Design-winning "interface Layer" Company: access to the world

in the user and the bottom

This article is the founder of the design community Behance Scott Belsky (also Pinterest, circa and Uber and other start-up investors). In his article, he notes that a wave of new design-driven companies are emerging that improve our lives by adding a layer of convenience between users and the underlying services. These converged services, "interface layer" companies that simplify interfaces, have the potential to gain market dominance by providing a superior user experience, and may even make technology more commercialized.

The time is fast forward to 2020 years (or earlier) ...

When I woke up in the morning, I picked up a recent screen and chose the day's transportation, supplemented the shortage of daily necessities, decided what kind of sandwiches to eat for lunch, made sure the room was clean, got the dry cleaning and the time window for dinner. In addition, through the online customized recommendations for the sister's birthday selected a gift. After an efficient 5 minutes, I started to get up and have breakfast.

To do this, you may think that I have to use Uber, Fresh direct or Amazon Fresh, seamless and other specialized apps and services to solve these distribution problems. But I didn't, because I had a pretty customizable interface to bring those services together, and it was a much more integrated, fluid experience.

Behind it is the API and the many partnerships and partnerships between logistics companies and utility companies that play a role as a new type of company operating at the interface level. Once a consumer-oriented logistics company, it has now been able to compete fiercely and continuously optimize its supply (and prices) in order to be absorbed into the interface we use to manage our lives.

The customer experience of these service companies, once represented by more than 10 apps (and their own interfaces), is now replaced by a single interface layer.

The interface layer is not just about good design, but also about the integration of simpler actions and the commercialization of the underlying services.

The interface layer is not just a layer, but an economic shift led by designers rather than network executives, technology giants and logistics operators. This is a "closed" user experience that is created in a fully open and fiercely competitive service ecosystem.

Everything in the future will be about simplification and aggregation. Atomization has gone too far, and the pendulum is now in the direction of one-stop solution to integrated services. "Modern Web Services", which we once loved and used in a piecemeal fashion, will be put together and displayed in a remarkable user experience.

A single interface layer is good for users, but it poses a threat to the commercialization of the underlying logistics and content providers.

Whether you are an entrepreneur, an investor, or a leader in a product or service company, a client cannot be aware of your presence if you are unable to play a role at the interface level.

Long wait

Many companies play roles at the interface level (meaning that the logistics and content behind the service is provided by other companies). The first generation of interface layer companies we are already familiar with, these companies are vertical areas, such as content companies, food companies, taxi companies, such as belong to this category.

Content companies, such as Flipboard and circa, are examples of things that don't produce content, but rather show, generalize, or edit mainstream media. They want to compete with the interface.

In the catering industry, hotels rely on seamless to get orders (despite having their own computers and meal-delivery staff), relying on OpenTable to receive bookings. These two companies do not eat, but have a lot of orders and discoveries by owning and optimizing the interface.

Uber is another example of an excellent interface-layer company. The company has revolutionized the traditional car-sending industry by adding a better user experience at the top level.

Second generation interface layer more interesting

Google maps now allows you to "get a Uber" and then integrate what?

We can look at Google Maps, the interface layer that lets us browse the world has absorbed Uber. Now as soon as you navigate or find a place, Google maps will show Uber as an option. At first glance, this is excellent, and it highlights the significance of Google's recent huge investment in Uber. There is no doubt that there will be more in the future to the map-style "interface layer" of the services to be integrated into the Google Maps. But will the deep integration of those services further increase its commercialization over time? If you could call a car through a map, would you care less about who provided the car? Will our loyalty to a particular service be diluted by a custom-accessed aggregation interface layer?

Companies that can successfully aggregate multiple services into one interface have the opportunity to truly change the industry landscape. As long as users rely on an interface to meet a set of requirements, the user will be loyal to the interface rather than the independent services provided by the interface. Google Maps is a good example. It is said that another company is consolidating the rental list of services such as Airbnb, HomeAway, and using the attributes of all services to provide parity, holiday bookings and other services with a more seamless experience. If this interface fosters loyalty, the user experience of the underlying company becomes less important (and eventually commercialized).

