Pull over an agent
A grabber of glass on the edge of the phone. Flick it and a composer floats up over the app you are in. Pull it in and it rounds into an orb that can see your screen and act somewhere else.
Today
4 events2 h 15 bookedFree from 2:30
9:00
Standup
Product teamVideo
Done 9:14
12:30
Lunch with Priya
Kiln12 Canal Street
11 min walk
1:30
Dentist
Dr Osei31 Alder Close
Runs into the call with the bankby 30 min
2:00
Call with the bank
Mortgage renewalPhone
Tomorrow
- 9:00StandupVideo
- 2:00Eye testCanal Street
Flick the pill down, or pull it in.
An agent on a phone can live in two places. Inside an app, it can change what the app holds. Over the whole screen, it can see whatever you are looking at and act somewhere else. Phones give each of those its own button and its own look. Here both start from one pill on the right edge, and what you do to the pill picks between them.
Flick it down. It runs down the edge, turns to face you, and seats itself as the round key of a composer: the plus, the field, the microphone, the key that sends. The composer is glass and floats over the calendar; nothing in the app moves to make room. Ask what clashes today and it tells you the dentist runs thirty minutes into the call with the bank. Tell it to move the dentist and the row is rewritten behind a caret of the agent’s own colour, the clash line goes, and the count under the title drops to four. Every change it makes carries its hand, the smallest kind of receipt. Flick the key back up and the composer goes with it.
Pull it in, at any angle. Under the finger the pill widens to a capsule and rounds into an orb on a spring, and a dot by the battery shows that it can see the screen. The orb is a disc of dark glass with one ring of light. The cool side of the ring is your voice. Say “tell her I’m running ten late” and the ring leaves the orb and circles Priya’s name in the lunch row, because that is who “her” is on this screen; the message goes out in another app, and the calendar is not touched. Ask when you need to leave and it circles the address and gives a time that is nowhere on the page.
One disc of dark glass with one ring of light. Seated in the composer it is the send key. In the air the cool side of the ring is your voice, it stops down to think, and when the ring leaves to circle what it found the warm side left in the glass is the agent talking.
The pull, stopped four times. Under the finger the pill widens to a capsule and rounds into the orb on a spring. Carry the orb back to that edge and let go, and it is the pill again.
In the app. The composer floats over the calendar and the handle is its send key. What it is asked for, it does to the calendar: the dentist is gone from today and written into tomorrow.
Over everything. Told to tell her, the orb finds who she is on the screen and circles the name. The message goes out in another app, and the calendar is not touched.
The orb goes where you throw it and comes to rest in the nearest quiet part of the screen, the way a floating video does: beside the title, beside a section heading, or in a foot corner above its own words. When it answers it moves to the place furthest from what it has circled. Carry it back to the right edge and let go, and it is the pill again.
Why the edge, when there is already a swipe on the island, a camera key and a circle to search? Those are three entries for three things, and two of them are at the top of a tall phone. The edge at thumb height is the one place a thumb already rests. One entry with two depths means you do not choose a mode before you know what you want: you start the same way, and how far you pull decides.
Where it breaks
A gesture with two depths is a gesture you have to discover. Nothing on a pill says a flick and a pull do different things. My guess is that most people will flick first, get the composer, and never find the orb unless something teaches them.
The orb also has to sit somewhere, and anywhere it sits, it covers something. Here it settles into the nearest quiet part of the screen and moves away from whatever it has circled. That works on a calendar. A dense screen may have no quiet part to settle in, and I haven’t designed for that case yet.