Exploring the user experience is endless

[Core tips] Luo Yonghao product manager responsibilities, literacy, principles and importance of these questions what kind of view?

I am one of the only product managers in the global handset industry to serve as CEO, and I'm not even a CEO as a product manager.

- Luo Yonghao, December 22, 2013

Zhang Peng, founder of Geek Park, conducted an in-depth interview with Luo Yonghao, Hammer Technology's "Product Manager and CEO." In this nearly three-hour interview, we have a long time to discuss a variety of product details and user experiences in the Smartisan OS. We found that Lao Luo familiar with the ins and outs of the details of each product, a product decision behind what kind of considerations have gone through what kind of choice, the future will be how to further optimize, what are outstanding advantages, what are the regret, he can tell you Road to.

In this interview, Luo elaborated his own views on the responsibilities, accomplishments, principles and importance of product managers, supplemented by clear case studies. Geek Park organizes these ideas as follows:

"The interactive experience problems are actually subtle psychological and physical problems."

In fact, Luo Yonghao's product manager career is much longer than Hammer Technology just two years earlier history. Emphasis on the user's psychology and try to figure out, is the old Lo always attach great importance to things. Discover the potential psychological needs of users and to be satisfied with the process, throughout the history of Lao Lo's entire business.

Starting from the establishment of an English language training school, Lao Luo often emphasizes the importance of reading user psychology in various public occasions. He is happy to recommend relevant books and share his own practical experience. The "One Money for Eight Lessons" communication strategy and the "personalized door care and toilet door lock" have been repeatedly raised. Lao Luo accurate positioning of user needs and creative improvements to the user experience, from that time has become a widespread topic of mass public.

While talking to us about the user experience of mobile devices, Luo Yonghao still emphasizes that product managers should be good at discovering and satisfying the psychological needs of users and conforming their products to the subconscious natural operations of users. He cited webOS as a reference and tribute to the multi-tasking interface, for example, while gesturing to tell us the underlying reason behind the success of this card interaction:

A statistical result is this, in all mobile operating systems, webOS users are most willing to shut down the background process, because it allows users to have pleasure. This action of swiping up and out of the card causes the user to feel a slight "go to you" feeling - the continuous throwing of cards is like making them roll, roll, roll, go, go, go, very Very happy solution, giving a sense of pleasure full of control. This is closely linked to one's mental and physical habits.

In the Smartisan OS, there are so many more "intuitive interactions" (a term derived from Straightforward) that meets the user's inherent psychological and physiological needs. For example, the timer part of the clock application pull-ring timing function:

Hammer clock application launch, this operation has been widely praised, Luo Yonghao explain the reasons behind the use of this interaction:

The disadvantage of this interaction is the inability to meet the niche need of "timing accurate to seconds". But the advantages of this interaction are far more significant than the disadvantages. You know, there are many such timepieces and other household appliances in European family kitchens that are very popular with housewives because of this pull-ring type operation, which gives the user psychological pleasure And fun feeling. This smooth feeling brings a great bonus to the overall experience of the application, completely making up for the lack of niche demand and giving the application a higher total score.

"You do not have to invent the technology yourself, but you have to know what technology to use."

In Luo Yonghao view, the mobile phone industry's technology is mature, highly modular, the use of the current top-level configuration, the performance of mobile phones is not a problem at all, the supply chain is also no shortage of all kinds of high-tech and complete sets of solutions, Mobile phone companies do not need to "invent" some revolutionary high-tech solutions. What's more, there is an excellent team of product managers who know what kind of new technologies and solutions should exist. Meet the pain points of human-computer interaction. He explained the problem with Apple as an example:

We see Apple's three successes, in fact, the essence of the success of human-computer interaction revolution. Apple did not invent its own revolutionary new technology, but it managed to find the correct use of the existing technology three times to solve the interaction problem.

Macintosh, everyone is using the character interface, Apple uses a simpler and easier to use graphical interface, but the concept is stolen from Xerox.

Then when the iPod clickwheel turntable, this is not Apple invented the technology, is also bought. It addresses the pressing need to find a file instantly on a handheld device in thousands of files.

Finally, when doing the iPhone, capacitive screen and resistive screen is almost simultaneous technology, only Apple found the proper use of capacitive screen to achieve a natural and smooth touch-screen interaction.

Our industry has always been faced with the problem of human-computer interaction. The computer chip is smart enough that it can be done very quickly, but the problem is that it does not know what you want it to do. So what you're trying to solve is the problem of talking to it, not the problem of speeding it up.

In the case of overcapacity and overcapacity, the product manager's role is to "translate" the high-tech and the human needs-picking the right technology and implementing the appropriate interaction based on those technologies to meet the user's psychological needs .

