[fainpul]

Nice experiment!

I agree that providing something more tangible than just a number would be beneficial for some operations. But I think it would get annoying quickly. Having difficulty moving a "heavy" file is the opposite of a good user interface. Every manipulation should require as little mental and physical effort as possible. Apart from that, I can't apply force with my mouse — it just clicks.

I believe a purely visual approach could work well. For example: every file icon has the same front area (basically the rectangles we have now), but visually extends to the back with some sort of stylized 3D effect, according to file size. So a small text file looks like a thin sheet of paper, a 10MB file might look like it's made of thick cardboard, a 2GB video looks like a box with considerable depth. The scaling should probably be logarithmic, not linear, to work well with human perception.

[shiveeshfotedar]

You are right. This is just an exploration. The main motivation was to play with the pressure input from Apple Taptic engine. I was trying to applying "physical" properties to virtual objects.

Designing for visual is what is missing, I would want to work on the visual plus audio to compliment the "heaviness" I think someone else also mentioned in the comments on experiments with audio to express physicality to

[flowerthoughts]

I don't think the visual approach does much for interactions, so that's a separate concern. This is more about feel. E.g. inertia applied to CoG, so when you grab it outside CoG, large files will tilt more as you drag. Light files would probably start spinning even.

Now, applying inertia for the movement itself would be annoying. Please don't do that. :)

[fainpul]

You talk about interactions. In my mind the useful part is the added information density which comes easy (we are good at judging object sizes visually, not by numbers). I also want this information before interacting with the files. The value is knowing in advance, at a glance, what you're dealing with.

When you mention CoG, spinning etc. it becomes game-like — not something I would want in a productivity focused interface. But if you're developing a game or a toy experiment, go for it.

[shiveeshfotedar]

Thats the micro interaction that needs to be explored with iteration. The taptic engine pressure response (IMO) is not the best , but applying some heuristic ux designs I think we can approximate CoG and inertia.

[IanCal]

I’ve often wanted a setup where it became physically harder to send an email to me the more unread ones I have to deal with. Like having to cram an extra letter into a pigeon hole that’s already full.

[shiveeshfotedar]

Or maybe make the Slack send button extra hard to press when sending messages after hours. Like you need to apply all the pressure and sustain that pressure over some time and only then the message goes. The emergency and anxiety is built into the interface X-D