps for cover actions at all. Instead, user flicks the cover horizontally to perform an action. This makes it irrelevant where you tap or flick a cover. Both tap and flick touch events can use the entire Cover area as a target. This makes a big difference in the accuracy requirement for performing an action.

Since it's the flick direction (left or right) that defines the action (media player play/pause and skip song for example), it naturally limits the maximum amount of actions into two. And since tapping and flicking to left or right all have a different effects on how, and in which order, your hand muscles behave; it's easier for our body to associate them for different things. Again, the design both supports and takes advantage of our unique capabilities.

Whether you use all the potential through these gestures or not, is up to you. Each of us takes tools we use to different levels of efficiency. Some push them all the way to their limits, while others are comfortable in casual use. Both are equally correct.

However there shouldn't be separate locations for these two ways of use. In Android, the requirement for widgets comes from the poor multi-tasking performance, as well as system complexity. It's nicer to have multiple home screens filled with widgets, where user can perform frequent tasks. However, that's just adding more complexity by fixing the wrong problem.

By solving how minimized applications allow different degrees of user focus, and reduce the need to enter an application, the need for a separate location for widgets is removed. It both makes the OS simpler and leaner, and greatly increases task handling speed, since various user needs can fulfilled in the same location.

Responding to user required level of efficiency and control.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Calm before the storm. Looking back and forward.

Already a month has passed. It's challenging to put in words, how great it's been to organize one's head through writing. I'm finally getting a closure for some thoughts, archiving others, and kicking out the rest. With a sweep of a keyboard; I'm freeing space for new ideas, and energy to revisit the old ones that deserve it.

Additionally, it makes me happy to hear most of you have found this blog to be useful/fun to read. The support and feedback has been great and helpful. Thank you so much.

The last week has been a silent one, though. During that, I've been on an autumn holiday with my loved ones. It's been a personal retreat from things I'm expected to do; and to dedicate time on things dear to me. Even if Sailfish OS has a very special place in my heart, it's consuming work.

Never the less, it's been a fun week off. We made an outdoor movie theater for my oldest daughter and her birthday guests. Everyone had equally fun in watching a movie outside in the woods, as we did while devicing the set for it. It was a great experience to sit in the dark and nippy autumn weather; on top of camping mattresses with blankets and pillows. Accompanied by both forest and plush animals. Not to forget the usual movie goers assorted treats.

Another personal post-kids-bedtime project I've been sinking some hours in, was a small mobile speaker for Jolla phone. It's a sturdy plywood housing, that also has a place for the phone. It's aimed to entertain the back seat passengers, during some unwieldy drives we Finns have to put up with.

The last one is more elusive project. Still partially in the dark and rough around edges, but it definitely has potential. For a long time now, it's the one thing I've become really excited about. However, I want to be sure about few things before making any bigger announcements. And this time around, I don't need a company tied to it. Just people with open minds, big hearts, helpful hands, and few some odd hours to spare for a good fun.

Before that, there's a few more posts coming. And a lot more work to get done.

Have a relaxing weekend and see you next week.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Together tomorrow

Dear Jolla users and enthusiasts, Jolla Ltd and its partners.

Who I am, or where I work, means nothing for what I’m about to say. On the other hand, what I believe in and what I choose to do, means everything.

I believe in this community and I'm asking it to act.

If someone can shape the smartphone industry, it’s all of us. We have already begun. Big things have happened thanks to all of you.

Let’s forget about Jolla for a moment. This is not about Jolla. Jolla is a small company with limited resources. I’m tired of both hearing and repeating it. It’s going to stop today.

It doesn't change the fact, that our community enabled the possibility we have today. And together, we either make or break that opportunity to give this stagnated industry a run for its money.

I see desperation in the smartphone industry. Same things are repeated and recycled. Over and over again. Big manufacturers are locked in an eternal patent war. A game of sudden death. Each focusing on getting better hardware cheaper. What it actually means, is selling compromised hardware for the user, with the same software experience as last time. A lot of corners are cut in that process. Only rivaled by the ridiculous amount of marketing that goes into covering it all up. Operators and retailers are trying to somehow come by.

Meanwhile, the end user is looking from the sidelines. Everything is badly derailed. It’s not sustainable. It’s not what tomorrow should be.

And we've known it for a long time. We all challenged that.

I'd like to point out that it's very rare for a community of this size, to have two real products shipping in several regions. A phone and an operating system.

Unfortunately, that is playing by the wrong rules.

It's the exceptional bunch of people behind it what matters. They all had real courage to do new things. They all bravely stood behind new ideas and promoted them. And their message was:

"We want to buy tools that fit what we do, not what the industry wants us to do."

It's essential to understand how this industry works. What are the rules it plays by. Because those rules aren't for people. They’re rules for business. Rules how to make profit for companies. The smartphone industry has long since stopped being user driven. Why else would you have to buy a new phone every six months.

Therefore our own style of play has to focus on user values. There is only one rope to pull. And only a single direction to pull it. We need to get noticed as individuals with different things we need a smartphone for, not a distraction from them.

Whatever the reasons was for all of you to get involved in this movement, I bet it was much more personal than any hardware specification. Every manufacturer is focused on how to distract users from the fact, that a smartphone should be useful in your everyday lives, instead of use up our lives.

A phone is an important tool that should comfortably fit to the center of our daily chores, instead of being your daily chore.

Stand tall. There's nothing to apologize. Be proud of what we've achieved together. Be open about how you feel in this community and help others to clear out common misunderstandings. Many simply don't know what this community is about. They don't have any idea what Sailfish OS even is? Why does it exist in the first place? What was the story behind its creation?

