Samsung, through the team responsible for the design of its UX, has unveiled the creative process which led to the birth of the renewed One UI 4 based on Android 12.
Yoojin HongHead of UX Team for Samsung Electronics Mobile eXperience Businessbegan with these words of comment:
“The society and the environment to which we belong are constantly changing. With this change, users want more complex and diverse experiences. In today’s world there is also a constant influx of innovative products based on advanced technologies that change our daily life. In the midst of all this change, the One UI will always listen to the voice of customers and will continue to evolve so that our users can enjoy their daily lives comfortably and joyfully.“.
One UI 4: ecosystem and simplicity
For the One UI 4the team of Samsung has always had a clear idea of seamless mobile experiencemoving with the aim of creating a user interface capable of harmonizing on every device and every context of use.
According to the manufacturer, the delicate and flexible elements of the new One UI help users express themselves and have the tools for a more comfortable and safer everyday life.
The One UI 4 has been designed to remove unnecessary elements and help the user’s eye fall on the relevant ones effortlessly. The same idea guided the choice of colors and texts: the color system simplified and the redefinition of font and text thickness goes in the direction of greater clarity and a more organic visual experience. The organization of information in simplified and updated cards aims at immediacy, the removal of visual distractions and the classification of data on multiple levels, making navigation easier overall. About the colors and of reorganizationthe Samsung team was guided by the idea of cleaning (“Clean up“). The unified use of the functional colors red and green meets the same needs, while the new font has been designed to give greater prominence to the most important information, working on size, thickness and use of space.
Work on apps: Weather, Calendar, Health and Wallet
Priority in the daily life of users are the applicationsthe work on which was obviously not neglected.
Starting with the app Weather forecast, updated with a cleaner and more modern design (including the icon): not all users interact with it in the same way, some look only at the current conditions, others only at the forecasts for the rest of the day; while this information was previously merged in the upper part of the main board, the One UI 4 shows them separate; in addition, the readability of essential data has been improved (temperature, position, weather icon).
According to data from Samsung, each user creates on average between one and three events per day via Calendar. The new background, white instead of gray, should help users focus on key information such as the month, day and upcoming events; the text was centralized and horizontal lines were added which helped to discern the information broken down by weeks.
For Samsung Health, three main ways of communicating information have been chosen: graphs by range, progress and the likesymbols for calories, sleep and hydration and text only (no frills) when the numbers are the core of the information to be communicated to the user.
Clarity is also essential for the new app Samsung Walletwhose home screen (Quick Access tab) is divided into compressed and extended information. The first ones pushed the team to a more efficient use of the spaces, with the logo placed at the top left and the properties of each card at the top right and similar information grouped together. Conversely, other functions and information have been kept separate.
Security and personalization
As for the speech safety and privacy, increasingly essential in a hyper-connected society, Samsung talks about a One UI 4 that meets high standards. The novelties are children of Android 12, from the microphone and camera icons that show when in use and let you know from which app, to the Permission Dashboard (Google calls it Privacy Dashboard) which shows how often the permissions for camera, microphone have been exploited and location. The latter can also find and block apps that require unnecessary permissions, even if they are inactive.
As for the renewed Dark mode, Samsung has sought the compromise between visual comfort and aesthetic appearance. With One UI 4, they aimed to create a common design to all Galaxy devices – smartphones, tablets, PCs and smartwatches – using elements such as icons, rounded corners, menu style, layout and more that create an impression of continuity.
To users who want more customization possibilities, the One UI 4 responds with the new Color Palette (also own of Android 12, Samsung had already worked on it on its own, but now Google’s Monet is in the AOSP), with the possibility to create emoji combinations (Emoji Pair), to use AR Emoji and more: from watch faces for smartwatches to new widgets, passing through the “Particle”Of the new backgrounds.
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