Samsung Galaxy SIII
Role: Galaxy Slll Project UX Leader
Timeline: 1 year
Wireframe (Basic interaction UI, Home screen UI, Multimedia UI),
Information Architecture
Interview on the news
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Overview
The Samsung Galaxy SIII was released in September 2012 with a UX customized by Samsung based on the Android Google platform Jelly Bean. The Samsung customized UX was called the TouchWiz. On behalf of the mobile UX team, I led the project in collaboration with other related departments (Planning, Sales, Development, and Verification). At the same time, I made an information architecture (called menu tree at the time) and I was also in charge of wireframes, Galaxy SIII's basic interaction, home screen, Widget, and Music player. etc. This was the same as the backbone of all Galaxy series released on the global market, except for operator requirements.
All of the contents described below are basic interaction UIs applied from Samsung Electronics' Galaxy SIII, and are the final version completed through collaboration with various related departments such as Samsung's R&D team, verification, marketing, and product planning. This basic interaction was applied to all touchphone models based on Galaxy SIII from 2012 to 2013. The Galaxy SIII was designed with a pebble motif, and accordingly, the theme of UX was also based on the wavelength and wave that occurred in the water when the pebble was thrown into the water. When the user swipes on the lock screen, the lock screen is released, and the sound generates the sound of water droplets bouncing due to pebbles.
The contents described on this page are limited to Basic interaction and the Home screen, and the UI of each app is different. I was in charge of the UI leader of the Galaxy SIII, defined Basic interaction and Information architecture, and made sure that it was applied uniformly to all Inhouse apps installed in Galaxy SIII.
Basic Interaction for Galaxy S lll
Lock screen UI
The product design concept and the lock screen, the first screen of Galaxy SIII, harmonize well.
When a user uses a swipe gesture on the lock screen to match a product design concept similar to a pebble, it is unlocked with the sound of pebbles falling into the water.
Define Gesture for Touch phone
Along with the basic swipe action, gestures that can occur on touch phones were defined to apply the same gesture to all Samsung's touch phones with the Galaxy SIII as the backbone.
Physical keys
The physical buttons located in front of the touch phone also had to be defined according to each location and situation. The main physical front keys that UX has to deal with are the Options menu button and the Back/Cancel button.
In the case of the Android Jelly Bean platform, there is a back button on the left side of the lower soft key and a multi-function button on the right, so the button position of all pop-ups that appear on the screen is the opposite of that of Samsung phones. Samsung Android placed an option menu button on the left side of the phone and a back/cancel button on the right side to maintain uniformity between Samsung phones according to the policy of the entire Samsung phone.
On the Google Jellybean platform, this option menu button was located at the top or bottom right of the screen (lack of unity) within all apps. However, in Samsung, the option menu of all apps can function as an 'option menu' button located in front of the phone. This was to maintain unity by applying the same physical touch key positions of Samsung's own platform, BADA, Windows-based touch phones, and all terminals released by Samsung.
Components
Popup -
Initially, Google's UI components were quite inconsistent, and there were many inconvenient elements to apply to Samsung's upcoming Android phones. Therefore, many UI components were applied in the traditional way that Samsung had. For example, there is a title in the pop-up, and the option menu of all applications is called with a menu key on the front of the product.
Home screen UI for Galaxy S lll
Navigations -
Lock screen shortcuts provided by Lock screen have the same default setting as Menus at the bottom of the Home screen screen, and can be changed from Setting > Lock screen > Lockscreen options > Shortcut. To reduce the malfunction of the Lockscreen shortcut provided by Lockscreen and to distinguish it from Unlock Jesture, the scope of the swipe gesture was separately defined in the Lockscreen document. It was not covered here because it was not what was progressed. In the Lockscreen document, it was defined that the application can be executed with a shortcut only when the user performs a tap-and-hold dragging to a certain area of the screen, and the size of the area to be dragged through various user tests was defined.
When the user moves the page using the Swipe gesture, the screen is provided with an interaction that seems to fall back. This spatial experience is continuously provided to users in various situations to make the user feel that there is more to the concept beyond the smartphone, not just a small smartphone environment.
Edit pages -
Users have five home screen pages, which allow them to enter the Two-finger swipe gesture(pinch) on any home screen page to edit the page. However, it is only possible to edit the number of pages that are deleted and add pages, not to create an app shortcut or to do so in detail.
Navigation for Apps, Widgets
If users enter through the Menu icon on the home screen, they can see that the Tab is divided into Apps and Widgets. Apps have a 4X5 Grid system, but it can be edited in Settings. Both Apps and Widgets can enter pinch gestures such as Homescreen Page Edit, but Add and remove pages cannot be added, and only order changes are possible. The pages of Apps and Widgets are automatically added when an item occurs beyond the number of pages it currently has, and the page is also deleted when the last item is deleted.
Information Architecture: Menu tree
Each time each mobile phone was produced, the UX team at Samsung used Excel to tree the menu structure and delivered it to the development and language verification teams.
The development team was divided by app, and the team in charge of the app also had a separate person in charge of UI/GUI development, so this menu tree was used to verify the app structure they developed. This menu tree was also customized and applied to each European market, American market, Asian market, and market buyer, such as Vodafone and Verizon. I worked in the European market that created the standard UI of the entire market, and the UX leader had to create a menu tree for the model in charge.
The menutree of Galaxy Slll