Nearly all of you know it very well, and can pass it on. Please do. Even if it's all work in progress. Our community, OS and available hardware; are all glimpses of what tomorrow could be.

The choice is ours. What do we all choose to do.

Smartphone manufacturers will not magically become aware of our values. We need to do something about it. That includes everyone.

Everyone can affect what Sailfish OS will be tomorrow. Because when working with the smartphone industry, we all need to be very clear about one thing.

Sailfish OS exists to serve user needs.

User has the control of what happens on their devices. If we don't make that clear, the OS will surely, as others before it, slowly turn into an industry tool, instead of being your tool. It will gradually stop fitting to the center of your daily chores by turning into your daily chore. For the same old stubborn game to continue. That is the inevitable effect that the industry has on undefended products.

It's caused by the way this industry plays. It's gotten blind to alternatives. Forcing everything it comes in contact with to submit to its rules. It needs help in finding other ways to play. Other ways to create value and also profit from it.

You're all a living proof that it can be done.

What this industry needs is a wake-up call. Nobody else will do it on your behalf. Either we keep doing what we do also tomorrow, or we don't.

Simple as that.

If you agree, grab that rope and give it a good pull.

#PhoneIndustryWakeup

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Why develop apps for Sailfish

I get asked this a lot so I did a post about it.

Simple really.

A Sailfish application has a much higher UX potential than any other platform counterpart. The whole operating system is designed around an unobstructed and efficient use of applications. What you as a user want to do.

In addition to harmonized gesture usage, Sailfish apps have also unique UX pattern called cover actions, that's missing from all other platforms. These allow you to interact with a common application feature, directly from your home screen without entering that app.

Why not use Android apps. Well, even though Android apps run on Sailfish OS, they don't always feel right because of the button based navigation at the screen bottom. So each native Sailfish application removes another Android app dependency and makes the user experience more complete overall.

Native apps are also much faster to load, use far less disk space and memory than Android apps. Every aspect of a Sailfish application is designed the mobile use in mind. Because when you're on the move, you are limited by four things.

A limited screen size, a limited battery capacity, a limited storage and limited processing power. But the biggest limitation is our own inability to focus on multiple things at the same time.

There is a live and active world out there. A ton of things happening everywhere. Both lovely and dangerous things. When you use your smartphone, you want to go in fast and get out faster. The world and people close you are the thing you don't want to miss out. Especially when it's about being part of something really wonderful, or avoiding something really painful.

That's why Sailfish OS and Silica apps work like they do. They're intended for mobile use, leaner in many ways than the competition. And what they can do, will get you there and back before anything else out there. So you wouldn't miss out the important things.

Now, fire up the SDK and let's get started.

Creating a Sailfish apps

Start from an app idea. The best ideas arise out from a problem cause. You don't want to do more on the go, but less by doing the right things.

Don't look at a desktop applications, or other mobile applications for that matter. Start from a concrete problem. Don't start off from a feature. Look into why that feature is needed. Process your ideas before you sketch out anything. Leave the huge ideas and projects for desktop environment.

Only after you've done that, start coding.

Look at example projects from github, and also shamelessly use both the Silica references and component gallery project that comes with the SDK. Most of the time, you don't need to write your own components. Unless that's the main point. But remember, from the user perspective, how your app fits the platform UX, is more important than how nice graphics you can make or transitions you can code.

Naturally, it's much faster to use existing blocks and focus on solving a problem instead of solving an interface. Also, Jolla will focus on keeping those components working. If our apps are based on them, they’re much more resistant to UI breakages caused by any system update. Apps done with Sailfish Silica components also load faster and scale nicer to different resolutions.

As much as it's fun, avoid innovating on top of already new interface paradigm. It will not help your users. They've just learned a new way to use their devices. Please reinforce that.

Prioritize. Promote the main app functionality. Allow favorites and some history to help access frequently used content. Make your app excellent at the thing it does. Not mediocre at everything another app does. Follow common UI patterns. Keep your graphic assets to minimum to reduce app loading time, memory usage and disk space, and overall improve the app performance. Users have an ambience for their devices, don't intentionally block it, even if you don't personally like it.

Sometimes you have to build something from scratch.

Then, make it look like it fits. Use styles from the Silica theme object. Avoid hard-coding colors, pixel or font sizes. Because if taken to another screen resolution, your app interface will break. Build it to last. Silica component gallery sources and provided references are again your friends to see how components internals look like. Pay attention to UX details and avoid common pitfalls.

Finally, spend time on performance optimization. Load your pages and content asynchronously if possible, to avoid blocking the UI and gesture use. Profiler is your friend. Rince and repeat. No matter what the app does, if it’s not smooth, it’s not very pleasant to use.

Also, don't do things alone. Do it together. Ask from the guy next to you.

There's a lot of people among you who know their stuff and can help. Don't get blocked by lack of support. And many people don't. As a result, Sailfish OS has a huge ratio of community created apps. Apps created by self-organized individuals, out of their own free will. They work on them in their spare time to allow us all make some things easier on the go.

They do it regardless of any payment mechanism in the Jolla store and part of those apps are not even accepted, because some features of the OS are not considered stable yet to hook in by third party apps.

Our community set up their own repository to overcome that. So that there would be an open alternative market to get apps easily from.

You don't do something like that if you don't believe in what you're doing. They believe that having native apps matter. And I agree.

My hat's off to all of you.

Thank you for putting your though and dedication in something you believe in.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.