Related discussions

Thank you all so much for the love on this post.

Ealesy101 - I don’t have your number. If I did, I would have called you directly and thanked you for your kind words. Btw you have suggested some interesting ideas regarding battery and storage widgets. I’ll try to come up with something on those lines and add them to this current collection.

Kassy - Not sure what you mean by a “fixed tab of chrome” ? The chrome bookmarks widget exists and on one tap you can be directed to the Nothing Community page. Either ways this falls under Google’s domain, it’s their app after all.

hrry - Agreed with the creative use part. I am a hobbyist musician and I like to check the base noise decibel for a room before recording vocals. This helps me filter them out later in audacity. Other than that, for common use cases the aim is to notify the user whether the environment noise is safe for them.

@Rahul - Thanks for inspiring me in the first place man. For the past couple of weeks I have actually studied your work. Saw your YouTube channel as well. Your initial concept widgets were crazy to the say the least. I wanted to make sure that both of our concepts were in different philosophical directions (while still staying true to the Nothing design language). Yours are more creative and interactive while mine are more simple and functional. Keep doing your thing bro and keep inspiring us all in the process.

        Please add a mono/stereo toggle into the “quick settings” widget.

        (Or auto switch to mono when only 1 earbud is on use)

        Congrats @flo_rahil 👏

        I love the design, but in the real android development only a couple are feasible, as described.

        Ringtone volume widget

        Android widgets are meant to do “simple” tasks, and a lot of interactions are just impossible (seekbars are not supported, custom views such a circular seekbars even less 😜).

        Real-time noise level

        To catch sounds you will need to continuously use the microphone, and can be used only in a single instance to avoid other apps requesting it (phone calls?) just like happens with camera.

        Speed dial

        Feasible technically, but a lot harder than it might look. In widgets you don’t have a navigation system, and change the view to support different screens is kinda a nightmare.

        Single screen and a settings activity would be more manageable (but yeah, half of the concept would be lost).

        Conclusion

        Sometimes I wish I was not an Android developer, because this doesn’t let me fully enjoy “concepts” if they are not possibly feasible.

        I really loved the designs, but also I become disappointed very soon when I realize they cannot shine in real life.

        I hope Nothing will open its own widget API (that is different from the android one) to let us cook cool stuff, and bring those concepts into reality.

        And I am disappointed no one asks about it.

          Great effort! I am inspired by your work. I would like to provide you some feedback regarding the symmetry of how dots are arranged. I have observed it from the first slide. The spacing between each dot, the position, the placement, the gaps in between these dots are unequal. The flame icon in dots, the dots are randomly placed to form the fire symbol. It looks cool, but not perfect. Similar issue is with the frost symbol. Slide 4 with contact speed dial, the font size needs to scale 4x up for better readability. Apart from this rest looks good. I understand the designer’s language and I come from a long history of UX/UI design and I myself worked as Concept artist for various clients and I am much aware of the time, effort and energy you add. Nevertheless, I admire your passion for Nothing, and I think you need more perfection and am sure you will bring outstanding results. I hope my feedback make sense. Looking forward to witness more of your work.

            Mirko_ddd - Thanks man. As a professional UI/UX designer, we are never asked to present an initial design based on development limitations. We are asked to design functional and aesthetic use cases which can then be tailor made to fit within those limitations in further iterations. The design for the volume widget presents an idea for how volume can be represented on the screen; if a seekbar cannot be implemented, perhaps on tapping the widget a modal/pop-up for that specific sound channel can open up allowing us to to workaround those limitations with what’s possible. But as designers we must always start without knowing these limitations as they help us to create and conceptualize out of the box ideas which can be refined further.

            zygerboy - appreciate the kind words. Yeah designing the flame icon was weird to implement in the dots; I couldn’t configure the right grid for individual dots but for the most part they do have a 1px gap between them. OS 3.0 will have dots of different sizes so these type of icons can be much better made with that in mind. I did initially try that but it looked weird, so I went with the best looking version. The font size on the contact speed dial is perfect in my opinion. Raising it 4x would look too big. You would hardly be able to fit a few letters in the widget.

                  Kindly add volume slider widget simply when calling to call volume when playing music or song to music volume adjust

                  flo_rahil I disagree honestly. Knowing the limitations helps a lot focusing on possible designs, at least if you’re willing to design a real product. Otherwise concepts will remain just “concepts”, and people will like something will never exists.

                      Mirko_ddd

                      Designing without limitations is the first step towards arriving at a final product.

                      This concept might not get converted into a real product, but it is a step towards communicating what the final product is required/expected to do and what the users want.

                      Changes in design due to development limitations are common everywhere and have existed forever, this isn’t news. (Check development of 1987’s Hideo Kojima Game - Metal Gear) But it is important to think freely at first in order to have direction.

                      As an android developer I ask you this - instead of rubbing these widgets off as “unfeasible” or “impossible” find a way or a workaround to make them work. Good design creates great problem solving opportunities for developers. And that is only possible if I as a designer can design without limitations.