Interactive design: A product model in the context of multiple-screen use

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Have to sigh the power of Tencent, originally not bland QR two-dimensional code through the promotion of micro-letter, it seems that overnight began to become popular in China. Whether it is the media sites in the recent scramble to open the micro-trust public platform subscriptions, the implementation of micro-credit coupons, or personal identity information, activity check-in, two-dimensional code has been widely used, but in fact, in mobile payment, security verification and other areas, this technology has been in the vigorous development.

But here I don't want to discuss the potential of two-dimensional code, let's think about what kind of situation we will use two-dimensional code? When browsing Web pages on computers and tablets and discovering an interesting picture and news, we may use a mobile phone to take a two-dimensional code from a website and send it to the phone to view, save or share; When taking part in activities and meeting a happy friend, we may use the cell phone to shoot the personal identity generated on the phone, and add their information to their contacts ... One common feature of these scenarios is that we are all interacting with other devices and have a tendency to transfer information across devices. In fact, this is our digital equipment is ubiquitous in the era of the biggest characteristics, everyone's work, life in different screens between the conversion, and this constantly across the screen environment has also created a new user habits.

A new study by Google shows more than 90% per cent of media consumption in the United States is done on four screens, such as mobile phones, tablets, traditional computers, and television, where people spend an average of 4.4 hours each day interacting with each other in front of the screen, which does not include data on how people work. As we can see from the further data, the average time that people use a cell phone is about 17 minutes, the tablet computer is 30 minutes, the traditional computer is 39 minutes, and the TV is 43 minutes. Because the mobile phone is portable, always online, but the screen size, the input experience is limited and so on, the single use of the long although the shortest, but it is the Internet experience is an important link, often people find information on the phone, transfer to the computer (flat, TV) for further operation, or vice versa, in the flat panel (computer, TV) When you find something interesting, send it to your phone or other devices that are better suited to its use. And in China and elsewhere outside the United States, we find similar scenarios happening. For most Internet services (Web sites, mobile apps, and others), this means that they are no longer just designing a single device product, but rather a cross-platform service that allows users to have a more coherent experience when switching devices freely.

Specifically, if we live in an Apple world today, with an iphone, IPad, Macbook Pro, IMac, or even a apple, why is it that when a user receives and responds to a message in the iphone's information application, he still needs the IPad, the laptop , desktop computers to handle countless notices? In contrast, Google's Gtalk experience in a number of devices to be a lot better, when the user in the mobile phone Gtalk reply to information, the page end of the Gtalk will not pop-up the same notification information. The same is true of Twitter/Weibo, and many online content-consuming platforms.

Google's report divides users ' cross screen usage into two modes: sequential and instant. The former is the pattern of a user moving to another screen to continue the same task after starting a service on one screen, which is where the user uses multiple devices to complete one task, or multiple tasks. In essence, the former is a cross screen data transfer and user consistency experience problem, while the latter is the problem of multiple-screen collaboration. Prcious Design has conducted a study on this issue, the cross screen use scenario for more dimensional division, but we can still boil it down to the top two categories. Different patterns, what are the characteristics of each of them?

Sequential cross-screen usage scenarios

In this scenario, users may face the use of the way may be: 1 without strict time, use the same service across screens; 2 typical sequential cross screen scenarios, synchronizing the use state of the previous device to a new screen, achieving consistent use in different time periods, and 3 sending the contents of one screen to another screen, For a better experience. In this scenario, services need to focus on the main issues:

Cross-screen consistency

From the trend of the responsive web design, which has been popular in the past two years, we can see how to ensure that users can have more consistent content and interactive experience when they switch from desktop browser, to tablet, to mobile phone, rather than to endure traditional functions, The mobile page with incomplete content has become a central idea of Web design. This design method has been the original support of many web design frameworks, such as Wordpress, Twitter Bootstrap, Jekyll, and many Web sites and online tools have started to use this page layout method, such as Boston Globe, the Financial times, Asana, Medium, SVBTL, etc.

