Thread: Thoughts on skin design guidelines?

I've just discovered RR and am playing around with the brushed metal skin. Here's a list of the things I'm wondering about in terms of overal user experience:

1. Inconsistent back button placement and size. I seem to use this button a lot and having it in a different place (and sometimes size) on each screen makes things more difficult to use.
2. I drive in America so I'm to the left of the screen. With my current placement to optimize readability (set back with a shroud), it's a bit of a stretch to touch the screen. I'm wondering if commonly used controls such as the back button or quick screen switching UI should be on the left edge in consistent locations.
3. I'm not yet sure what I think of having audio control on every skin - it's kind of useful but it takes a lot of useful space. If instead there were either a consistently place button that took you to the audio skin or some kind of expanding UI to expose the (majority?) of the audio controls when needed that would seem a better use of the space. Thoughts?
4. Centrafuse has support for embedding apps and clicking the title area where songs get displayed expands the app to full screen bar that title area. This gives you a good compromise - a smaller view of (say) a GPS app but the ability to easily have it full screen. My opinion of this may change as I play with Guino's fully integrated touch-screen friendly MapPoint experience .
5. Touch screens often don't work that well around the edges of the screen due to issues and/or just the bezel which unfortunately is often the best placement for buttons. This is just an observation - I'm not sure what the design outcome of this might be - possibly heavier 'menu' use with fewer but bigger activation buttons.
6. I just tried driving around with my 8" lilliput sort of in place with a shroud and it was unreadable when sunlight still managed to get directly onto the screen (unfortunately this happened a fair bit ), but was just about ok when in shadow. It seems bigger text and/or higher contrast buttons would have made it easier - the Alpine skin seemed more readable with it being so bright. I didn't try running the Windows Media Center shell - I wonder how it looked in the bright light since it's pretty high contrast. The brush metal skin is very nice but also seems very low contrast.
7. Skin switching seems useful whilst experimenting but is it such a useful thing it should be on the main screen? There's already a lighting button so duplicating that is wasted on the appearance menu.
8. Videos / DVD / TV are related. Perhaps a more structured approach to accessing these is in order. Particularly valid since you shouldn't really be watching Videos/DVDs/TV whilst driving so optimizing easy access to them whilst being distracted by driving shouldn't be a priority .
9. The music title is nice but I'm mostly not interested in the middle of a song and a lot of space is reserved for it. I like the approach I've seen other places where the title appears bigger for a short while as the song starts and then slides/fades out. But interacting with the screen pops it back into view. That gives a good compromise between having easy access to the information and an uncluttered UI.

So here's my thoughts if I make my own skin:
1. Try and work out my preferred priority of UI access whilst driving. Use this to adjust the sizing and placement of the various UI pieces to match that priority whilst achieving consistency of placement.
2. Back button somewhere consistent on left edge of screen. Bigger perhaps.
3. Possibly consistent screen switching buttons on the left edge with an expando to hide them if desired (make more space for GPS for e.g.). I'm not sure I like hiding them since it then requires two clicks to switch skins which is a pain whilst driving.
4. Fewer audio control buttons - a direct link to the audio skin and bigger buttons there would seem preferable. Alternatively, have an expando system for them too. I've noticed some of the flash skins starting to head in this direction but I want to do it without flash to keep cpu usage to a minimum. I can make changes to RR source to support this if necessary.
5. Experiment with the option of having music data on the non-music screens being more temporary.

Any other thoughts? Feel free to disagree - this is my personal preferences after all .