Microsoft working to make Live Tiles even more interactive: Report

One of the standout features of the current Microsoft operating system (Windows Phone 8+, Xbox and Windows 8+) are Live Tiles. If the  report from ZDNet is to be believed, they might soon become even more interactive in the near future.   According to the site, the new project has been named “Interactive Live Tiles research project”. The demonstration of this project was shown by Jiawei Gu in February 2014 during Microsoft Research’s TechFest. Gu is a researcher with Human-Computer Interaction Group.   The proposed new Live Tiles are likely to come with an Interactive Desktop Tile which will enable users to use Desktop Office apps as well as third party apps. This would also desktop helps as well as those in transition from conventional desktop environment to Metro UI.   These tiles can also be pinned side by side. This will enable a user to easily navigate between the tiles. Gu has described the technology that will power the new and more dynamic Live Tiles as “parallel tasking”.   Though the description has been pulled out, it earlier reportedly read, “This project features an Interactive-Tile UI system that enables users to access and manipulate Live Tiles in an interactive way with touch gestures. Interactive Tile’s UI is responsive and flexible to an app’s content and function. Users can provide quick input to the Interactive Tile on the Start screen. With a perception of Start as an entrance page, Interactive Tiles were introduced to empower the start screen with an intermediate access level to applications.”   Another feature that the proposed new Live Tiles may bring along is to show the content on the ‘Start Screen’ itself. This would allow users to save time to go through the process of actually browsing through the app to search for updates. For example, the email app tile would display all the mails from your inbox in an expanded view when you touch it.   It seems like Microsoft is eager to capitalise on its new operating system. Just few weeks ago Microsoft announced its very own voice assistant  Cortana  along with the all new Windows Phone 8.1 . A beta version of Cortana is expected find its way into new batch of Window Phone devices that are expected to hit the market in the near future. The report also claims that Microsoft may or may not roll out these proposed changes to Live Tiles.