This document discusses important questions to consider when developing applications for netbooks, such as who the target audience is, how to engage users, optimizing for small screens and touchpads, and implementing intuitive keyboard shortcuts. The author uses their art application "My Little Artist" as an example, highlighting how they tailored the interface for children and made drawing accessible using touchpad gestures rather than a mouse. Overall, the key is optimizing the application, interactions, and content for netbook constraints and the intended users.

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Originally published as a blog by Dmitry Rizshkov at :
http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/blog/2010/07/01/questions-you-must-ask-yourself-when-developing-netbook-application
Questions you must ask
yourself when developing
netbook applications
Who is your audience?
First you must understand your target audience. If you’re developing applications for
kids you must make the application easy to use and easy to understand. For example,
consider eliminating text labels, popup menus, etc.
When I started developing “My Little Artist” the hardest task for me was to create the
brush icons. The easiest way was to make text labels. But if a kid can’t read or even if he
can read, can he really understand what I mean by calling a brush “fur”? I think I found a
good solution—to draw on icons, things I can draw with that brush. Another benefit of
not using labels is globalization of the application. There is nothing to translate. And any
kid, from any country can use this application. No matter which language he speaks.
How to hold user attention? While developing My Little Artist, I used a
trial version of Intel® VTune™. VTune helps
Kids like to draw, but not all of them can
me to find the number of the performance
draw something interesting or artistic
pitfalls, and ways to optimize my
their first time. Kids who try to draw in a
applications. One important way to do
program with standard brushes and
this was to update areas only affected by
pencils will find nothing special in it,
stroke portion of the memory buffer. This
close the application, and forget about
allows me to reduce processor usage for
it forever. It is important to help kids
some brushes for 50 percent.
believe that they can draw really amazing
pictures. Brushes and mirror modes in My Size of screen is another critical factor. If
Little Artist help young artists be more you are using a 21-inch monitor, there is
creative from the very first stroke. no issue on how much space is used by
toolbars. But on the netbook it matters.
On which devices? In My Little Artist I decided to use no top
Another important point: on which devices menus, with no window captions, and
your programm will be used. With mobile maximized the main window. Ideally, ap-
devices an issue like battery life is a very plications give the user use of the whole
important thing. Applications must be screen. For that I added new features. I
optimized to use less CPU to preserve allowed for the main toolbar to be hidden
battery life. when pressing the Tab button. Also, the
toolbar can be moved from left to right
with just one click on the arrow button.

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How to interact?
If your application requires use of a
pointer device like a mouse or a touchpad,
make sure it is easy to use. Drawing with a
mouse is comfortable on the netbook. But
if a user has no mouse device, make sure
he can use the touchpad. I almost forgot
about the touchpad when I develop my
first version. Then I tried to draw
something with the touchpad and found
that this is not as easy as with a mouse.
To draw, a user needed to tap twice on a
touchpad and move the cursor by moving
his finger across it. If the user removed his
finger from the touchpad to start drawing,
he needed to tap twice. Or he needed
to press and hold the left button on the
touchpad. I developed an easier way to
do this in My Little Artist. To simulate left
mouse button action, a user can just press
the spacebar. To release the left button
just press spacebar again. Nothing special,
but this little feature will give the user
the ability to draw with one hand. Now
drawing with a touchpad can be as easy as
drawing with a mouse.
Keyboard shortcuts are a useful feature.
Shortcuts can speed up some operations
and make applications more comfortable
to use. In the new version I deceided to
implement shortcuts to support Undo
and Redo commands. My Little Artist is
aimed at kids, so shortcuts must be easy
to understand. My simple solution is to
map Undo to the left arrow key and Redo
to the right arrow key. This is easy to use,
intuitive and easy to remember.
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