[Flyme 360°]MEIZU WORKSHOP 2016

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2016-01-15 22:18

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MEIZU Workshop 2016! Let's learn some serious stuff about the development of MEIZU and Flyme.
Smooth and easy – Flyme interaction ideas and choices
Each generation of Meizu mobile phones has made different progresses in terms of interaction. The design of Smart Bar, the unique LED ring, and mBack is praised as the great innovation in mobile phone operating philosophy, which brings brand-new interaction means of the Aindroid system. The design creates a better and user-friendly experience. This workshop introduces stories of Meizu engineers in terms of interaction philosophy evolution and choices behind the scenes.

The Smart Bar + the LED ring becomes a mark of Meizu's exclusive design. Meizu engineers consider that, in one aspect, the Smart Bar is a good design and makes the apps more unified and better looking; in another aspect, the Smart Bar is not a good design, because it is not perfect and has less adaptive apps and poor compatibility. To make users enjoy better experience, a new interactive design concept was raised.
Throughout the Android mobile phone series, the return button and menu button are alternatively designed at the left and right. The diversified Android mobile phones make certain users feel difficult to choose a new model. Meizu engineers question "why not place the return button in the middle?" This question brings up the mBack interaction concept. The"tap to go back to the previous level" and "press to go back to home screen" become legendary features of Meizu mobile phones. The learning costs are low and fitness is high. This user-friendly interaction concept is inherited in subsequent Meizu mobile phones. With the fingerprint recognition and unlock functions, the user operation is more smooth and easy.
After the Flyme 5 comes out,it better fits the mBack button, making the Meizu mobile phone more attractive and better to use. The mBack button provides more choices for the navigation structure and also provides more reasonable navigation structure, and more natural, coherent, and interesting animation effects. The Flyme 5 is praised as"a smooth, easy, and fast system". Meizu engineers still engage in the optimization towards user-friendly, personality, fun and intelligence.
It is because of the Meizu engineers' determination and thoughtful consideration that this interactive concept is widely recognized by the users.

| Superior to simple and antiquated - New aesthetics of Flyme visual design
From the classic simple and antiquated style to the Flyme5, the Flyme visual design has been to provide users with relish. The visual designers introduced the new aesthetics of the user perception design to the participants. The Flyme visual design adopts the color system which is more suitable to younger generations. In accordance with the evolved DNA redesign, personalized content construction, and sophisticated operations design, each amazing screen and details of the Flyme come from the care and thought of Meizu design team.
The overall color system is adjusted with each version update of the Flyme, until the Flyme 5 comes out. Its crisp and bright primary colors better fit preferences of young people. Its hierarchical structure and content enrich the images. Meanwhile, the design team restraints the use of color to ensure that the overall cover is not clutter and maintains unified and harmony.
The evolutionary design language is a new initiative of Flyme 5. The design language of hardware and software uses unified shape and touch experience to bring users smooth experience and natural transition. In addition, the upgraded icons are natural, user-friendly, and intuitive, and comply with the familiar shapes of the users. The icons have sufficient affinity and bring comfortable feelings to the users.
In the aspect of content, more entertainment-oriented information is provided to satisfy the needs of different users. To facilitate information transmission and highlight experience design, the redundant information is filtered for the users in an intuitive manner based on the "content prior to design" principle. For example, the album cover of the music app that adopts the container design in Flyme 5 is processed by super imposing adsorption colors and fuzzy cover. Therefore, the music cover has a good overall sense but does not appear to be superfluous.
In response to the customization needs of users, the Flyme team continues to convey new content and refine the operations design.The Flyme team is engaged in bringing diversified forms and small surprises to users from time to time. The users can feel more joy than expected. The"care for every detail" is a principle always abided by the Flyme team.

