Samsung’s new One UI: a UX perspective
A deeper look at what Samsung calls “viewing your phone with an experience that feels second nature.”
At Samsung’s developer conference 2018 in San Francisco, the company showcased One UI- a refreshed interface design for its smartphones.
Let’s have a deeper look on the UX perspective side, since Samsung’s idea is “viewing your phone with an experience that feels second nature.”
Key interaction
As presented, they have redesigned how things are placed on the screen and they say that “One UI helps you focus on what really matters to you”.
Samsung design team has divided the screen into 2 parts; The upper part is used for viewing information, and bottom part is used for key interactions such as buttons.
This is very welcomed on UX design because with the age of the BIG screen phones some apps make it really hard to touch key buttons since they are placed on the upper part of the screen. Therefore, it makes it hard to reach with your thumb.
A great example of this approach is the latest Chrome redesign that you can check out on my previous article.
More space
Some of Samsung’s apps will now have a “viewing area” — big, easy-to-read and with header text . Also, they will have an interaction area covering the lower half of the screen.
For example, control center, notes etc.. have a huge space on the top, enabling the buttons appear on the half of the bottom screen.
Rounded corners
New interface has elements with huge rounded corners so users can “focus on the task at hand” as they say it.
Their approach is to group things together in a way that the user sees more content and it seems more natural. This is done by the Settings options that let you group them and arrange the most often ones to appear first.
Other improvements:
- Icons are redesigned to be simplified and to be in perfect harmony.
- Night mode is appearing across all the system.
- A range of color themes such as skins to match the hardware color, so every device has it’s own style.
Take aways
With the coming of BIG screen mobiles, we as UX Designers should consider the placement of elements on the screen very much. I would suggest to take care of reachability rules and use patterns to make life easier for users.
Placing most used actions on one page at the bottom is always a GREAT thing.
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