Welcome BumpTop Beta
November 9th, 2008
You have probably seen it online a while ago or more recently at the Ted talks: Bumptop is a 3d desktop interface.
It was a prototype, now it is out as beta version that I am trying in these days.
I´ve received the invitation to test the beta version – it looks pretty cool. Althogught it is a bit unnatural to use – we are so used to the “normal” desktop - it is also very interesting. Bumptop tries to re-think something that hasn’t been basically changed in the last 20/30 years.
Here is the site: http://bumptop.com/
You can find plenty of videos on youtube.
At the moment I am still under the “wow-it-is-3d” addictive effect so I am not 100% reliable.
(a “dancing bear” ware as Alan Cooper would call it)
Here my first feedback for the beta:
- a feature that I think you shold absolutly add -at least I can’t see it at the moment- is the possibility for the user to drag an image from the browser to the desktop copying it. I found it s annoying not being able to do it (on vista with firefox).
- I am not too conviced about the right click beheviour at the moment: on right click you see three buttons “Shrink”, “grow” and “More”. The “More” button reveals the “normal” right click context menu, and to do so you have to perform an additional – even if small – action. Now, it is kind of cool what they have done, but at the same time I would rethink that right click considering that the “Shrink/Grow” actions are not that important compared to the context menu.
I will try it for the next few days to see what bumptop could add somehing to our daily experience.
This is the TED talk video
Here the Flickr group with some users’ screenshots:
http://flickr.com/groups/bumptops/pool/
This is probably the best parody made when BumpTop was firts announced:
Hey, thanks for the writeup on BumpTop. You should be able to drag directly from Firefox to the desktop. There is a bug in the current version where this is not always reliable and we are working on that.
Also, you can Ctrl+right-click to immediately get the Explorer context menu.
Hope that helps!
anand
BumpTop
Hi Anand,
Good to hear that and thanks for you comment!
The drag and drop from the browser to the desktop is one of the many small features that I wouldn’t renounce to.
About the right click. Is good to have the alternative, I would let the user decide whether they prefer to see the Explorer context menu or the BumpTop menu on right click.
The other menu would be still available pressing Ctrl+rightclick. If that is easy to change the user could always decide to customize this action as they prefer.
(like it happen in skype where you can decide to start a call or to start a chat double-clicking on a name from your contact list)
Or maybe that option is already in there?
That option is not there, but its an interesting thought. We’ll think about it. Because our philosophy is providing users a really good set of defaults out of the box. But I understand what you’re saying.
Also, if you right-click and gesture downwards, you’ll always get the Windows right-click menu right away! Same goes for any gesture on the menu!!
Hi Anand,
The way the right click gesture works is pretty cool: it is quick and you easy to learn.
However I think that some people will still prefer having the Explorer menu straight away – especially if you have to press it tons of time a day.
There are many consideration and is not easy.
Thinking out loud about this point:
- showing the bumptop menu on right click instead of the Explorer one looks much better, and besides, it gives continuity to the narration.
- in a touchscreen application it would work like a charme and I really wanna see it working on a tablet / iphone.
- both the “right-click and gesture downwards” and the “Ctrl+rightclick” are very good alternatives, but I hated when Apple forced me to press ctrl+click to see that menu.
- a pro user would be happe to be able to go to the preference panel and change that setting so that they can see the Explorer menu by default
- some users could get lost and never find the Explorer menu and might need some tips: when you see the 3 buttons “Grow”, “Shrink” and “More..”, you could think that pressing the “More” one you will find more of those kind of actions (“Extend”, “Cut”, “Dry”) and not the Explorer menu
I am starting getting more into BumpTop today, overall you have done a great job! Compliment to all the BumTop team!
It will be interesting to see people reactions in front of something so different – and at the same time much closer to what you could expect from a real desktop.
Great Xperience!
BumpTop seems new and interesting. I can’t shake the feeling that BumpTop is a solution in search of a problem. I don’t file documents on my desktop that way. If I did, the demos don’t indicate Bumptop would be easier to indicate what documents are which.
To me to most difficult problem is sorting all this stuff out. How many pdfs, word docs, photos, and other docs do you have on your computer? And importantly where are they (network drive, cd, email attachment, hard disk folder somewhere)? What did you name them?
I have tryed it for a week now, and here are my impressions:
- the feeling of being in 3d space, with elements getting bigger and smaller depending on the distance is quite useful. I have the impression that I could organize better my files on my desktop. That doesn’t really solve what Sam pointed out but I think that it is a good improvment and a path to follow.
- the way this icons move and collide each other is pretty nice looking but it also gets easilly annoying. I want to have full control of what I am doing and i do not want things start moving around without my intention. There is a settings to disable the constant collision but still, too many things happen witout my will.
- the chance to draw shapes to select several icons is interesting.
- the post it are great. they can be improved of course, but as idea they are excellent: they are not intrusive and they actually works well.
- I haven’t really used any of the special sorting functions such as tiling the icons. I don’t feel it necessary so far – I guess it is something that you could find interesting and useful as soon you get confident with it. I almost ignored them honestly
- about the right click menu, I stick with what I said in the previous comments
Over all I think that the current version of BumpTop is still far from being a real alternative to “our desktops” but it has good margin to become important.
Obviously we are talking of the beta version of product that has never been released before, so I am sure that many small problems and annoying behaviour will be to adjusted soon.
I would definilty promote the 3d space and I wouldn’t be surprised to see this idea applyed to windows or osx one day.
Hi there,
i’ve been trying to subscribe for the beta several times but i don’t get an invitation by email or whatsoever. Does anybody else have the same problem?
kinds regards
Hi Riccardo,
I guess that there is quite a long list of people asking to join the beta program – surely Anand here (founder of bumptop) will tell you more.
I recently updated to the latest beta version and I must say that they are doing a lot of improvments!