| Advocates of simplicity – Meizu industrial design sharing and communication
Since Meizu M8, Meizu has always insisted on the supremacy of minimalist industrial design, with unique beauty. Each generation of Meizu mobile phones has a unique appearance, in order to bring comfort perception and experience for users. In this workshop, the product design experts review the design process of the PRO, MX, and Meizu Note 2 series,which integrates Meizu's ultimate pursuit.
Behind the simple figures in the evolution of the MX and PRO product lines, it's Meizu's artisan spirit. The evolution process shows how a metal rough blank becomes a mobile phone case (from 250 g to 21 g). This process also introduces Meizu's unremitting efforts in achieving the best grip feeling and impressions. Meizu is continuously trying to use new materials and processes, such as the first all-metal mobile phone, integrated nano-injection molding, and integrated all-metal case. The selective coating process perfectly achieves the simple but special highlight edge design. Integrated flash and focus components bring the ultimate beauty of simplicity experience. The optimization of the capsule-shaped button concentrates Meizu's unique understanding and presentation of the industrial design.
The deepest impression of the participants about Meizu Note 2 is the "righteousness of plastic" concept. Meizu engineers stressed that plastic does not only represent cheap and low-end materials. Their developing on the plastic materials gives Meizu Note 2 series a new life.This texture is gentle and smooth, but is also dazzling and colorful, giving users another experience of beauty. In the details & lines in design, the"why not we start all over again" saying becomes the team's verse, and "change again" becomes the mantra of everyone. All of these is to achieve a better design and experience.

| BSP – A solid foundation for smart phones
The theme of this workshop is "BSP - to lay the most solid foundation for smart phones". The BSP, short for board support package, is the most underlying and core part of the entire operating system of the mobile phone. It is mainly used for developing the hardware Bringup, Linux kernel, and device drive. The BSP is also used for optimizing the user experience system, assuring the underlying QA, and developing the engineering firmware and test tools of the product line. When we assemble a new computer,we need to install various drives. For mobile phones, the BSP can be understood as an embedded software drive package. The BSP functions as adhesive between Flyme and the hardware. It drives each hardware and also provides various OS core support to the Flyme. It plays an crucial role in terms of integrated system experience optimization, including the performance, charging speed,standby time, and temperature control.
The BSP is the major contribution for making the Flyme system become the power and easy to use system. As the software support package between the Flyme and the hardware, the BSP optimization and commissioning plays a key role in user experience. Just because Meizu engineers optimizes theBSP all those years, the BSP makes a comprehensive, stable, reliable,comfortable, and balanced Flyme system, which provides users the best experience and makes Meizu mobile phone as the "best easy-to-use mobilephones".

| Advanced technology helping in promotion of the Flyme brand
The brand of Flyme has an extremely high reputation, for example, praise of users and media, 48% growth in baidu index, and 70% Weibo user satisfaction. Certainly, all of these is based on the overall improvement of the Flyme, in terms of UI layer and performance layer. For example, in 64high-frequency use scenarios such as calling and viewing new messages, Flyme is faster than MIUI 7 in 46 scenarios; in the startup aspect of 30 popular third-party apps such as WeChat and AliPay, Flyme is faster than MIUI 7 in 27apps.

In just a few months, why does Flyme have such a big change and why is the reputation of Flyme brand increased significantly? What is the secret behind it?

Demanding workflow
Each submission of code must comply with the relevant access specifications. The code has to pass more than 10 harsh tests such as integrated smooth experience, complex scene fluency (equalizer mode), memory leakage, and core scene responses. Then, the qualified code is accepted.Otherwise, the code shall be modified and tested again until it is qualified.In accordance with such standards and processes, software quality has been greatly improved, and the reputation is natural increased.
Currently, Flyme associated test specification involving power of 5, 3 stability, performance 12 and still growing, and refinement. Currently, 5 power consumption standards, 3 stability standards, and 12 performance standards for Flyme-related tests are available and continued to be increased and refined.

Strength of the black technology
The power of technology is enormous. The development process of the Flyme heavily relies on the technology and innovation. A series of technical innovations related to power consumption reduction and fluency,stability, and security improvement, such as the memory fragment management technology, image texture compression technology, dynamic load balancing technology in games, and association cutoff and wakeup technology, promote the improvement of Flyme performance.

