Sony EvolutionUI, a gamified smartphone UI in works

Sony appears to be working on an experiment called EvolutionUI, a gamified UI meant for the Android smartphones. This new UI is said to enable new features as users unlock the achievements. Yes! The UI will get advanced as users learn how to use it just as the process of levelling up in a game. The ultimate objective of the EvolutionUI is to announce the popular topic of gamification in smartphone UI.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

/ by Abhinaya

Sony appears to be working on an experiment called EvolutionUI, a gamified UI meant for the Android smartphones. This new UI is said to enable new features as users unlock the achievements. Yes! The UI will get advanced as users learn how to use it just as the process of levelling up in a game. The ultimate objective of the EvolutionUI is to announce the popular topic of gamification in smartphone UI. 

Sony EvolutionUI

It is very important as users learn to play games easily than they learn to use the applications. In fact, there are several well known applications and services as well that have integrated the process of gamification in the user experience. Stack Overflow and Foursquare badges are a few noteworthy examples.

Usually, most of the games start off with a simple gameplay that will become complex gradually. As the end users are facing issues with the complexity in their smartphone the EvolutionUI would be a great one that can help them handle even the advanced features with exposure to the interface.

Sony EvolutionUI Basic Concept

The overall idea of EvolutionUI is to disable the advanced features at start and gradually unleash them as and when the user gets familiar with the basic functionality and learn how to handle it. This way the phone gets more and more advanced gradually with time and hence the users will be able to handle everything that is bundled along with their smartphone.

Evolution UI’s basic concepts.
  • The EvolutionUI monitors phone usage by tracking “Experiences”. Every time the user performs an action, for example makes a call or starts an application, he or she gains experience.
  • As the user gains experience, he or she also gains a certain amount of points. For example starting an application could result in 1 experience point (XP), while making a call could result in 10 XP.
  • Each achievement has a condition, usually in the form: “if experience X has been obtained N times” and a cause, usually enabling of a feature.
  • When an achievement is obtained, features are only enabled, but not activated. This means that the phone software behavior is not changed yet, it’s up to the user to activate it, since maybe the user is not interested at all in the new feature. New features are activated through the status bar.
  • The experience points are used to “level up”. The user starts at level 1, but after obtaining, lets say, 100 experience points, the user will reach level 2. As a result the user will get a “Coin”, which can also be used to enable new features. In addition, the user level can be used to compare experiences with friends.

By reaching achievements, new features are unlocked in the EvolutionUI.

Those at Sony have also posted a video demo of the gamified homescreen showing how interesting this all new interface could be. To know more about EvolutionUI, click the source link.



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