The Freedom to Innovate – Interaction Design for Plasma Active

The main user interface for Plasma Active on tablet computers, called Contour, was already basically in place at the time. The main idea behind it is to put Activities in the center of the usage workflow. Activities have been introduced in the KDE Software Compilation’s desktop shell, Plasma, in the 4.X series as a way to customize your desktop for different activities (like e.g. work, communication, a certain project…). Activities in Plasma Desktop, KDE’s desktop UI, mainly consists of sets of desktop widgets, or Plasmoids, specifically selected and configured to support each activity. In Contour, this concept is taken further by allowing users to connect not only Plasmoids, but also all sorts of resources (e.g. files, contacts, bookmarks, people, events, …) directly to Activities, which are then shown on the Activity screen. This way, users have everything they need for a specific task or in a specific context directly at their fingertips.