Design Continuity

Along with the release of IPhone4, IOS4 also officially announced. Next, the competition between Android and iOS will become more intense.

We have already studied, in the interface design aspect, the user's learning cost will bring how huge influence. The same is true for Google and Apple. Just to be clear, Google is an engineer-led company, and Apple is a designer-led company. This difference has created today's two completely different companies.

Google's advantage is the network, there is no doubt that he has achieved great success in this area, and Android has cleverly extended his advantage. But this is not what we are going to study today.

For example, the top image of the beginning of the article, even if the word of the iphone is removed, it is still easy to tell, this is Apple style. Although he has changed a lot. And this, this is the unified design style brings the thing, also we should pay attention to now.

As the title of this article mentions, what is the continuity of design? Here is a picture from the "life" design of the Tencent CDC, which can be a good illustration of the problem

As the figure, usually in the software interface to see the drag area of the neat oblique 45 degrees design, in fact, is derived from our daily life. One of the greatest benefits of this is that the user can see the usefulness of the design at a glance. That is, reducing the cost of a user's new learning.

As we said earlier, reducing the user's learning costs can effectively improve the use of the experience. It's obviously a lot smarter than the ingenuity of redesigning.

There is a benefit to using a design that extends from life, because the user already has enough knowledge of the design before they can learn to use the software. But what if there is no design in life?

It's simple, so create the opportunity. Because the crux of the problem is not whether the design originates from life, but whether the user is already familiar with the design.

And Apple, that's the way it is.

We are already very familiar with the Apple style. This Apple's "human-machine Interface Design Guide" is a perfect summary of most of Apple's design ideas, concise and worth reading. In addition, there is also a Chinese language by the Tencent CDC summed up the "iphone user interface design Pristine," also wonderful.

Apple with its excellent detail design, so that users fully remember their own, remember the apple style. This is also with Apple perennial for users of education inseparable.

Since 2001, when Apple officially launched Mac OS X, the typical details of Apple have never changed from the desktop Mac OS X system to the phone's current iOS. The classic black, white, gray color, to rounded corners, shadows and reflective buttons, even those who have never used Apple products, see this style can be immediately linked to the idea that this is Apple.

Apple's behavior, which has consistently been the sole design concept, has apparently received excellent results.

Now, whether it is not Apple users, have a great understanding of this style, almost no need to learn to quickly start. In this way, even if the introduction of a new operating system, Apple will only need to focus on functional development, so that users can get the best use experience.

Maintain the continuity of the design, the largest program of the emancipation of the program development ideas.

Starting with the GUI, in fact, Windows has always been the same style, but he is clearly not the details of the Apple as prominent, but in the end did achieve the same effect. But the same thing to Linux, there are some deviations.

Some time ago, I almost always used the Ubuntu system. This is really a very good operating system, and I especially like his super fast start speed.

Linux has a lot of systems, and everyone is a part of it, which is more serious for the user, that is, based on Debian development of Ubuntu. But why is it that Ubuntu has done quite well in all aspects, yet it still hasn't created enough influence to shake windows and Ubuntu.

We're not talking about commercial issues for the time being, just looking at Ubuntu itself. The following are clearly the three screenshots of Ubuntu 8.04, 9.04 and 10.04-

These three pictures are really beautiful, and you can clearly see the progress of the Ubuntu interface. But there is another obvious problem: they don't have a really unique design style.

Whether it's a whole color, a window match, or a button icon, even the default wallpaper. Almost every version of them is different. I can not deny that they do not exactly the same place, such as the location of toolbars, menu configuration and so on. But in many cases, I still feel confused when I face a new version.

For example, in version 10.04, he defaults to the window's Close button on the left, I spent a lot of time to change back again, there is a new bubble hint, it is really beautiful, but for a while I always thought that such a hint blocked the program I am using. Such a similar example may be able to find a lot.

Also worth mentioning is that Linux commonly used two desktop environment KDE and GNOME have a huge gap, Ubuntu chose Gnome by default, but he also has the use of KDE Kubuntu to provide downloads, which caused users a great deal of trouble. No one knows what kind of desktop is better for you before it is used, only Ubuntu is what the user knows. Before using, it has been invisible to increase the user's learning costs.

Perhaps in the next release, the Gnome shell will be enabled in Ubuntu by default. This can really be called a revolutionary change, but again, great changes bring a new learning time, which will be a long process. The current version is not enabled by default, and it seems that developers are more or less aware of the problem.

Sometimes I almost think that the Ubuntu developer doesn't really realize what the user experience is. They just put what they think is better into the system.

I do like Ubuntu to have the same design ideas as Apple or WINODWS, but it may be hard for an open-source operation to be as good as the business companies. So I can only expect it here.

Source: http://www.lolibeta.com/pc/1466.html