At this year’s WWDC, Apple released a design language called Liquid Class, which has caused great controversy due to its current subversion of the flat design direction of more than a decade since iOS 7 and the readability and achievability issues exposed.
01. It is a design language, but it is not a design language
Liquid Glass, a spokesperson at the press conference, said that it is a new design language that will gradually be applied to all products under Apple’s umbrella. But to be honest, from the various readability problems it has exposed so far, it can be seen that it cannot be a design language upgrade that visual designers can decide and lead, and naturally it will not contain the design principles and concepts spontaneously thought by Apple’s visual designers, which is obvious.
In other words, at least its starting point is not simply to create a new design language, at least it is not a design language based on visual upgrades, but a transcendent design language created under certain circumstances, which is obviously for its latest Vision Pro, for the future human-machine relationship and for its future gamble, but not through the existing equipment upgrade and the existing human-machine relationship as the starting point.
Therefore, the reason why all its current discussions about vision are slightly empty can also be seen from this, because it is not an upgrade and deduction from the existing human-machine relationship, the existing design concept and principles, but from another human-machine relationship and design concept reverse adaptation to the design style, so many discussions are based on a misplaced field, and the formation of a natural cross-server chat and chicken-and-duck atmosphere is so natural and reasonable when discussing.
If you see a police officer pressing a thief to the ground on the street, at most you will watch a spectacle, but you hardly have any astonishment, because you have placed yourself in a realm of law or public order and morals, and we will find that in one field this matter is the violence of one Homo sapiens (possibly Neanderthals) against another Homo sapiens, and the police are the violent tools of the ruling class. It is convenient to reconcile and deal with the contradictions exposed by all classes of society.
In other words, only in such the same field can we discuss the rationality and degree of the violent relationship between people, the symbiotic relationship between man and machine, and the virtual symbiotic relationship.
B-end product manager’s ability model and learning improvement
The first challenge faced by B-end product managers is how to correctly analyze and diagnose business problems. This is also the most difficult part, product design knowledge is basically not helpful for this part of the work, if you want to do a good job in business analysis and diagnosis, you must have a solid …
View details >
Consensus in the field and suspicion of the phenomenon of events are the basis of our discussion, and it is the basis for our constructive discussion.
02. The relationship between the screen and people
When I was writing this subheading, I considered several similar titles, similar to the development of human-computer relationship, the relationship between humans and virtuality, etc. But in the end, I hope it stays in a relatively convergent and precise field, the relationship between man and the screen, and then we are reversing a perspective, starting from the screen and looking at its encroachment on real space, so as to summarize the continuous development and change of the human-machine relationship.
Then the encroachment of the screen on this real world can have two different dimensions: intimacy and physical size.
2.1. Intimate relationships
Of course, what is more accurate here is relational intimacy rather than intimacy, nor does it refer to visual intimacy, similarity, equal alignment, etc., but refers to the relationship between us and the machine itself becoming more and more harmonious and ambiguous, and this kind of relationship intimacy can also be multi-dimensional.
Generally speaking, if it is a relationship between people, the better the relationship, the less excessive respect and politeness will occur, but in the past, because electronic devices are often valuable, we will appear more and more respectful in use, entering the computer classroom to use the computer to wear shoe covers to prevent static electricity and not to hold the power supply to turn off directly, so that when I was a child, I also experienced the embarrassment of not wearing shoe covers and only playing a class on the playground because I did not wear shoe covers.
Today’s mobile phones and tablets are still relatively expensive electronic devices at home, but we will not respectfully pick them up and use them, but instead put them around in a certain way of ordinary and random. The so-called protective shell is not from the perspective of protection, but more from the perspective of beauty, good-looking and practical.
In the past, electronic devices had their own exclusive position, and at the same time, they could only be used for a short time for an hour or two after finishing homework or when parents went out. But now most of the users of most electronic devices use the posture of lying down or crooked, and the time covers before falling asleep and after waking up and most of the scattered time.
2.2. Physical dimensions
Electronic devices have been getting bigger in screen sizes to squeeze in more and more real-world space. In the past, whenever a new generation of iPhone was released, memes about iPhone screen size were always created to illustrate that the screen size of the iPhone was getting bigger and bigger with each generation.
In addition to the encroachment of real space, it also has to constantly encroach on its own devices, it is becoming more and more unbearable to tolerate the content that shares the screen space with it, first the keyboard is constantly shrinking, reduced to a Home button, and then completely disappears, the corresponding bezel must become narrower and narrower, and finally it can no longer tolerate even the tiny front camera, it first surrounds it, and then at some specific time, it must also become part of the screen display.
It is accompanied by more and more screens, more and more screens with information surrounded by us, and it is said that a person is now surrounded by about five screens on average.
Therefore, it is not that there will be a so-called virtual world in the future, but rather, the virtual world and the world of screens have already surrounded us in a broken form, but we are unaware.
2.3. Transcendence of the screen
With the thirst for space on the screen, its development path can be displayed very clearly in front of us, and the relationship between virtual and reality has never been to create a so-called virtual world, but from intimacy to the size of reality, constantly encroaching on our real world in a continuous penetrating way.
We can go without talking about some explorations on the Z-axis, including some of Apple’s hierarchical performance, Material Design’s simulation of vertical screens, which may be possible to achieve a so-called screen-to-body ratio of more than 100% in some concepts, but that is just an illusion and a play on words.
