MIUI began to exert force, the vice president of Millet said is a sprint runner marathon

When the price of the product has obviously not been able to set off in the market when the waves, Lei's "triathlon" the other two have begun exerting force: in last month's rice Noodle Festival, MIUI became the subject of the theme of the absolute protagonist of the speech. And in the micro-Bo and other platforms, the promotion of MIUI also obviously began to increase. And Millet co-founder, vice President, MIUI head Hong Feng told us that MIUI users have now broken through 17 million.

In the original MIUI V5 before the official release, at that time on the new version of the evaluation is already hot, although the evaluation of mixed, but the overall is already received outside recognition. Even with the discerning peer-Luo also gives the "visual style and animation of the unity of interaction and integrity is very high" such a positive evaluation.

"MIUI V5 is a sprint runner marathon."

A few days after Miui V5 's line, he wrote, "The V5 design process is actually a step back to the work of MIUI all over the years, and then a process of overall optimization after unification." ”

MIUI V5 was established last 6 July. According to Hong Feng, Google in Android 4.0 released a new interaction specification, MIUI 2.3 to MIUI V4 hasty iterations caused some problems, the outside response is not good, the team itself is not satisfied. "At that time, other departments from the MIUI team to draw some people, the team not even 50 people." ”

"We want MIUI to have its own DNA," Hong Feng said of MIUI V5, "We want us to be able to define MIUI for ourselves instead of passively waiting for every update on Android." ”

Asked about the biggest difficulty in MIUI V5 project, Hong Feng's answer was quite unexpected-"keep it secret." ”

Because MIUI always maintains a tradition of weekly updates, the team does not adapt to keeping MIUI V4 normal iterations, "you make it difficult for a sprinter to run a marathon." Hong Feng revealed that the reason why MIUI choose Fast Iterations, is based on the fastest access to user feedback, and MIUI V5 but need to "choke on a big six months", "We are very worried about the situation behind closed doors." ”

Finally, the team thought of a way: Selected 10 "very character" netizens to participate in the beta and feedback. "We still need some outside voices," he said. ”

Despite this, the team is still very modest and tries to avoid a build-up to the new edition. "I don't think we should put the user's expectations too high," he said. ”

"Cooperation with Rigo cannot be replicated"

MIUI V5 is the crystallization of team and design company Rigo cooperation. According to Hong Feng, the cooperation between the two is very accidental. Previously, millet company invited Rigo for MIUI design a set of "very good" theme. During the design process, the Rigo team felt that the architecture could be further adjusted. "As a result, we hit and decided to do the next generation UI together." ”

Hong Feng revealed that in cooperation, the MIUI team is more responsible for the interactive design of products, visual design and animation design by Rigo and MIUI team together to complete. Hong Feng admits that Rigo gave them a lot of good advice and inspiration.

"I think the cooperation between MIUI and Rigo is an excellent case, but it is not replicable," he said. "Hong Feng that both Rigo and MIUI design team, self-awareness are very strong, to work together to do a product very difficult to running-in." "The art of this thing, is not right and wrong." ”

The reason why "not to replicate" is precisely because of Rigo founder Robin and the Millet design director Dexter between the friendship, which obviously makes the team's resistance to the run-in has been reduced a lot. "Cooperation has more inclusiveness than the so-called party B status." ”

However, between "visual and interactive", the two sides still encountered some friction. Vision and interaction, in essence, is "good-looking and easy to use" balance, this design and engineering contradictions in the technical company is not uncommon. Hong Feng that efficiency is one of the most important elements of vision, but for the mass consumer goods such as mobile phones, visual experience is equally important.

"In reality, some engineers will be more engrossed in the improvement of efficiency, he will complain: ' I wrote the program for more than 10 years, now in this accompany you to play the effect of flying." "Of course, more often than not, engineers feel that there is no need to" slightly zinfandel ".

"But I think this is not a contradiction between good-looking and easy to use the tangle, indicating that the scheme has compromised." But any solution is always deficient because time is limited. Hong Feng says the company has a group of engineers who are very concerned about UI vision, and the final product maximizes the beauty and ease of use.

