TouchWUI – a concept UI for Windows 7 for finger-friendly input

Windows 7 offers a great capability for Touch and Multitouch input – however lacks an easy to use and finger friendly user interface. Even though Windows 7 enables different gestures to enhance the input via fingers, the default shell is in no way perfect for tablet pcs or slates. The cause for this seems to be that the system evolved over time to provide a perfect solution for mouse navigation – however, finger input needs a different kind of UI to allow the user to interact with the system.

A special user interface in combination with the power of Windows can be used to create a powerful Slate Consumer Device not only for web browsing, sharing pictures, etc. but also for more powerful tasks.

“TouchWUI” is a combination of the new interface for Windows Phone 7 and Zune which allows the user to have all the important information at a central point and further provides a finger friendly UI because all the objects are large enough to easily interact with them via touch input. The UI shall display up to date information of the system state, e.g. the battery state and also notifications of various applications, such as a mail client or social network updates.

“TouchWUI” is intended to completely replace the current Explorer shell of Windows 7.

Please have a look at the concept guidelines for TouchWUI and let me know what you think.

Download Guidelines

I have also created a video demonstrating how TouchWUI should look like.

Download Video

Here are some concept drawings of a finished device.

  

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