Coquettish Rebirth

The engineering prototype was turned on, and two logos lit up in the center of the black screen, one for Changhong and one for Huaxia Hi-Tech.There are some lights flashing on the two logos. After flashing for about half a minute, the two logos disappear, the screen goes dark for a few seconds, and then enters the system when it lights up again!The system on this screen looks similar to the one on the phone.There is a status bar at the top of the screen, showing the time and network connection status, and then below the status bar, it really looks like a mobile phone with a horizontal screen, and there are big icons on the screen .These icons include the live TV function of itself, the video-on-demand function of Huaxia Hi-Tech, and of course the Android market of Huaxia Hi-Tech and other applications.

"Mr. Jia, after some screening of the application icons on the mobile phone, we have made specific modifications. On the mobile phone, we started to adopt the flat pattern design concept this year, while on the TV we still adopted the The design idea of ​​skeuomorphism. Considering that many consumers are relatively old and are likely to use it for the first time, we think that the design style of skeuomorphism may be easier for consumers to understand..." The software engineer of Huaxia Hi-Tech is on the side Introduced, "At the same time, our ui has also been specially modified according to the remote control..." With that said, the software engineer used the remote control to select Huaxia Hi-Tech's video-on-demand application and began to display the interior of the application.

After clicking on the video-on-demand application with the remote control, I only found that the layout design and ui design inside the video were indeed modified according to the hardware environment of the TV, which is different from the mobile phone.After all, the mobile phone can be operated by touch screen.And even if the TV has a touch screen, it is estimated that few people will really leave the sofa and walk over to touch and control the TV!Compared with mobile phones, the TV usage environment is quite special.The size of a smart TV will always be greater than 30 inches.This leads to the fact that its normal use environment should be 2 meters away, and when it reaches 42 inches in the future, it is better to watch it at about 3 meters.In this way, even if the consumer wants to touch and control, it is unlikely to get up from the sofa, walk three meters away to touch it, and then walk three meters away to come back after the operation, right?Of course.This is not without other solutions, that is to use a design similar to Nintendo's game console wiiu after the wii game console, and get a tablet-like controller.Then this tablet controller is touch-sensitive.

But in this way, it is actually a bit superfluous. After all, if such a tablet-like controller is equipped with a screen, should consumers see this small screen or not?Could it be that after the consumers have chosen the channel.Want to use this tablet controller to watch TV?But if you don't read it.So such a controller only provides touch function?Will this lead to an increase in cost and an imbalance in the functions provided?Is it simply going to cost more money with no real success?Besides, as far as Jia Hongjian and his family's TV watching habits are concerned, when watching TV, they basically sink into the sofa, the lights are dim, and they may even watch TV while eating melon seeds and snacks.Sometimes Jia Hongjian may be half lying and half sitting on the sofa, playing with his mobile phone while watching TV. At this time, let him use a device similar to a tablet to control the TV, which is really too much for his hands. Used it - after all, the ordinary remote control can be operated with one hand.And the tablet remote control requires both hands!

Therefore, although the display area of ​​TV is much larger than that of most PCs, it has a long operating distance.As a result, the amount of information displayed on a single screen is less than that on a PC.This actually leads to the hardware limitation of the TV itself, which makes the UI of the TV less capable and requires touch to be "precisely" controlled!In this case, it is better to save some money and simply cancel the touch!After the touch is gone, only relying on a four-direction navigation button like the so-called five-dimensional navigation button of the previous mobile phone to select, many operations will be more difficult, so the ui design must be re-according to the characteristics of the TV remote control to design.As for the software designers of Huaxia Hi-Tech, the ui they designed is actually based on the ui on the mobile phone system, but it has been slightly improved.

For example, the arrangement of icons on the desktop adopts a page design similar to that in the current new Android version that can be moved up and down—in the history of Google’s Android in the [-]:[-] and previous versions, different pages on the desktop The operation logic is arranged horizontally, and different pages are switched by the horizontal movement of the thumb.However, Jia Hongjian felt that such a logical operation seemed inconvenient. He felt that vertically distributed pages might actually be easier to operate. Therefore, in the new Android system of Huaxia Hi-Tech's mobile phone, vertically distributed pages were adopted.In the UI of the TV, although there are not many application icons, Jia Hongjian can see that the overall design is still designed according to the logic of vertically distributed pages.