Of course, this design approach may not be universal, but the purpose of this example is to illustrate that consistency is a key element across screen design. Of course, this does not mean that all screens are completely the same, and it is necessary to have a targeted expansion of different screen devices, consistent with content and core experience. Taking Evernote as an example, the Evernote on different screens are very consistent in their core functions and experience, and the data can be synchronized uniformly, but in mobile phones and tablet versions, Evernote more emphasis on photos, audio, and even geo-information, which is a feature of mobile device integration. Under the premise of ensuring consistency, the optimization of different screen features has become an essential element of an excellent product.

Another example is the famous diary application of Mac day one, the desktop version of day one emphasizes the archive and management of journaling, as well as the record of text type diaries, but on the IPhone, the core remains a diary application, but contains photos, locations, The more media-rich diary form of the weather can bring a better experience to the user.

Cross-screen consistency

As mentioned in the IMessage example above, how to allow users to switch between different screens, the most consistent use of it is an urgent need, IM cross-screen state synchronization, Twitter/Weibo and other social media reading status synchronization, the different screen consumption content of the progress of the coherent, These are typical examples. This is actually a form of data synchronization, but the synchronization is not the data itself, but the user's operational state of the data. (This is a very old problem, Email, RSS reading and other fields have long been or got a better solution.) )

It has to be said that while service providers such as Apple and Twitter have not yet provided good support, many other services have achieved more satisfying solutions. These include the above mentioned Gtalk IM State sync, Amazon Kindle Whisper sync (similar to Google, Apple, Microsoft and other companies on their respective platforms to achieve a variety of consumer content progress synchronization), Instapaper/pocket reading progress synchronization, Like the Twitter Marker (recently renamed by Twitter's policy shift to watermark), the sync between client/screen tweets, and the music progress of domestic emerging music products jing.fm. Further, the Cross-platform user continuity experience of the nascent phase of Google now has shown us the possibilities for the future.

Cross-screen interactivity (1)

This is a feature that spans two usage patterns. For sequential cross screen scenarios, its current typical approach can refer to DMCA and Apple's Airplay, which have never been widely supported, and send video, audio, and apps on the phone, on the tablet screen, to the TV, computer screen for better use and audio-visual experience. Previously aborted WebOS's cross device communication technology can be said to demonstrate the greater likelihood of this area, and believe that in the future, cross-equipment communication will be more powerful.

Instant cross-screen usage scenarios

In this scenario, the issues that the service needs to focus on are cross screen interactivity. The simplest, one screen as an extension of another screen shows this usage except that we may face two situations where: 1 multiple screens cooperate with each other to accomplish the same task; 2 a screen as the main use of the device, the other screens are not necessary to complement.

Cross-screen interactivity (2)

In the first case, multiple-screen devices are necessary to complete a task. For example, in Scrabble Scrabble on IOS, an interesting model is to use the ipad as a public spelling version, while the iphone shows the individual blocks of letters that different players have (for the Chinese, a better example should be the ipad as a Mahjong table, and the iphone Displays your own tiles group. It can be said that all multiplayer online games are different implementations of this pattern. But outside the game, this model also has many useful places.

In the second case, a screen plays an absolutely dominant role, and other screens are not necessary for the task itself, but they can enhance the experience. If you watch a lot of epic dramas like Ice and fire songs on TV, and a grand sporting event like the Olympics, it's an interesting experience to use the aid of mobile phones to get to know all the relevant information and even interact with other audiences. In this regard foreign tunerfish, intonow, domestic paragraph, snail TV, etc. are in the relevant attempt.

With the further development of mobile phones and tablets, it will become more and more common for users to use the cross screen, and the use of the scene will certainly have more possibilities. Whether for content publishers, service providers or application developers, how to find the needs and motivations of users across the screen, targeted design optimization for different uses is a challenge and a vast new opportunity. Microsoft's SmartGlass is a great example of a comprehensive integration of multiple-screen experiences, and the design of a product for a particular use scenario is another reference, like Evernote.

Original address: http://www.geekpark.net/read/view/163095 Source: Geek Park