[Greenisus]

That's a clever approach to widget-izing apps, but I suspect that using the pinch gesture on such a small touch target could be problematic.

In the iOS Human Interface Guidelines, Apple suggests that your touch targets have a minimum size of 44x44 points. (https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userex...)

If you look at the icon size list at https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userex..., you'll see that iPhone 5 icons are only 60x60 points (divide the pixel sizes by two to get the point size). I imagine that 60x60 is simply too small for a two finger gesture to work well.

Maybe this would work better with a one finger touch and drag gesture where the drag direction dictates how the icon will grow into a widget (but with icons on the top and bottom rows only able to grow in one direction). It would need to be a quick gesture, though, since tap and hold triggers that app reorganization mode of Springboard.

[dmur]

A well-articulated point, but I disagree with ruling out the concept on this basis. Affordances could be made to make this sort of concept more usable. For example, the pinch could work when the user is approximately within the icon dimensions (e.g. only one finger is actually on the icon, the other is close to it) rather than the "strict" implementation requiring both fingers to be within the icon's dimensions.

[Greenisus]

Good point, but I'd worry about overlap, since you'd likely be touching two icons at once with an approximate touch. I suppose you could take the center point between the two touches and expand on whichever icon that lands on (with boundaries of course; it would be strange if you pinched the edges of the screen and it expanded an icon in the center).

Another thing that's bothering me about it being a two finger gesture is that the entire point of this feature idea is to be able to see things quickly at a glance. I would imagine, then, that in these scenarios most people would be holding their iPhones with one hand and only touching the screen with one thumb. This wouldn't be such a big deal on iPad, but I think it would be on iPhone. That makes me feel more strongly that some kind of one finger gesture may be a better way to do this.

Other people in this thread have pointed out some good points too about discoverability: which apps support the feature? How would the API be designed in a way that's performance and power efficient?

This is definitely fun stuff to think about :)

[geon]

> I would imagine, then, that in these scenarios most people would be holding their iPhones with one hand and only touching the screen with one thumb.

I don't think it was meant to be used frequently. More comparable to press-and-hold to enter the app removal/dragging state.