It can also be said that to date we have almost approached the limits of the screen.
The man who liked his sister said that man is a rope between animals and superhumans, and that man is something that should be surpassed, and so is the screen.
When the screen is pushed to its limit, it is forced to begin to transcend its own existence. Then it once thought that its enemies were the keyboard, the mouse, the Home button, the border, and everything that was not on the screen, but after it almost eliminated everything that was not on the screen, it began to really realize that its real enemy was not here. Its real enemy is a subject-object relationship, a control relationship from the input and output at the beginning of interactive creation, and a relationship between the four senses and the control and control in the perceptual system.
Whenever I make an action, it may be an input of a text, an action, a sound, no matter how intelligent it develops, it must give a corresponding feedback on my behavior just now, but once it wants to make this or that feedback, it must always be subject to such similar behaviors and expressions, forever trapped in feedback, and never able to surpass itself.
We sometimes talk about multimodal interaction, more on gestures and voice interaction, but if you think about it briefly, you can know why Sister Li can’t live long, many times you are chatting with your friends, you can’t evoke Siri or Xiao Ai, its misevousness will even make you feel irritated and unhappy, because you can’t introduce a new relationship that didn’t exist in an existing conversation, and even you are using gestures to manipulate the glowing glass is a disrespectful behavior to the existing connection.
Therefore, the next generation of human-machine relationships is very clear, and it must come from something similar to some kind of love, or something similar to touch (because the other four senses have a clear subject and object), in other words, it is not a wearable interactive device but more like a prosthetic limb, because only such a thing can be indistinguishable between subject and object, and only in this way can it be an extension of the body, by actively participating in all my relationships in reality with a part of me (so why should there be an ugly face on the Vision Pro) to transcend myself. I must actively participate in all the daily life of my life and participate in the relationships in my life.
(It can’t block my face)
(It has to be involved in my social relationships)
In the end, we will not stand in reality and manipulate something called a screen, but we will manipulate reality in the screen.
3.0. Still in liquid glass
Therefore, Liquid Glass is fundamentally not an upgrade thinking based on existing equipment, because the previous design system and design language have been very mature after more than ten years of polishing, and there is no need for excessive subversion. Instead, it is an adaptation of existing products due to new human-machine relationships and new equipment, and the weight is more biased towards the latter in terms of some impact on the existing user experience, ecological unity, and hardware sales.
While a small part of the screen extends its tentacles to a fixed UI layer by blurring the boundaries, they must also become part of the screen and content, rather than being fixed there trying to get off the screen.
From the perspective of compatibility alone, the current performance on the iPhone is not a big problem, first of all, as a beta version is used to expose and fix problems, and secondly, it is not irreconcilable and untreatable, and the comparison is aggravated at the hierarchical level, so as not to abuse such an effect too much, and do not exaggerate such an effect at some inappropriate times, the overall basic experience should still be guaranteed.
The starting point of most manufacturers is still different, and they lack the overall ecological environment and hardware performance, but the design style is estimated to follow up, at least so that designers have new needs to do.
And it should be predictable that in the next generation of Vision Pro devices, part of Apple’s ecosystem should be able to be converted into glass and penetrated, so as to have more connections with the real world.
There is also this real-time rendering effect, the requirements for hardware should be very high, and the models that are perfectly supported will be a little less, and the hardware will have to increase the price a little, which is also an obvious thing.
04. That’s why I’m optimistic about Vision Pro
But to be honest, I’m not optimistic about it, I just respect it. Because it is too advanced and very dangerous, it is impossible to determine whether such a human-machine relationship can be accepted by society now, and in what way it can be used as an entry point.
Although it is very difficult for a company with a market value of 100 billion yuan like Apple, it is difficult to be a high-scoring answer sheet at present.
But it is still actively doing a part of the future, whether it is successful or not, from my personal point of view, it is the right effort and worthy of respect. If one day another company creates a satisfactory answer, this pioneering effort is always worth remembering.
So I never think that Apple is creating, but that Apple is just moving forward, it has eliminated the Home button, the controversial notch, and the Smart Island, and it is only because it is on the established path that is in line with the development of the screen. The reason why it seems to be being created is because other manufacturers are not enterprising, and they don’t know where the right direction is and they keep rolling into death (yes, I just don’t know and don’t understand, why in a world of infinite screen expansion, the direction of a manufacturer is actually to fold it up, fold it twice, fold it triple, and finally fold it into a small piece and put it in your pocket. As everyone knows, the word volume itself has a strong meaning of uselessness, and it is useless except to provide the boss with a little bit of emotional value.
Due to the so-called volume, it has led to some thinking about the concept and its lack (I am not referring to your cognitive improvement class that is better off buying health care products, thank you). Assuming that Vision Pro achieves the expected success, the most affected probability is the current new energy vehicle industry, many practitioners have not figured it out, new energy entered the first half because it did not do a good job in the first half, and now the proportion of consumers’ purchase decisions HMI system is actually very low, the source of the new energy premium is a promise of a new lifestyle, a complete subversion of the new mode of travel, just like the mobile Internet to the current lifestyle of a change, not what function, Technical and parametric indicators.
OK, that’s all for some ramblings about Liquid Glass, thank you very much for your patience.
Throughout history, there have always been many pioneers and many people who have sought fame and reputation. And its spiral is also that we are always in some kind of fog, but one day when we look back, we will always know who has really been on that right path.
