[Galaxy Note GT-N7000 General] LiquidNitrogen:
I'm a little crazy about user interface design. And while I am no professional, new ideas for how software could or should work can keep me up late into the night, sketching on my Note. The night official ICS was released a really simple idea hit me as I was falling asleep: the multitasking tray should take advantage of the Note's massive screen size.

For those of you with ICS, take a look at the multitasking pane. It takes up all of the screen and displays relatively little. In addition, compared to other multitasking solutions, it lacks in features. It only displays the recent/running apps. It could really use a re-design.

So I took some time, researched the alternatives and imagined what would be best, and sketched up a design on our favorite drawing device.

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With this design, the multitasking app windows are arranged horizontally near the middle of the screen. You swipe left/right to move along the list of recent apps, and swipe up/down to close an app. At the bottom is the music tray, with - left to right - the music app button, previous/pause&play/forward, track/artist/album information, and an image of the cover art. Above the multitasking area, there is tray for recent messages and mail. Any recent messages or mail, regardless of read status, will be shown there. You can swipe up/down on the items to scroll through a small selection of them, and tap on one to open your mail app of choice to that message/email. Above the messages/mail tray, there is a quick settings tray for brightness and volume. The volume is assigned to media if there is media playing, or if none is playing then it is assigned to call/notification volume. At the very top, there are buttons for tasks and settings. All of this is located inside a solid textured window that sits on top of the current app, with the current app dimmed/greyed-out a little.

I was very careful with the placing of all of these. I am still undecided as to the placing of the top most three items, but I feel confident in my design thus far. I placed the music tray at the bottom - closest to the thumb, which has just pressed the hardware button for multitasking - for quick, easy, comfortable and intuitive access. The multitasking area takes a large section just above the bottom of the screen and near the middle, to give it the main visual focus of the window. The multitasking app-windows are arranged horizontally near bottom for quicker and easier access, as the thumb/fingers are near the bottom of the screen so the reduced distance and the horizontal swiping motion are the most ergonomic for the form factor. For most people the top three trays are typically accessed less than music and multitasking, so that's why they are near the top (farther from the thumb/fingers). Messages/mail also looks very good near the top of the screen, aesthetically speaking, as the eye tends to look near the top of the screen for important/interesting things. I am tempted to swap the tasks/settings buttons for the messages/mail tray, but that would make messages/mail less easy to access for the fingers and they are a main focus of the device (it being a phone and all).

There are numerous coding implications of this multitasking launcher but they are largely self-obvious (ex. having an option in settings to allow the user to set which music app to use for the music tray).

Comments? Questions? Thoughts? :D

P.S. Please note I am not familiar with the Android customization scene and do not know if there is already something like what I have designed.