"We have no intention to cater to the so-called flat design trend"

MIUI V5 's UI design experienced a process from realism to freehand brushwork, but the final team opted for a flat design, "it lets us see a fresh breath, something different." Hong Feng's words reveal a unutterable indescribable image.

From the industry's perspective, the flat design of Android 2.3 to Android 4.0,ui, from iOS to Windows Phone, seems to be a trend, and the rumored use of flat-screen iOS 7 has put the two design-style battles on the cusp. Hong Feng that MIUI was not affected by the so-called trend.

Hong Feng mentioned that the realistic style is difficult to unify the visual style as the Freehand style because it follows the realistic image.

"This is what we want to achieve-though it's a long distance, people will probably see it as a MIUI." ”

Asked about his view of flattening the wind, Hong Feng said he did not care much about the so-called trend. "There is no denying that the public will converge and follow the fashion, but I think we can define what looks good." ”

"IOS Moderation: You don't have to wear all the nice clothes."

Hong Feng is very appreciative of iOS, and he thinks iOS's subtlety is "moderation".

"The biggest thing I've ever said to our product manager is--you see whether all IOS apps have a very short setup interface, which is moderation. Complaining corresponds to the reality of the bad. Hong Feng admits that MIUI had a stage, because too much consideration of the user's functional needs, do not know how to control, in addition to the function, resulting in a bloated function, "such as the design page is very lengthy." ”

So in MIUI V5, Hong Feng requires that the first design page of any program must be within one page. "I don't want the user to see it by rolling the screen. ”

However, Hong Feng does not think it is necessary to add subtraction and ease of use on the product. "You can do an unusually simple but very functional product." ”

"Everyone thinks IOS is neat, but it has a lot of little-known features." Advanced features should be to set some threshold for users to find, a good level, reasonable entrance, so that the user's endless demand is met, and sometimes there is no entrance, users need to explore their own. ”

"It's like you don't have to wear all your nice clothes." To explain in one word is to hide without revealing. And bloated is just the way the function is rendered incorrectly. ”

The idea of this design, obviously as Lei ideal MIUI "easy to start, difficult to master." ”

Commercialization of MIUI

In the triathlon, MIUI a whole year early millet mobile phone. Hong Feng revealed to us that the company's decision to enter the mobile phone market early in doing MIUI has been determined, not to say that the rapid development of MIUI to promote the company to do a combination of soft and hard. "Everything we've done today is three years ago, but some of it has not been put on the agenda," he said. ”

In fact, miui--this investment three years long, carrying millet Internet service system engineering, is increasingly becoming millet new revenue source. Hong Feng told us that the current MIUI monthly revenue has exceeded 10 million.

MIUI's main profit-making approach focuses on application stores, themes, games, and cloud services. For example, paying for the theme of the company and the designer 37-divided strategy, which is the way to build their own biosphere. MIUI V5 Strengthen the construction of their own ecosystems, can be embodied in two aspects: first, some vertical services are divided into separate, such as Game Center, video, the second is to strengthen the basic services of millet Internet, such as the rice Currency center.

This is obviously not all, Hong Feng really optimistic about the direction of the "mobile phone on the small amount of transactions," he thought, portable and intelligent mobile phone has become the center of user life, it can be linked to a lot of peripheral equipment, mobile computing Center, will form a different from the virtual ecological "entity" ecological circle.

"For example, now many people go to the mall to buy things will sweep bar code parity." Mobile phones become a decision aid in the consumer's consumption process, which is a significant business opportunity when it assists you in making the purchase behavior. The user does not need to play the game when the phone jumps out to tell you to eat breakfast, but should be when the user is hungry to tell him what to eat breakfast, "Hong Feng said," and all this will be closed in mobile payment. ”

"This is not just a chance for millet. ”

In the context of the third-party ROM market, Android's native systems have become more perfect since Android 4.0, which means that the space for third-party ROM is getting smaller. Hong Feng said that this has become an indisputable fact, but for the user is good, no matter what choice is not bad.

Hong Feng suddenly changed: "Before the iphone comes out, people think the phone on the market is good, but when the iphone comes out, everything else becomes crap." ”

"We are now more likely to be quantitative, not qualitative." ”