Let me start by asking you all a question. As the end of the year approaches again, are you thinking about getting a new phone? Again?
Remember when you scoured review videos, made numerous side – by – side comparisons, and agonized for a long time before finally buying your current phone? Now, does it feel like it’s more of a burden to keep than to replace?
The reality is rather awkward. Young people and their phones are in a sort of ‘tolerable relationship’. In a small survey we conducted, only 20.3% of young people gave their current phones a 5 – star rating. 79.7% rated their phones 4 stars or lower. What was once their dream phone has now become a forgettable accessory.
So, what should a phone, a brand, or even an enterprise do to keep people feeling ‘fresh’ about it in the long run?
For young people who hold their phones all day, that subtle ‘liking’ often stems from softer moments – like when a bug that’s been bothering you is quickly fixed, when you see a long – awaited upgrade in a new feature, or when you feel that the brand is really listening to you.
Honor has given people exactly this kind of impression in recent years.
On November 17th, Honor reached a crucial five – year milestone. In its fifth year, Honor chose to stand with more young people, paying attention to their real needs and integrating them into the daily operations of organization and product iteration.
While other brands are busy educating users, Honor seems to be better at one thing – ‘listening to advice’. It makes users the ‘invisible product managers’ of product iteration and turns products into great companions for everyone’s smart life.
So, what are the reasons why young people ‘love and hate’ their phones? What are the common ‘disappointing’ bugs in phones? And how has Honor ensured that ‘young people are always heard’ over the years? In this issue’s ‘Young People’s “Ideal Phone” Survey’, 541 readers shared their answers. Meanwhile, this report will also reveal the mystery of why Honor is becoming more and more ‘youthful’.
The question ‘What kind of phone do young people really need’ may seem like a matter of personal preference, but in the actual survey, young people almost reached an overwhelming consensus. 92.8% of them agreed that system smoothness and stability are the most important.
Although some are picky about the design, some value battery life, and some are crazy about imaging, in fact, ‘no lag, no crashes, and easy to use’ are the pillars of the basic phone experience.
In recent years, the hardware parameters of domestic phones have been getting higher and higher. Any phone that is a bit sub – standard doesn’t dare to call itself a flagship. However, no matter how high the hardware parameters are, if the basic experience is poor, it will be labeled as ‘high – score but low – ability’ by young people.
However, young people’s requirements for phones are not just about ‘no lag’. Nearly 80% of young people think that ‘operating system and UI interface design’ are equally important. The importance of this aspect even exceeds the screen display effect, as well as the battery life, signal, appearance, and imaging system that many manufacturers have been emphasizing in recent years.
The high regard for the operating system and UI interface design is because young people’s aesthetics are upgrading. Compared with the somewhat over – emphasized hard indicators such as the processor, screen, camera, and battery, a phone system with a sense of sophistication, flexibility, intelligence, and ease of use can better reflect their personality and taste.
We found that young people have high and quite professional requirements for phone systems. There seem to be fewer ‘digital novices’ when it comes to choosing digital products. Young people not only pay attention to whether the power consumption increases after a system update but also are very picky about fonts, colors, personalization, and even system themes. In short, they are becoming more and more determined in pursuing the aesthetics and experience of phones. As for what kind of phone interface can be considered high – quality, ‘simple’, ‘beautiful’, and ‘smooth’ are the highest praises young people give to phone interfaces.
In the past, some manufacturers were keen on using flashy but impractical interactions and animations to show their uniqueness. However, now young people generally don’t buy into this kind of form – over – content design. They prefer something clean, easy to use, and preferably with a bit of ‘their own style’. Simplicity is the real essence.
As for what kind of phone interface can be considered high – quality, ‘simple’, ‘beautiful’, and ‘smooth’ are the highest praises young people give to phone interfaces.
In the past, some manufacturers were keen on using flashy but impractical interactions and animations to show their uniqueness. However, now young people generally don’t buy into this kind of form – over – content design. They prefer something clean, easy to use, and preferably with a bit of ‘their own style’. Simplicity is the real essence.
Nowadays, young people obviously don’t just pay for top – level hardware parameters. They are more eager for a system experience that really understands them and is easy and reassuring to use.
Let’s see what Honor has done in the face of these real needs.
