Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Navigating a touch screen remote by feel

When I use a regular remote control with physical buttons I navigate by feel. I don't have to look at it to change the channel, adjust the volume, navigate the TV guide, etc. Navigating by feel is a major goal of Xeblix, which is problematic for software that runs on touch screens without buttons. To help reach this goal I have integrated gestures to the Xeblix screens. For example in the Speed screen you scroll up to send the Pause command, down for Stop, Tap for play, right for Fast Forward, etc. This works well until you want to change from the Speed screen to the Volume screen. To switch screens you usually need to look at the phone, click the back button, then select the Volume screen. This violates the goal of not having to look at the phone.

It occurred to me, what if Xeblix used the gyroscope to change between screens? For example if the phone is in Portrait and vertical show the Speed control screen, if the phone is in Portrait and horizontal show the Direction control screen, if Landscape show another screen and so on. By simply rotating the phone you can change the control screen. I believe this will significantly reduce the need to look at the phone while using Xeblix.

I will try to prototype this feature in a few weeks,but first up is a developer release. I have one more feature to add and a bunch of bugs to fix before my first release, which I hope to complete by the end of May.

If this gyroscope screen changer works, it leaves me with one last problem: how to swap device targets (ie go from TV to DVR to PC).