This leads to a problem. If the application icons displayed on the TV screen are full, it is estimated that there can be 16 on a page. This is no longer a nine-square grid, but a 16-square grid. page, this will definitely confuse the elderly who use our TV for the first time!They fell into the trap of too much information all of a sudden, and they didn't know what to choose all of a sudden, they just felt that their eyes were going to be dazzled!Relatively speaking, if the TV is only operated by the remote control, that is to rely on the four buttons up, down, left, and right, and the OK button to select and confirm, then it may be necessary to be more intuitive and limit the amount of information that appears. A kind of ui—for example, design the ui according to the four dimensions of up, down, left, and right!

How do you call it the four dimensions of up, down, left, and right?In short, after the TV is turned on, the first batch of icons that appear after the system starts should only be arranged in a horizontal row in the center of the screen. The size of each icon can be larger, so that the icons displayed in the eyes of consumers may be smaller Only five.Then they can use the left and right buttons to make the icons move continuously, and replace the icons that are in the back. Is this more simple and clear?Is it not easy for the five- to sixty-year-old elderly to feel that their eyes are blurred and they don't know what to choose?Of course, if there are too many icons, it is completely forbidden for consumers to press the button more than a dozen times to select an application. This can replace the icons that first appeared on the screen with folder-like ones!Just keep five, six, six, seven icons at the first level!How simple and clear is that?

Of course, it is not good to have too many folders, and it is easy to cause cumbersome operations.Then you can directly add the design of vertical display content directly to the folder arranged horizontally on the desktop!For example, after turning on the screen, there are five "folders" in the center of the screen, which are "folders" such as live TV, audio and video on demand, and application stores.Then, if you want to watch TV, select "Live TV". At this time, instead of directly entering the live broadcast, various station logos and Chinese characters will appear above and below this "folder".For example, CCTV, China Satellite TV, etc., you can use the up and down keys to select at this time, and press the ok key to directly enter the live broadcast!In this way, is it faster than selecting and changing channels one by one after entering the live broadcast?Similarly, if you enter video-on-demand, you can also directly select categories such as movies, cartoons, TV series, etc. through the up and down keys. Will this allow consumers to find what they are looking for faster at one time?

In fact, this is to organically combine the main navigation and the secondary navigation, so that consumers can effectively reduce the waiting and operation steps, and intuitively find what they are looking for as soon as possible!Such as ps3, xbox360 and other game consoles in history, in fact, their system operation pages are very similar to this mode!On the contrary, it is like the so-called block navigation of Samsung Smart TV, but it is easy to stuff too many things on the screen. Young people may find what they want at once, but old people will only feel dazzled!Of course, in addition to such an approach, there is another approach that is to use the same method as tiles.However, the disadvantage of the magnet approach is that there is no way to configure many third-party applications!Because the style of tiles is often customized, this tile is a special icon.However, if the third party has no experience or does not make tiles at all, this will of course easily lead to failure to match them.Even if the third-party TV application is restricted, tiles must be designed, but the main navigation of such a tile does not include secondary navigation, which means that when there are many applications, the tile will become It's endless!Isn't that as hard to find as it is?

Thinking of this, Jia Hongjian quickly expressed all his previous thoughts.He considers it from the perspective of consumers, which is different from the perspective of expert engineers—sometimes it is too professional, and it is easy to fall into a situation where the mountain is not the mountain, and the drill is too deep. Instead, it is a bit unclear about the overall situation.Sometimes too much focus on technology, but forget the consumer experience.

After listening to Jia Hongjian's thoughts on UI design, the software engineers were really stunned!And after being stunned, one by one hurriedly found a notebook to write it down!You must know that they are the first batch of people who develop smart TVs in this time and space on this planet. No one has more experience in this field than them, and no one can give them advice on what to do!It can be said that they are crossing the river by feeling the stones, and they don't know how to do it right, and they haven't even formed a core design concept!And at such a time, Mr. Jia suddenly gave everyone a clear design direction and a framework, so why don't you pay attention to it?Once you have a framework, you can follow it, and you can work towards it.Without Jia Hongjian's guidance before, they seemed to be walking in the dark, not knowing which direction the way out should be!And now Jia Hongjian is equivalent to lighting a lamp for them in the distance, directly allowing the software engineers to find the way forward. Can't this let the software engineers quickly record it?

After it was recorded, this group of software engineers looked at Jia Hongjian in admiration! (To be continued..)