To more systematically receive the real demands of every user and achieve a closed – loop from ‘hearing the needs’ to ‘completing the delivery’, Honor established a first – level department called the ‘Consumer Insight and Experience Department’. As the ‘beacon’ of user needs, the mission of this department is not to passively collect feedback but to actively and systematically ‘understand’ users, convert a large amount of real feedback into implementable product features and experience optimizations, and thus promote ‘listening to advice’ from a user interaction mechanism to the core strategic level of the company.
You can imagine it as a ‘super user representative’ in the company. It not only looks at sales data. More importantly, it collects real complaints from users everywhere, extracts the real core problems from these suggestions, and then feeds these problems back to the colleagues in the product department to truly improve the user experience.
For example, before the release of the Magic 8, Honor received feedback from some users suggesting that the traditional phone voice assistant had limited functions and they hoped to see a more seamless and user – understanding service in Honor’s products. So, after collecting opinions and quickly upgrading the product, the Honor Magic 8 was launched with an AI intelligent agent YOYO, which is completely different from the traditional simple ‘human – machine interaction’.
To better understand users, Honor also launched the ‘YOYO Wish Pool’ program and the ‘MagicOS Monthly Update’ program, enabling YOYO to have the ability of continuous’self – evolution’.
The ‘YOYO Wish Pool’ is a user co – creation function in the Honor MagicOS 10 system. Users can directly put forward requirements or suggestions to YOYO. Once adopted, this function will be quickly implemented through the ‘MagicOS Monthly Update’ program and pushed to users’ devices on a monthly basis.
As of November 16th, the YOYO Wish Pool had received a total of 10,073 valid suggestions, and the needs of young people for phone functions or aesthetics can be met here.
To better meet user needs, the design director of MagicOS conducts in – depth interviews with KOLs every week and has face – to – face discussions with pioneer users regularly, listens to user preferences, absorbs user suggestions, and finally determines the direction and invests in improvement and development.
What’s the result of doing this? Let’s directly make a side – by – side comparison of the design interfaces of MagicOS 9.0 and MagicOS 10.
In this case, we can see that MagicOS 9.0 has a conservative and restrained style. The interface layout is regular but a bit rigid and has a strong business sense. In contrast, MagicOS 10 uses more flexible bubble cards, a more transparent visual effect, larger rounded corners, and delicate icon details to convey a sense of lightness, airiness, and breathing, which is obviously more in line with the relaxed and dynamic lifestyle of young people.
It can be seen that to become the ‘ideal phone’ in the hearts of young people, the first thing to achieve is the dual management of ‘aesthetics’ and ‘experience’. The tone of UX, the rhythm of interaction, and the way of handling details are all quietly influencing their judgment of a phone.
When these ‘visible parts’ become more and more satisfactory, young people’s attention naturally turns to a deeper level. Since the outer layer has become more in line with their aesthetics, can the phone’s functions meet more needs?
The front – end experience has laid the foundation. What really makes the difference next is the system’s own capabilities.
If system smoothness and a beautiful interface are the reasons for people to turn on the screen, then what really determines whether a phone is easy to use often lies in its deeper – level capabilities.
Nowadays, the ‘ideal phone’ in the hearts of young people is no longer just a tool for single – task completion. Instead, it undertakes the ‘daily scheduling’ across scenarios, devices, and even roles – allowing them to switch freely between work, entertainment, and life, maintain coherence between different applications and needs, keep the rhythm from being interrupted, prevent information from getting lost, and make complex things simpler.
That’s why the inexplicable small glitches in daily use are the most likely to make people ‘crazy’:
01 @Less ice, no sugar
There are too few apps supported by the app cloning function. Switching accounts in one app is error – prone.
02 @Fish balls
The phone easily gets hot when running a large – scale game, which seriously affects the user experience and game experience.
03 @An’an
The intelligent assistant is always a day late and a dollar short. It’s never available when urgently needed.
These trivial ‘complaints’ point to various scattered functions, but actually, there is a commonality behind them:
As the pace of life becomes more fragmented and role – switching becomes faster, the functional requirements that a phone must meet have become more detailed. Young people are no longer satisfied with a phone that ‘works’; they hope that every daily operation ‘doesn’t hold them back’.
When we further explored the ‘function points that young people hope to optimize in phones’, these frequently – appearing keywords also revealed the same expectation of young people for an ideal phone – to make the phone perform like a master in the application process, rather than a showy but useless one.
