Why is the end of digital product theme beautification the default?

As one of the hottest topics in daily life, "theme beautification" once gave the Android party a sense of superiority that the iOS party did not have.

For a long time, the Android party can change the lock screen, status bar, mobile phone font and icon pack at will according to their own preferences, but the iPhone in the hands of the iOS party, if you do not choose to "jailbreak" to crack the mobile phone system, you can only change the wallpaper, which stems from the extreme control of iOS by Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, in his view, the iOS system should be closed and secure, and any opening will affect the security and stability of the system.

But as the iOS system continues to update and become open, the Apple Party can freely change the theme icon after iOS 14. At that time, many netizens played a new trick with their iPhone. But now, more and more people are beginning to return to the default theme, and some people even shout out the statement that "the end of theme beautification is the default". One wonders how this view, which seems to contradict people's pursuit of individuality, came about? Why is the default theme accepted by more and more mobile players? Everything may have to be talked about with the source of the theme beautification.

The trade-off between "beauty" and "practicality"

Although nowadays, when people mention mobile phone beautification, they usually think that this is a way to pursue individuality and beauty, but in the original human-computer interaction interface design, the default theme is to pursue the unity of beauty and functionality.

As early as Apple explored the form of human-computer interaction of graphical interfaces, the balance of "beauty" and "practicality" was the focus of designers. Susan Carré, apple's "mother of icons", who designed elements such as command key symbols, trash can icons, paint bucket tool icons, lasso tool icons, floppy disk preservation icons and other elements on Apple keyboards, once mentioned that the reason why she was able to design those icons and symbols on Apple computers at a glance was precisely because of her "zero technical background", and she was able to design things that were easy to understand from the perspective of an ordinary user who had never used electronic products at all.

"Computers are supposed to be friendly, so I wanted to inject some friendly, funny, and some common sense, easy-to-remember images." Susan Carré once summed up her principles when designing interfaces for Apple, and on that basis, Apple made people understand the different meanings of the default icons in the virtual world.

This actually helped people to complete the preconceived cognition and profoundly influenced the theme beautification designers later. For example, the recycle bin is a garbage can shape, and then such as a folded corner of the paper representative documents, etc., although these are the default design, but have become a habit, if deliberately in order to beautify to make personalization, but increase the difficulty of identification.

From another point of view, Apple's default theme does not represent ugliness, but is a long-term use of many people, time and effort to bring things, compared to a certain or a few people to make a beautification theme, the default design is not bad, so people are willing to return to the default after reading a thousand sails.

For example, the iPhone 6 wallpapers we are familiar with, "Flowers in the Dark" and "Snow Mountain Galaxy", are real photos of flowers and natural scenery, but in order to make the photos look clean and beautiful enough, photographers have spent a lot of time and effort to capture the nearest perfect look.

For example, the famous Apple Watch butterfly wings, jellyfish swimming, flower blooming and flame burning dynamic dial, are spent a lot of time, using high-speed cameras to continue to shoot, and finally selected, the photographer once shot 285 hours for a flower to open, taking more than 24,000 time-lapse photographic photos.

Jonathan Ivey once mentioned that Apple's "most challenging part is to deal with fragile abstract concepts" In order to make those innovative products have affinity and ordinary people can understand those indescribable abstract concepts, Apple chose to achieve the unity of beauty and practicality in design details, such as the clever combination of Apple's Force Touch function and Fighting Fish Live Wallpaper, which may also be the reason why the iOS party can not change the icon theme, but still loyal to Apple. On the other side of Android, there have also been subtle changes over the years.

From "more tricks" to "less tossing"

The former Android party made various attempts to beautify the theme, but it also affected the daily performance of mobile phones.

Install the launcher, replace the icon pack, modify the lock screen, change the status bar style... In the past, these theme beautification functions had similar implementation methods on different Androids, and the "machine party" realized the corresponding functions by installing different apps, which usually meant that the occupation of mobile phone memory resources became larger.

For the Android memory resources that are not enough, these apps dedicated to beautification not only need to occupy resources, but also reside in the background, which means that as time goes on, the "machine party" who is keen on theme beautification has to endure the slower and more caton of the Android phone, although the hardware upgrade has increased the memory ceiling of the Android phone, but the concept of "theme beautification" affecting the performance of the phone still remains in the hearts of some "machine parties".

But later, with the rise of domestic MIUI, Flyme, ColorOS and other mobile phone systems, mobile phone built-in theme stores have become a trend, without tossing "one-click beautification" has become an important reason for many people to choose domestic Android mobile phones, especially under the premise of mobile phone manufacturers to provide paid and free themes, designers, mobile phone manufacturers, users have formed a more stable ecological cycle, "machine party" finally does not have to toss as in the past while occupying memory space.

However, the beautification theme also has its own problems, some themes look amazing at first glance, but it is easy to get tired after a long time, especially those deeply customized various anime and game themes, when the user's preferences are constantly changing, they begin to constantly look for other themes. However, there are more and more custom themes in the theme store, and when "random flowers become more and more attractive to the eye", choosing your favorite theme has become a time-consuming thing.

In a variety of beautification options, the more people choose, the more they are reluctant to spend time and energy to tossing and turning.

British psychologist William Edmund Hick believes that in the simple judgment scenario: the more choices a person faces, the longer it takes to make a decision. Sometimes spending too much time in a choice can lead to a failed decision.

Therefore, in the face of more and more diverse themes today, everyone actually has difficulty in choosing, the more choice, the more time it takes, since the default theme design has been very attractive, everyone may not be willing to spend time to set the theme.

In the process of users constantly tossing, manufacturers of UI and system interface attention began to make Android default theme on the fast track, in recent years, we continue to see such as Xiaomi MIUI 12 super wallpaper, Huawei P40 through the combination of flames and ice to shoot the default wallpaper, as well as vivo will be the number of daily walks and the wallpaper on the flower open to link the dynamic behavior wallpaper and other new concepts, as well as the manufacturers for the domestic mainstream App icon design full coverage, have made the default theme become better than the past, As a result, the default theme of the Android party has also begun to become resistant to looking, and some people become the "default party" after "reading a thousand sails", and "not tossing" has become the norm.

Who defines the good-looking theme

Designer Jakob Nielsen has made the point that when users have learned how to use a website through experience with other sites, they want a new site to be used in the same way as those familiar ones to avoid panic and be more familiar.

Obviously, the iPhone is the design "model" that it once was, and its default design influenced the design of Android phone manufacturers. For today's Android manufacturers, the default theme design has long passed the "gorgeous" stage, and towards the "beautiful" and "practical" balance that Apple follows, they began to pay attention to details, pay attention to those places in human-computer interaction that were once inferior to Apple, which makes the Android default party have the confidence to "not toss" and use a good-looking interface.

Oh yes, and one more thing, the theme beautification is never-ending, but now everyone's attention is distracted.

Whether it is a mobile phone or a PC, it will take a long time to choose a good wallpaper or a good ringtone, and it will take a long time to change it, and after changing it, you have to adapt to this change. Sometimes this is not a good thing, such as the ringtone change to think that someone else's mobile phone is ringing, etc., so gradually, many people gradually return to the default state of the manufacturer.

In the final analysis, although the technology of beautification theme is progressing, the default theme is also accompanied by technological progress, the better default theme is becoming more and more attractive, the beautification theme is no longer as popular as in the past, the times are changing, and all manufacturers are changing.

This article was originally published by Geek Park GeekPark, please add Geek Jun (ID: geekchoiecs).