The future of Android interfaces

AT THE WEEKEND The INQUIRER headed over to Vodafone's headquarters in London for its developers day where we took a look at the future of 3D in interfaces and apps on Android.

Erik Hellman, a Research Manager - though he prefers the title Software Innovator - from Sony Ericsson, took us through a presentation including demos of some 3D concepts and codes. The idea was to give developers a helping hand for coming up with the next generation of 3D applications and interfaces for Android.

Back in 1998 Jakob Neilsen, a renowned web usability expert, posted a statement online saying that 2D is better than 3D due to various difficulties, including hardware. Hardware has improved a vast amount since then and we are seeing devices, such as smartphones, with considerably more powerful specifications that are capable of providing some richer experiences, such as Sony Ericsson's current widget called Timescape.

Along with advances in hardware, user interaction is completely different these days. It's hard to find a smartphone that doesn't use touch technology. Hellman told us that this interaction is most important, and that touch is more intuitive, especially when pitched against the mouse, and the proof is in the pudding when you consider things like the fact that children are able to figure out how to use touchscreen devices with little instruction compared to the struggle they have when introduced to a system with a mouse and a keyboard.

The concepts Erik introduced at the developers day didn't involve coding in 3D but taking existing 2D content and evolving it into a 3D experience. The key thing for developers is the ability to take existing "Android content and create new content without having to write huge amounts of OpenGL ES 2.0 code or reinventing the wheel", declared Hellman.

He started with the basics, elements like shaders and shadows. These are prime examples of where existing content, like icons and widgets, can be used to "create 3D effects without coding in 3D", said Hellman, invoking the use of normal mapping to emphasise both the 3D effect and feel.

Something that Android is missing is the ability to do two finger rotation gestures, which is one of the bits of code that Hellman gave to the developers. One of the demonstrations that Hellman gave was using this rotation combined with the other concepts to place and arrange widgets in three dimensions, overlapping them and using rotation to adjust their depth. Therefore more widgets can be placed on one home screen, increasing customisability.

2D to 3D conversion for images was an interesting idea that Hellman showed on a handset where, using an algorithm created by Cornell University called Make3D, a 2D image can be analysed and converted in 3D and then set as a "live wallpaper". Lastly, Hellman showed the developers some code for measuring the pressure put on the screen, which could also have some interesting implementations including the ability to control the phone without even touching it by adjusting the sensitivity of a capacitive touchscreen.

So, provided the developers take some of these ideas and bits of free code and get to coding, these could well be some of the features we will see on user interfaces and applications in the future on Android handsets. µ