Elizabeth Dykstra-Erickson
Activity Bubbles
Meetingplace Chat for Microsoft
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The Brief:
Meeting software on mobile devices struggles to support desktop features: viewing Powerpoint presentations, identifying participants on the call, and having public or private conversations during the call. Our challenge was to port the desktop design, creating Microsoft's Nokia business software on the Symbian platform.
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The strategic issues:
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Users find it difficult to set up and join conference calls from mobile devices, and this project would not permit alterations to that process.
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Strategize how to make chat, sharing, viewing, annotating, and switching presenters fit in the mobile device, with room to add more features later.
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Work within existing guidelines and frameworks and across two companies' design teams (Nokia and Microsoft).
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The result:
Patent pending. Microsoft did not ship the feature.
'Do While' multitasking on a small screen
An Activity Bubble is a minimized reference to an activity that can appear on top of another running application. Bubbles can be moved, expanded, and deleted. Touching a bubble expands it. To delete a bubble without expanding it, drag it off the screen.
Some bubbles may have additional functionality. In the Chat bubble prototype below, dragging one Chat bubble onto another Chat bubble joins the participants into a group chat. Deleting the bubble deletes only this representation of the Chat; it can still be viewed in the Chat application.
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We received a patent on this interaction that was later introduced in Facebook Messenger.
Join the meeting…
Weekly team meeting is underway. Participants view slides on their smartphone from the team status deck.
Have a side conversation?
Two participants ping each other using Chat. Each chat message appears as a bubble. One chat below has been read – its text is grayed and the notification bar is removed.
Move the bubbles
In portrait mode, up to 6 chat bubbles can be onscreen without obscuring the slide view. Move or close chats, or touch to reply.
