Exclusive: Windows Mobile 7 To Focus On Touch and Motion Gestures

Microsoft is currently developing Windows Mobile 7, the first revolutionary change to its mobile device operating system. Recently, I was given a document by a source inside Microsoft that details the touch and gesture plans for Mobile 7. This document is a confidential internal use only document, used to explain the plans for Mobile 7, and contains well over a hundred pages of designs, ideas, and changes to the way we interact with our mobile devices.

Below, you’ll find over 3,000 words detailing my notes from the document. I can’t publish the document here, at least not until after the product is announced, to protect my sources. I will provide the document to trusted journalists in order to share and show proof of this information. If there is anything I leave out, please don’t hesitate to ask and I will try to provide a screenshot or answer.

The document appears to be from the past summer, and some of the details may change before the product is announced. However, the touch and gesture plans appear to be set in stone, and will be the focus of Windows Mobile 7.

What’s New
Windows Mobile 7 will dramatically change the way we use mobile devices. It will emphasize the use of touch on the device, as well as motion gestures created by using the device. It is, absolutely, Microsoft’s effort to beat back the iPhone, and the iPhone is referenced several times in the document.

Windows Mobile 7 will use touch gestures, similar to how the iPhone does. You will be able to flick through lists, pan, swipe sideway, draw on the screen. A lot of emphasis has been put on making navigation easier and doing away with scrollbars, including a new scroll handle that allows for multiple ways of finding items extremely fast.

Windows Mobile 7 will use motion gestures, something the iPhone does not. It will not use an intricate and complicated series of gyroscopes and accelerometers. Instead, it will use the camera on the phone to detect motions and create appropriate actions. You will be able to shake, twist and otherwise manipulate the phone and get things done. The phone will be able to perform actions when placed face down on a surface, and it will know when it is in your pocket or bag.

Windows Mobile 7 will have an exciting locking screen, that will allow you to play around with it, draw on it, shake it and completely otherwise mess with it.

Windows Mobile 7 will have dramatically improved visuals, different from the iPhone and much more similar to the dark and futuristic visuals of Windows Vista. It will feature graphical transitions, subtle effects, and other things to make it more interesting to look at. This is not detailed in the document, but featured in the multitude of screenshots.

Windows Mobile 7 is designed to use the finger, not the stylus, though many devices will be required to include a stylus. It is designed to be easy to use with the hand, including one-handed, and to be fun to use and easy to understand. It is designed to be used on devices with no buttons, few buttons, lots of buttons, full keyboards, and devices without touch screens.

Windows Mobile 7 is clearly designed for better media playback, with screenshots indicating a much-improved Media Player and photo gallery application. There is talk in the document of a games mode. Mobile Internet Explorer runs full-screen web pages in a minimalistic interface, and has “tabbed” browsing, except you can switch tabs by shaking the phone.

The keyboard has been improved, but plans for a full touch keyboard, a la the iPhone, have been shelved until a future version of Windows Mobile.

Below are my detailed notes. Some of it is raw, some of it is very detailed. It is accompanied by screenshots direct from the document which show off other features planned for Windows Mobile 7.

Click on any image to view it full-size. They’re all high quality images.

Goals of the New User Interface
Touch, gestures, scrolling, and direct manipulation. Also, animations, transitions, motion gestures, and codenames “Phosphur” and “Starburst”.

Goal: Finger optimized, best in class touch experience that users are comfortable with everywhere.

Requirements: simple, memorable and fun; consistent, predictable and interesting; natural movements, natural animations and transitions; and enhance the mobile experience, not degrade it.

Goal is to support hardware with buttons, hardware with buttons and touch screens, and touch screen-only devices. The Touch-only devices are specifically referenced as “iPhone compete”.

User experience requirements: consistent UI interaction across the device (up and down should always scroll up and down lists, not something else), should not be overloaded. The new UI will not be opt-in for applications, but required, so old applications will all get it. There will be a “game mode”, where games will be allowed to override the UI requirements and use similar movements for different actions, allowing games to have more complicated controls than the average app.

There will be audio and visual feedback, only where appropriate, like indicating the top and bottom of a list, which objects are touchable, and a “ring of fire” indicating where you press and hold down your finger.

Designed to be used by a finger, without a stylus. Microsoft Research is researching the size of the average fingertip/tap size. Currently, they are working with the assumption of a 7.6×7.6 millimeter fingertip size. The goal is a device that can be used almost entirely one-handed with the thumb of the hand holding the device.

There were plans to implement the Soft Input Panel (the on-screen keyboard) as a finger accessible portion of the UI (like the iPhone does), but it was cut for Windows Mobile 7.

Tap drills down in a list, but some lists will have you tab once to select, once again to drill down the list.
Interface elements will be designed so there is no fear of users making a mistake and missing their target. It will be able to dynamically resize elements of the user interface, prioritizing them and making them easier to hit. Corners, like the close button, scrollbars, icons and the title bar/status bar, will all be able to grow to make things easier on the user.

A stylus will be required on devices meeting certain screen size, orientation, DPI and resolution marks. User interface elements will scale their size and be prioritized in order to make hitting them easier, especially scrollbars, corner elements, icons, the title bar and the status bar.

Touch may be the actual product name as it stands.

Gestures for scrolling (horizontal and vertical), task and menu access, press and hold controls, list items, press and drag, and launching shortcuts. The device will be able to detect finger velocity, scrolling further if the user’s finger moves faster.

They are considering the need for scroll bars when users are scrolling with gestures. Current plan is to show them on Touch devices when flicking through a list, but not show them on button-only devices when scrolling.

When a dialog is longer than the screen and needs to be scrolled horizontally, they are considering replacing the scroll bar with a visual indicator, like text fading off the edge of the screen.
Pressing and holding launched the context (right-click) menu, as it does now.

By default in a list, tapping drills down items, but there will be visual and audio feedback if drilling doesn’t occur and the user is merely focusing on an item.

A stylus will be required for device makers to include, based on screen size, screen orientation, and screen resolution.

Microsoft is considering if it needs to support screens and drivers that do multi-touch, but multi-touch is not a base feature of Windows Mobile 7. Multi-finger touch is shown for cropping and rotating photos, but there is no indication if this is software based or requires multi-touch hardware.

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