[epic][enhancement] Making Orbiter Delightful - The UX Challenge

[Zorlin]

This is a set of changes to Orbiter intended to drastically shape the experience of using it to be delightful, responsive, and adapt to different use cases and "feel good" on any screen or interface.

It will capture a number of features and requirements that when fully implemented will make using Orbiter a delightful experience for users.

These are the tasks:

• Make the interface reflow perfectly to match your screen's display width (vertically this is already nearly perfect)

• Make it so that the horizontal content lines (the rows of content in each category that you select and browse) are infinitely long as long as there's more to see

• and make it so that the UI hint we use
  to tell people there's more and that they can scroll,
  is just a simple but bold right arrow with "more ->"

  • the more will be deliberately understated and lower emphasis in terms of contrast and size,
    the arrow dominant, so over time the "more" fades for any user
    and they don't see it
    and the UI looks like nothing but artwork and content

• Make it so that the infinite long content lines snap nicely in a way that makes it look like there ISN'T more

  • This is to keep the UI looking really clean and tidy and aesthetic, while the right arrow being obvious but tasteful helps guide people to realising they can scroll to the right
  • because let's face it as soon as I see anything I try and swipe it anyways if it's on my phone or tablet
  • so by doing this everyone wins

• Navigating the UI should feel natural on every screen and input method we support

  • Near parity for PWA vs App on mobile devices (ie: "make it feel good on every screen") - test and report, improve, until true
  • Keyboard support
  • Gamepad support
  • Touchscreen support (which should be equally good on web and mobile, see top issue)
  • No jarring half cut off UI to show that the UI can be scrolled and there's more, just clean design
  • But obvious hints that are clear and serve as a dual purpose to allow us to click "more ->" and bypass the infinite scroll hell
    • because not every user likes that
      and they should have a choice.
  • A toggle in settings, near Magic <---------> More Magic, that allows you to enable a mode where dragging one row of content drags the entire screen worth of content of that type
    • ie: if I'm in the music section I can now fly through pages and pages and pages of album covers to find what I want
      allowing me to fly through and find interesting things and just generally feel fun and snappiness

The priorities in this are many, and will need individual GH issues created for each that explain what exactly needs doing and why.