iPhone Springboard Redux

Update: Lukas Mathis has an excellent post on the difference between hierarchical and behavior oriented data organization, which provides an alternative take on the problems mentioned by Bruce Tognazzini.

He also links to Springbord Expose, which is a FAR more elegant concept of handling multiple home screens, then my humble suggestion. In fact I like it so much, that I will show it to you as a behavior oriented concept in contrast to my hierarchical oriented idea.

In the ongoing discussion about the iPhones Springboard, I agree with many that it should offer a better way of app handling. But I think it should also offer more functionality then it does now.

I propose to combine a search (as it already exists), a info dashboard (as Teehan+Lax suggest it) and an app management (heavily inspired by Bruce Tognazzinis idea).

My suggestion would be to reduce the home screen to three areas: Search (the magnifying glass icon), Home (what Teehan+Lax suggested) and Apps. Once you are in the App area it looks like a normal home screen. The difference comes with interaction.

You can now scroll and it serves two functions: If you scroll down (no smooth scrolling, but rather a screen by screen scrolling as with the current side sweeping gesture), it scrolls into view another screen full of apps. A normal scrollbar tells you where you are. This allows you to have a unlimited number of apps (although, after 3-4 screens it will probably get boring to scroll, so in reality it’s probably closer to 48 apps) per home screen.

If you scroll up, beyond the first apps, a header appears, labeling in what home screen you are. Think of it like the reload gesture in Tweetie 2. In case you’re not near the top of the current home screen, just tap the menu on top, watch it scroll up and drag down once.

Turn your iPhone sideways and the home screen switches to a coverflow view, showing thumbnails of the respective home screens as well as their names. Browse through and select one and you just changed your home screen.

Renaming a home screen and arranging apps within it (every app can be part of many home screens) happens in iTunes.