Jaali

Design thinking

A jaali is the pierced stone screen of Mughal buildings: you look out through a lattice of stars at a bright world. So the film plays behind a star-lattice window set in a carved sandstone frame, in an alcove lit by a shaft of sun. The page above is our own AI-generated reference, rebuilt: the alcove is the reference itself and the unit is the live player placed on it pixel for pixel. The seek bar is a row of eight-point star beads that light up gold as the film plays, with a streak of light on the bead the playhead is moving into; drag along them, click one, or Tab to the bar and use the arrows. The time strip reads the current time and duration on the left and time played and time left on the right; the carved script in the middle turns captions on and off. The lapis-and-ivory pill holds previous, back 10 seconds, play, forward 10 seconds and next; the ivory studs are mute (the carved panel beside it is the volume), settings for speed and captions, and fullscreen. Every control is a 44px target with a visible focus ring, and the strip and deck are opaque stone, so their contrast never depends on the footage.