A very interesting patent registered to the Apple company and discovered by AppleInsider it shows us the company's vision of how the Contacts or iPod applications in iOS could look. Apple already intends to replace the classic menus with new ones based entirely on graphic elements that users could use much more easily. For example, in the case of the Contacts application, Apple intends to implement an interface in which all the contacts in the address book would be displayed with only one picture next to each name, and we could select the contact by the respective picture. For groups of contacts, Apple intends to implement the possibility of adding more contacts to a group represented by a picture and calling a contact through that graphic element.
In one example, contacts could be presented with provided pictures of people, represented with a number of tiles on the screen. Contacts or music could also be shown with a dynamically generated mosaic, collecting a number of associated pictures.
Unlike an alphabetically organized address book, this interface may allow [the] electronic device... to provide an address book that is intuitive to the user, and may enable a user to quickly call a number of users from the same contact group in succession.
For music, the situation is similar, Apple wanting to implement a list of graphic elements based on the album covers of songs copied into the iPod application, and we can select from them what to listen to. Something similar already exists in the iPod, but Apple wants to modify a good part of that structure. The patent seems very interesting and I have said it many times: iOS needs radical changes in terms of design.