All choices are made in the front-end experience

We are actually living and working under the control of the interface. We like simple choices that are made in the background. Finally, the once unrelated choices in our lives are aggregated and integrated, and the world of design and technology will be intertwined in this way. The second generation of "interface layer" leads to many problems!

Aggregation interface era who is the winner?

Customers will get a better user experience with less friction. The service provider will initially benefit from broader coverage and seamless integration into the interface layer of the company's other products. But as time goes by, it gradually loses its identity, and as the interface layer companies introduce more of the same low-level services, competition becomes increasingly white-hot. Designers have become the biggest winners. In this new industry era, designers have become the most important leaders (which is why we see more and more people like John Maeda join the Kleiner, and the funds that focus on designer startups like designer fund are starting to appear). Interface Layer Company's success will be driven by designers, the best user experience (speed, design, etc.) will win.

How do the "interface layer" companies measure their success?

The interface layer Company will be heavily dependent on the design. These companies quickly iterate and test the user experience and interface design in a more continuous way. Since almost all of its product implementations are done by the real service providers (the old internet economy) at the bottom, such as logistics, these companies will become very concerned about the design process.

These companies are found to have an excellent interface for integrating a set of existing services. These points are then used to measure their performance: (1) The loyalty of the interface command, (2) Whether it is more effective than others to achieve end-to-end consumption, (3) whether the price, availability and quality of the pressure to service partners.

How does the interface layer affect the VC industry?

The real "interface layer" should be a low-cost, high-margin business that competes around design rather than operation. These companies must expand quickly through collaborative functions, social sharing, and so on. They need money to build the right team, to attract good designers, and to take a quick and effective approach to marketing. But they do not need the capital and technology required by traditional markets (marketplace) and logistics companies.

Who can be a major participant in these interface layers? It should be the company that is icing on the cake by complementary product forms of services such as hardware, maps, or injections of appropriate data. For example, Apple (Hardware), Google (Hardware, maps, data) and Pinterest (data) and other companies. Think about it, Pinterest as a business interface-level role, and is replacing the discovery experience that often occurs on e-commerce sites (and retail stores) through a browsing layer that is constantly tuned to your interests.

Reflection on the interface layer

The basic concept of "interface layer" tells us the success factors of many modern web services.

(1) The success of a product depends more on the user experience of the technology than on the technology itself. Remember, you must constantly find, maintain, and supplement what drives Ux/ui forward. In the world of Web services, design cannot be outsourced or delegated to a department to complete. As interfaces become companies, design increasingly becomes the business itself.

(2) Ease of use (and speed) is increasingly becoming the biggest competitive advantage-this is not limited to specific actions/services, but also reflected in a series of services that make life better. There is no doubt that the best companies will eliminate friction.

(3) The pursuit of the service and the user experience of the atomization to help us into the simple design and logic of the default era. These same principles are now used to aggregate services and integrate them into the public interface. Our hands, arms and home screens will become a conduit for everyday life, and integration will be beyond our imagination. The future is no longer the thousands of independent, dedicated apps that occupy the screen! When I conceived this article, John Maeda reminded me that the interface layer resembles the early concept of "multi-sensor fusion" in the field of image processing, which is "piecing together a complete picture of various data sources". Of course, you need a reliable source of data before you integrate. Services must mature and withstand the test of time before integration comes in. Perhaps the atomization of service app is a prerequisite for aggregation?

The concept of "interface layer" is not a new idea. Service integration is the goal of many industries. But Ux/ui's ability to a certain extent to catch up with the pace of technological development. Many leaders of the "technology world" are increasingly emerging through design rather than technology. Just as we have a layer of technology on our daily life, we now have a design layer on our daily technology.