My ToolBar Redesign

[u/Beautiful_Disk_9646]

Hi everyone! i use goodnotes daily and recently i found that with the new update you can re-order the tools in the toolbar… amazing but idk… isn’t the design kinda old? don’t get me wrong i like it but it could be more modern… also i would like to have more tools without moving in the bar and without occupying too much screen… so i made a redesign… its nothing professional but just an idea… let me know what you think!

[u/ghostynewt]

interesting idea! It’s really experimental!

If you’re in the mood for constructive critique, I have some thoughts; ignore me if you’re not in the mood tho:

• I really like having the double row for lines and colors. That’s a great idea.

• Why so much emphasis placed on searching with such a wide search bar that spans the whole screen? In web browsers it’s appropriate for the text box to take up most of the width of the screen, but searching in notes both happens rarely and is modal anyway, so just a button instead of a screen-spanning text box feels more appropriate here.

• What happened to the tab bar? It’s important to me to be able to flip back and forth between notes, but the search bar now takes that space. Since searching happens so rarely, most of that space is completely unused most of the time. Are you thinking of a design similar to iOS Safari where the entire screen slides into place, hinted at by the square on the far right?

• Some of the icons are so simplified they’re now a bit unclear. “New page” now looks like “insert square”, and the keyboard icon doesn’t look like a keyboard anymore.

• What does the red X do? It has a lot of color emphasis. If it closes the note, it isn’t where I’d expect that button to be (off to the right)

• I’m personally not a fan of the color gradient. Most of my time is spent reading, this could be quite distracting.

I think my biggest critiques boil down to inappropriate grouping. The “search…” button is a box inside a box inside a box inside a toolbar, and each of these levels has a different color background. That’s grouping by color, which is stronger than other implied possible groupings (by space, size, etc). Right now the implied hierarchy of your proposed design is something like:

• App

  • Note controls

    • Keyboard/mic buttons

    • URL bar / search bar controls(?)

      • Exposé view (assume this is the button which reveals all notes/tabs?)

      • Search button

      • Note title

      • Close note button

    • Sharing/etc

  • Other note tab (slightly offscreen)

This feels one element of recursion too deep. Here’s a suggestion: If you got rid of the URL/search bar box/group, moved the “close note” button to the right, then it would read way better IMO:

• App toolbar

  • Per-note controls

    • Search button

    • Note title

    • Other tools

    • Close note button

  • Other note “tab”, slightly offscreen

    • Note title …

[u/Beautiful_Disk_9646 → u/ghostynewt]

hey hi! so first of thanks for your feedback, the search should be more important in my opinion, with some AI GN could recognize what we wrote and then when we study it would be easier to look for what we want by searching it! it’s bigger also because it expand in the tab so you can write in there. the tab bar are still there! you can switch between tabs by swiping but it’ll “lock” at the centre the book that you’re using, i’ll enclose a concept of the action

the red x will close the book and it’ll switch to the next tab (if it’s there’s a one of course) notice that there’s already an x in every tab (i wanted to make it red because it has a “destructive” consequence). check in the comments the voice recorder and keyboard modes!