Open-Ended Design

Before the quarter gets ramped up again, I wanted to give my thoughts on the current state of Cluster and what I see as a burning need for a more open-ended design. I feel as if we've put a lot of effort into building the UI in anticipation of the user's specific wants in executing only the tasks we've set forth. We're trying to force the user to arrive at a sequence of steps to walk through very specific scenarios. This has led to the extensively segmented and chronological feel of the application.

Because we started out with the idea of partitioned functionality (roughly, the three buttons on the home screen and the big red button) and have been designing to accommodate only specific tasks, we stumble upon shared UI as an afterthought - haphazardly drawing parallels into the design. Though it is a methodical way to approach the design process, it strikes me as reckless. If we want to force users down certain paths to execute tasks, it doesn't make sense to make the application labyrinthine.

Instead of returning to the segregation of functionality in order to restore the clarity of the design, I think we should move toward taking a more open-ended approach. Instead of forcing the user down a single path for tasks, we should look into making each path as broadly functional is possible. This eliminates the need for separately anticipating and accommodating every single quirky notion the user might get. By doing this, we'll eliminate a lot of unnecessary overhead and may even see the need to completely get rid of any notion of segregation.

Note, this is purely a change in the philosophy of how we should approach designing the navigation - it is not a call to throw in any new functionality. I just think that Cluster could have a more comprehensive approach that would be more useful on a broad scale and eliminate the need to corral the user into behaving the way we expect them to.