The humanistic details of finding potential user needs in this way and creatively fulfilling technical solutions are also widespread in the Smartisan OS. For example, the system comes with a photo album application integrates the face recognition function, for portraits, regardless of the face in the photo in what position, in the thumbnail interface to make faces appear in the middle:

At the conclusion of this conversation, Elder Luo told us that he plans to relocate the R & D center to the United States after a steady profit so that Hammer Technology's product manager team can tap into and select a large number of new technology solutions in Silicon Valley for the first time to explore potential Technology, driving the next wave of revolution:

The frontier technology is like this. There are numerous technologies in Silicon Valley born every day. When we heard about it in China, it was already second-hand information, because when you heard it, there must have been a large enterprise that had turned it into a product .

So if we make a lot of money by making a mobile phone, we will move R & D to the United States. Those in the forefront of technology, in fact, every day to find large-scale home-based marketing. Our talented team of product managers, though we can not invent ourselves, are familiar with the pain points of our users and are well aware of the possible scenarios for new technologies in the future.

This time, we can first spot the future direction of a new technology, bought it, we can guide the next revolution, or at least be able to participate in the first wave of a revolution.

"Know how to choose, trust your own judgment."

Speaking about the product manager's basic professionalism, Luo Yonghao special emphasis on the ability to choose and judge the importance of. Old Luo to historical research to do than that, the importance of trade-off ability:

This is certainly part of deciding whether a product manager is good or not, but more importantly, if your team is good enough, innovation is overkill and your trade-off ability is of particular importance .

This is like a historian to do research, his historical data will always be surplus, how he reasoned out the historical data, to make a trade-off, it is particularly important. To do the product, to a large extent, too. Software product managers to do when, think of innovative features is a part, but the trade-off is also an important skill.

In determining the trade-offs, the product manager's judgment on demand priorities can become extremely important. Old Lo said he trusts the team of product managers to do more than they do online surveys, user votes, and forum feedback Judgment:

The investigation will be wrong, do not investigate will make mistakes. Ability to balance the needs of priority and judge, is the product manager's basic skills. Most of the time, I actually do not trust online surveys. I trust the judgment of more than a dozen of our own team.

You see, before my conference, I vote on Weibo. This is not because I need to investigate user needs. Instead, I want to tell this story at a press conference and need convincing data. I am going to vote because I use this data to tell stories on stage. In fact, most of the time I have the answer in my heart.

In principle, we do not believe in the "wisdom of the masses" in the forum. The merit of the wisdom of the masses does not lie in the priority of determining a certain demand. Instead, it helps us to find out the deficiencies - you must be able to do 90% There are five percent of vulnerabilities, and if your product team is not big enough, it really needs someone to help you find it. This is only a supportive role.

As for the criteria for trade-offs, Lao Luo said that in order to keep the system simple, the team of product managers judged less than 15% of the demand in principle and did not do so, while only 15% could still do exceptions:

Add this feature, will not interfere with the user's original habits and experiences;

Although this function has few requirements, it fully embodies humanistic concern and corporate philosophy, and is suitable for story telling in marketing. It helps to spread the reputation of the product and establish the unique image of the brand.

"Product managers must have marketing awareness and marketers must understand the product."

As we asked about the relationship between marketing and product development, Lao Luo told us how hammer technology works:

Product design and marketing planning at the same time, product managers must have marketing awareness, marketing staff must understand the product.

According to Luo Yonghao, the OCD option (hidden desktop icon name, hidden logo superscript) key features implemented in the Smartisan OS is a classic case in which marketing and product integration - OCD users in the crowd Is less than 15%. However, the well-established OCD option brings about ample humanistic care and plays a very good role in establishing a corporate image and building brand stories:

We have a well-established model of obsessive-compulsive disorder that we can even continue to optimize until OCD people around the world consider it the only cellphone to take care of their group.

People with obsessive-compulsive disorder are like this: If there is a manufacturer who will even test their obsessive-compulsive disorder needs, they will run with each other. This has a huge benefit from marketing.

You will see those obsessive-compulsive disorder every day online complain that this application on my phone there is a corner push, delete can not delete, every day curse, this time if you help out, they will run Tell me, give your product a huge spread effect.

"Good design never goes out of time, real beauty goes beyond time"

The main controversy for the Smartisan T1 in the media and critics is the design of its nine-grid / sixteen-grid system's main interface and the frontal appearance of three physical keys. In the face of some media and personal criticisms of these old-fashioned obsolescences, Mr Lo's response was blunt:

These criticisms, which target physical keys and MiG-interfaces, are the thoughts of the insecure poor. They always think that if I use something that reminds me of the past, the poor, the old something, they would mentally feel that others would disregard him. Actually, this is not the case at all.

Luo Yonghao's point of view is simple: Being a product manager, you do not have to follow "industry practices" or bow to non-target users. Seize the core needs of target users, using their own independent judgments, you can make the right choice.

