What is Apple's quasi-materialized design?

BKJIA special article: luxurious leather stitching, a grain of wood that you can almost feel, vintage microphone ...... If you are Apple's loyal users, you will never be unfamiliar with these designs. The so-called quasi-materialized design is to create an immersive interaction mode by simulating the existing items in the real world based on the characteristics of the product, make product design more quality and emotional. Using this design method can bring the appearance and behavior of the product closer to things in real life, and the user can understand their operation methods more quickly, the easier it is to use. However, the use of quasi-materialized design will bring you a sense of intimacy, but it will also often make you feel confused, because sometimes you will often find that many designs are intended for the quasi-thing, it brings a lot of inconsistent operation experience.

On the Design of book-style anthropomorphic objects

We will find that many of Apple's native applications use the quasi-materialized Design of book pages, such as iBook, memo, Address Book, calendar and reminder items. Enter the most representative ibook, there will be a wooden bookshelf that imitates the real world, such as) There will be books we often read.

Click the book we want to read, and a page similar to a paper book appears. When we flip the page, the page can even move with our fingers, when pages are turned over, the animation, text angle, and shadow will also change accordingly. The classic design method of iBook is imitated by many third-party programs and programs on different platforms. For example, there are many similar programs on the Android platform, but either the smoothness of book pages is insufficient, that is, the transformation of animation or shadow is not natural, or it is not followed by hands. First, this paging algorithm is difficult to implement, shadow transformation and corresponding animation require a lot of operations. At the same time, due to hardware inconsistency on Android and inherent weakness in UI animation processing, it is decided that using this design will not bring a good user experience, and may bring the opposite effect. In fact, if we carefully experience iBook, We must drag the book page in the lower right corner of the area, often because the fingers do not enter this area to flip the page but do not respond, at the same time, when we drag, there will always be a latency of about half a second, the original iBook is still the same, not to mention other applications?

Then we enter the memo, the black leather shell, the left side is the memo directory of the white background, but the right side is with a brown leather edge and uneven yellow or to imitate the intention to make the old) grid paper, it looks like a leather notebook. But how should we flip the page? The strange thing is that we can't flip pages by touching the bottom right corner of the iBook by means of gestures. We can only flip pages by the left and right arrows in the lower right corner, and we cannot control this page flip process, this undoubtedly results in inconsistent user operation experience.

Let's take a look at the strange one: the address book application. It looks like a book, but we are surprised that although it looks like a book, it does not have the page flip function. The left side is the contact list, the contact details are displayed on the right. All operations are completed on these two pages. In fact, for the operation experience, for the contact type application, the simplified design best fits the user's operation habits. Users can easily scroll through the list to find contact information. But why is it necessary to design a book as a quasi-object? This is actually confusing for users. Next time we encounter a similar program, do we have to first try whether we can simulate a thing-like flip, and then try other operations?

Game Center

Let's take a look at the Game Center. The entire Game Center interface is similar to a big gambling table. Every Game is placed on a gambling table like a playing card. But first, my question is that for most users, have they ever seen a real gambling table? Are there any real operations on the gambling table? Users who are not familiar with gambling tables will think that they are placing a bunch of icons in order and then moving them to the cloud. I did a survey on Weibo. Some people think this is a pool table. What does it mean to put a pile of cards on the pool table? In addition, for the color scheme of the Game Center, I think that he is not concise and clear enough to integrate the elegance of the IOS system. The first time he entered this built-in application, I doubt whether this is Apple's design.

What is the road to Apple's quasi-materialized design?

At Apple, Scott Forstall has been advocating the design concept, and he himself has decided to leave Apple next year. Currently, Tim Cook). Forthost shares all of his efforts with Steve Jobs to develop details of the materialized design. However, these recent efforts have been completely changed by Tim Cook, the successor of the Lord Joe.

At present, the man-machine interface is managed by Johnny avy Jony Ive. The famous Apple hardware soul designer has designed almost all of Apple's most successful hardware products, such as iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and MacBook Pro. In the future, mac OS and iOS are likely to be more concise, generous, and practical, rather than being overly flashy. This means that in the future, OS X and iOS will be able to greatly modify the quasi-materialized design, such as leather stitching in the memo and simulation notebook binder in the Schedule reminder. However, do not expect such elements in the next operating system to be improved immediately. Because around a million people are currently using Apple's operating system, they are used to this mode and operation method. If the design concept of the proposed thing is to be abandoned, I will expect the Alibaba team to improve some details first, for example, remove the gray background behind a series of text and notification centers and the visual effects that intentionally mimic the linen material, and use a unified style and Operation Experience interface.

In the future, we do not know whether the Ivy team will completely remove the quasi-materialized design. In some cases, using materials or textures that you are familiar with is truly warm and friendly. We hope to have an appropriate approach, so that digital interfaces can be cleverly combined with real-world events, rather than just for the purpose of thing preparation, it is necessary to respect the user's operation habits, appropriate quasi-materialized design will make users feel comfortable.

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