A POSITIVE RANT ON GOM PLAYER
Here is something that is not directly related to usability, but rather to improving awareness through subtle complementing visualizations. Since it caught my attention very soon after I updated GOM player and I truly enjoy seeing it every time I run the aforementioned software, I decided to share it with the world. It is also a perfect example of how to improve the usability of a product through subtle awareness clues. Here is the thing … the GOM player taskbar icon:
As you know most task bar icons are static but the guys at “gomlab” made a pretty neat design. They incorporated the state of their player in the taskbar icon. For decades the three states of any audio/video player have been not playing (stopped), playing and paused. However, few have thought about improving the awareness of their users through a non-standard approach. And GOM does it in a very gentle yet prominent fashion – by having a dynamic status bar icon that reflects the current state of the player. In me they have another happy user, I hope in you as well, and I salute their design team for the great job.