Achieve these two points, you will find the use of MiG interface and physical buttons are very natural product decisions:

The early target audience of Smartisan T1 is "urban elites, middle class middle class, biased, quality-oriented and taste-conscious people" who seek to be efficient, concise and fast, and typically use no more than 12 applications per day , So Smartisan OS tailor-made for this crowd a minimalist Jiugongge main interface and efficient 36/81 grid icon quick finishing mechanism.

Incorrect use of industry-standard virtual buttons / capacitive buttons can cause false touches, especially when the full back-screen fingerprinting makes it easy for the finger to swept past the capacitor return button. In order to prevent these problems, the use of physical buttons is a natural choice.

Finally, Lao Luo illustrates his aesthetic perception of value with the example of a product designed by Dieter Rams for Braun:

These decades ago design and manufacture of products, even today seems still elegant and beautiful, just like from the future.

For me, the design is outdated. Really beautiful things, completely beyond time, good design has never been outdated.

"Easy to use, good looking, fun"

A special feature of Smartisan OS is the ubiquity of the fine details. In talking about why we should pay attention to these tiny details in the system, Lao Luo answered the following sentence:

Some people say that our small details are "miraculous trickery" useless, in fact, a mobile phone, so that users feel good, is easy to use, nice, fun. These small details are not useless "magic trickery", but to make the system become "fun."

In Lao Lo's view, the system can become fun, there are a large number of exquisite details so that users continue to find, and are willing to repeatedly pondering over the hand, is an excellent smart phone system should have the qualities.

On the Smartisan T1, we did see the exquisite details popping up throughout the system, up to almost completely reproducing the music player that classic vinyl jukeboxes operate, down to the dots used to indicate the paging position when the home screen is switched sideways Delicate and precise cascading effects across the various round holes and finally through:

Luo Yonghao tells us that in order to do a good job of paying tribute to the vinyl record player and accurately restoring the operation details of the record player, he even re-purchased the vinyl record player for comparison. And shared with us his experience comparing the sound quality of vinyl record players to CD players:

When I was young, I bought very cheap vinyl record players. This time I bought a more than ten thousand, I feel quite good to hear, but I think more than 10,000 vinyl record player and more than 10,000 CD player, or CD player is better to hear. Later I had some friends playing Hi-Fi 撺 掇 I said that as long as the vinyl record player to more than twenty thousand price, you can surpass all CD player.

I told them that when I bought more than 5,000 vinyl record players, I bought more than 10,000 and bought more than 10,000 now and I do not like to hear it. Later, I could not help but buy a more than twenty-six thousand vinyl record player, the British Linn, buy it back later found that I have a split CD machine, add up to more than 70,000, indeed It is more than 20,000 vinyl record player sounds better than it. Not directly AB can be heard out, the vinyl record player really nice.

"Excellent user experience brings core competitiveness"

At the end of the interview, we asked about the importance of product-driven and user-experience. Lao Luo answered without hesitation:

Our core competency is an ecosystem of great user experience.

In order to explain this issue, Old Luo used the case of millet and Samsung as a comparison:

Data show that 80% of Xiaomi users use Xiaomi's own software store instead of other products such as Google Play or pea pods. Excellent user experience has brought a good software ecosystem, allowing users to stay in millet ecosystem, using a variety of software provided by millet.

Samsung sold hundreds of millions of mobile phones, is the most qualified and conditional entry to realize the mobile phone company. But because of all its poor user experience of software services, even those who are willing to buy Samsung mobile phones are reluctant to use Samsung's cloud services, because the user experience is so bad.

Even with a closed platform like Apple's iOS, there are plenty of people who want to use Dropbox instead of Apple's bundled 5GB iCloud cloud service.

Lao Luo concluded that as long as the user experience to do well, even in a variety of similar services open competition, hammer technology own cloud services can also form a huge advantage, the Smartisan mobile phone users gathered in Hammer Technology own Service ecology. Thus forming a healthy and healthy ecosystem, continuing to retain old users and attract new users.

"We are a creative team."

Luo Yonghao proudly tells us that 40% of the current version of the Smartisan OS is initiated and promoted by himself, while his product manager team has been in a state of "excess creativity," with the idea of ​​a new interactive feature originating Constantly:

So I'll tell you that our team, in the characteristics of creative design to what extent? Only 150 new features in this version of our only reason is that the development team can not keep up.

The future company will develop to a healthier node, there will be hundreds of R & D engineers. By that time, we could make more than 300 new features in each edition, with no problem at all.

We were surprised to ask him why there was so much room for improvement in Hammer Technology's product team? Old Lo told us a discussion that often goes on inside his product team:

We always discuss a problem internally, the pursuit of ease of use and humane, in the end there is no end?

Seems to give us some time to think, old Luo drooped a cup of coffee, and Zhang Peng immediately asked "the correct answer is what?"

Old Luo looked up:

The correct answer is - there is no end.