36 Krypton Interview MIUI Director Hong Feng: Millet has its own design language

the venture four

Among several co-founder of Millet, Hong Feng's Mandarin is the most standard. So MIUI 6 conference for him, also do not need to read too much.

However, the launch of Hong Feng, like the Millet 4 Conference at the end of July, once again put the start-up four years of Internet hardware companies on the cusp. Some people say, "Once good miui, now better use", also some people say "once very like the apple millet, now more like Apple." 36 Krypton interviewed Hong Feng with these accolades and questions, and the head of the MIUI said more than we wanted to know.

What Millet has to do is connect

"Millet is an electrical appliance business", Hong Feng Frank from the beginning of the interview we feel. MIUI's three big Mall monthly revenue has been over billion, the first half of the total to the developer divided into 174 million yuan. "(and) can't just look at our partitioning of the developers, browser navigation, life services, these are the developers to us," in Hong Feng's view, the value of MIUI is not defined by revenue, "we are actually connected."

MIUI is doing Internet service 2013 years later, Hong Feng and Lei have emphasized this in recent press conferences. In addition to integrated thunder, cheetahs, the company's services, MIUI also calendar, Address Book are internet. Even tools such as the compass have been created by millet to enhance the reality of the flavor.

This is easy to associate with the micro-letter, the public comment in order to get the micro-letter entrance pay the price is 20% of the shares. Millet and third-party cooperation more also lighter, have shun Fung and Merchants Bank, also has Sohu video and Baidu Music. This allows millet to have local services and content distribution platform shadow, but Hong Feng do not like the idea of layout, "but we have one or two more people, finally can try to do such a thing."

But Millet is doing more than one or two people do, such as smart home and smart hardware. This is a collision with the micro-letter, Tencent in August published a series of APIs to attract developers to the hardware to the letter. "We and the micro-letter great minds alike", Hong Feng is not Tencent's sense of crisis, "I believe that hardware and hardware connectivity is more pure and more efficient."

Have you ever used vista?

The similarity between Tencent and Millet is not only reflected in the product, but also in their often face "plagiarism" accusations. Foreign media to the miui of the large area of criticism for the first time people really feel the "international fan Son".

"Suggest Brush MIUI V5 Development Edition, open folder, is transparent blur effect?" If transparent ambiguity is plagiarism, it's all a copy of Windows Vista, Hong Feng, who thinks that plagiarism does not have to be copied to the entire history of computer interaction, "flattening is Microsoft's Metro UI first, and even Microsoft is not the first, the original design is flat." I'm just too lazy to say them. "

"But from the overall visual effect, MIUI is really more like iOS, what is the design language of millet?" ”

"We have a unified design language within the GUIDELINE,V5 and V6 have, including you said that the two and T-type structure, is to make the design more modern," Hong Feng think millet design style is forming, "we will not go to strong set a design language, allow exceptions." But what is the app for the tool class, what is the content class app, and the uniformity in the MIUI is quite high.

Even if Millet eventually formed their own design language, or people will be unhappy. Google this year in the I/O Conference to publish the adoption of the new material design of the Android L. MIUI's 6 candy and iOS7 are seen as a betrayal of Android in the eyes of Android Fidelity.

"What do you look like? Google doesn't care, and what they're most concerned about is that developers work on all phones that are supposedly Android, and you know the ambitions of Google Empire. We have a formal relationship with Google, each version of the upgrade will be communicated to see how many of us from Google to Know ", Hong Feng said the communication and cooperation mainly refers to the anti-fragmentation protocol and CTS compatibility Test, he said he did not know the design director of Android Matias Duarte.

The development of millet, the trouble of growing

MIUI's troubles are more about function than design. MIUI claims to be a fan-brush ROM, but after 70 million users have to think more about ease of use. Hong Feng once said that Miui has a stage to make the function too bloated. Now their solution is to hide a lot of functions, people who care about the complex functions can be transferred out, with Hong Feng own words, MIUI to do "easy to master".

Another consequence of the expansion of the user base is the increased workload. V5 only need to fit two models, 6 to take care of at least 6. "We're still talking about whether the MIUI 6 of the Millet 2 series is based on Android 4.4 or 4.1," Hong Feng that there is no doubt that an internet company wants to upgrade all users to the latest version. But he can only put the millet flat and the Millet 2 series of upgrades are postponed to the end of the year, "We are still hiring, would you like to come?" ”

Krypton may not be a help to millet, they have a multitude of troubles. In Taiwan they are accused of returning user information to the Beijing servers, and in south-east Asia they need to be busy looking for local companies to provide O2O services. At the end of this article, UsTwo announced on Twitter that Millet was not authorized to use Monument Valley at the MIUI 6 conference.

Talking about these issues, the millet staff to remind us that "all the official release of the statement," Hong Feng also seem a bit tired, until we talked about the future of MIUI.

"MIUI 7 and 8 to be more intelligent, to try to eliminate information asymmetry, why I can not know where the next bus now go, why I can not know if the restaurant has a window seat, why not know when the registration line to me, Hong Feng's imagination can not stop the car," some people say the mobile phone has no improvement, In fact, mobile phone is also very silly force, the future want to do is you lie on the sofa, want to see what screen, what will appear in front of you.

"This is probably MIUI100 to achieve, so to exercise good body, live to that time the most important."