It seems to me that moving ActiveTiles from a visual UI to an auditory format may be very useful for providing point Gist updates, and fast systems overview status information

Microsoft Active Tiles

Now, as you may know my thing is auditory glancing – and in the ‘mainstream’ glance interfaces. Interfaces that give you the ‘gist’ of something but not directly a summary of the content; an interface which enable you to answer the question ‘Is this useful (to me)?’

I came to these interfaces via my work of blind mobility in the real world – and then in the virtual world of the web. Now it’s all about getting more information into less cognitive bandwidth; moving fast parallel visual information to slow parallel auditory information.

This gist / glancing is why I Love Active-Tiles! Yes yes I know – it’s Microsoft – but for me Active-Tiles and the Metro interface is a giant leap forward in UI design – kicking mac iOS off the top spot by a good margin. Why, well for me it is because you can visually sweep the tiles and understand each recent update – inviting (or not) a more in-depth investigation. I expect this has cumulative saved me a number of hours in selecting icons only to find, new content but, nothing of interest.

It also seems to me that moving ActiveTiles from a visual UI to an auditory format may be very useful for providing point Gist updates, and fast systems overview status information.