For the original association cutoff and wakeup technology of Flyme, the association is interrupted from the underlying. Therefore,unnecessary mutual startup between apps is avoided. In this way, the systemfluency is improved. This technology also helps to address the high power consumptionand "unleashed" traffic issues. A test data indicate that, after the user enables the 'Disable linked launching of apps' function, the startup speed of apps is improved by 55%.

Listening to the voice of users
Meizu always attaches great importance to user comments and suggestions, and provides multiple feedback channels such as the Flyme Community, official Weibo, and user feedback app. In addition, Meizu also held various activities such as "Different Flyme because of you" and"Flyme face to face". During these activities, Meizu has collected tens of thousands of suggestions and feedback. Almost every user's comment and suggestion are responded and concerned.

Opening up
In 2015, the Flyme ROM tool was officially opened. Online and offline activities such as ROM developer salon and Flyme ROM development competition were held, attracting many well-known developers to participate in the activities. Currently, nearly 100 models of mobile phones can experience the Flyme system,including Samsung, Mi, and Huawei.

In addition, a series of initiatives such as opening the fingerprint recognition technology and organizing technical open day and Flyme Internet programming contest, gradually deepen the opening of the Flyme system,expand the Flyme influence, and lay a solid foundation for future development.
According to the presentation of Flyme technical director, Zhou Xiang, in the future, Meizu continues to improve the basic user experience in terms of stability, fluency, power-saving, and security and makes Flyme become the industry benchmark, and thereby improving the influence of the Flyme in the industry and attracting more talents. In addition, the Flyme will still maintain positive interaction with users, to provide users with better operating experience and satisfy the needs of the users.
Such Flyme deserves the expectation of all users.

| Helping you learn future Internet products
"One day soon, when you use the voice set the alarm clock to get up tomorrow, the system will be based on the date of clogging traffic, transport, general breakfast place or variety, parking conditions andother factors, advance or delay wake you up, so you get to work from the process, very pleasant, and efficient completion. "--Flyme product Director Liao Jianliang depicting the future planning of the system products.The Flyme product director, Liao Jainliang described the futureplanning of system products as follows: "One day soon, after you set thealarm using voice instructions, the system may awaken you up in advance or delayed according to the traffic status, vehicle types, breakfast place orvariety, and parking conditions. The entire process is very pleasant and efficient."
In fact, users do not understand their needs. A useful product shall be easy to use by the users without learning. Flyme 5 completely breaks through the shackles and creates a product ecosystem based on services.Flyme 5 is close to the individual needs of every user.

A good product shall focusing on the service process
Liang Jianliang said, "In the past, we allow users to select functions through our imagination, tosatisfy the user's single requirements". Today, Flyme is trying and practicing active product ideas, that is, leading users to form use habits by setting scenes. In this way, intelligent services are rapidly provided forusers according to different use scenarios. In addition, different service packages are provided according to different user groups and requirements.
Developing a warm product
Users often have such an experience: more than 40 apps are installed on the mobile phone, but only several apps are frequently used.The reason may be that the browser is integrated with the searching, reading,and listening functions. Therefore, Flyme advocates breaking the product boundaries and opening up the repository of products (life services,multimedia, and security) on the cloud end, so that each app can provide one-time services according to the application scenarios and gradually satisfy the potential needs of the users.
The application scenario is evolved from "a single function solving a single demand" to "multiple functions covering the entire application scenario". That is, when a user issues the first demanding instruction, the system associates the subsequent potential demands and provides services according to the user, demand, time, place, and object,thereby achieving a complete service process. This is known as a warm product.
Internally and externally refined, making the product more perfect
"Because inadequate two-way communication and ignorance about product and service design concepts, users frequently complain about functions. To improve the communication, we strengthen the customer care and help users to understand the product design concepts. In another aspects,in the internal, we continues to improve the Flyme. By means of rapidly achieving product function iteration, the product becomes mature.""It is important to let the users learn that we can continue to break through the design and start over again because of the non-perfect products."
It is easy to learn that the service life of smart phones becomes shorter. Simple function stacking and appearance optimization cannot attract the users anymore.Therefore, the product design shall be based on the user demands. In the product operations, Flyme must continue to provide useful and warm services, to satisfy the users and wish to gain more heartfelt recognition from the users.