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我们生活在一个充满设备的世界中。平板电脑，智能手机，台式机，笔记本电脑，智能手表，汽车，电视，恒温器，门锁。也许很快也很快。当然，我们不需要其他“事物”。当然，如果我们想做一些简单的事情，例如浏览照片，我们可以将平板电脑，智能手机或直接插入智能电视中。
但是人们在Loopwould beg to differ. Sometimes, you do need a separate device—one dedicated solely and completely to one thing, and to doing that one thing extremely well.
In this Spotlight, co-founder and head of designEthan Ballwebershares with us the company’s thinking behind Loop, a personal image-sharing device for all generations.
A New Way to View Our Images
Remember the digital picture frame? That horrid-looking black plastic frame with a really poor quality screen? Enter Loop, a stand-alone interactive display for photos and videos. Its design and functionality are light years beyond that first plastic frame.
Ever since the advent of digital cameras, which exploded everyone’s capacity to produce images, the problem has always been glut and obscurity: we all have way too much photography on our hard drives/mobile devices/clouds; we don’t have the time to edit and organize the images and videos, and there’s no easy way to display or share them. Sure, you can set up Instagram and Flickr accounts, but then anyone else you want to see them (say, your older relatives) has to have access to a computer or mobile device. You can email them, but then they either don’t get opened up, or they’re viewed a whopping one time before they drown in the relentless stream of email. You can print them, but… no need to go into what that entails.
As Ethan explains, “We wanted to create a device for displaying images that fits within people’s lifestyle. For some people, all the technology out there is just too much work. They don’t want to have to download the images and then attach them to an email or upload to a website. So we asked ourselves, how can we connect people with their photos in a way that works for them, that makes it easy for them. You can’t just stream them directly into the device because that would create the same backlog of photos.”
Contrary to what some might think, Loop isn’t about disrupting yet another industry—in this case, the multi-billion-dollar digital frame industry (we’re not kidding about the billions). It’s actually about soothing the consumer in a hyper-evolved tech environment. Yes, it is a new physical device, but its function and its very reason for being are about dialing down the multi-tasking, attention-splintering functionality that’s all around us all the time.
“The question we always asked,” says Ethan, “was how can we simplify [our device], how do we wrap it up in a framework to make it a different experience from the tablet. The tablet is about rich interaction and versatility—but for solo use, since you’re holding it in your hands. Loop is a hands-free device for more passive or lightweight consumption that you can share with other people.”
您的硬件穿什么？
一开始，Loop的创始人Brian Gannon申请了Highway1 accelerator。用伊森（Ethan）的话来说，来自该加速器的原始产品比目前的产品“更简约”。它有一个带有核桃底座的铝制外壳，并受到了大量的启发：“我们选择了高级材料，并以本世纪中叶的现代家具为基础。”
That was what Ethan calls Concept Zero.
团队立即遇到了他们的第一个挑战。“概念零得到尊重，” Ethan解释说。“它做得很好，但不一定是每个人的，它不是'友好'，也不让人们表达自己的个性。它吸引了设计师。”
Another issue was sourcing the materials. “Walnut is difficult to find, and that makes it hard to manufacture on any sort of scale. One of our advisors challenged us to do something better. Something great. To make [Loop] more friendly, approachable and iconic.”
So for two weeks, they put everything else on hold and focused exclusively on design. They took everything into consideration, including the 1950s and 60s televisions and radios from their own original inspiration boards.
In the process, Ethan and the team realized that works of art do not necessarily translate to a great user experience, or to manufacturing at scale. “Design and materials are closely related: sometimes it’s about the material and sometimes it’s about the form. Concept Zero was about the material, and Concept Three is about the form.”
Why UI Really Does = UX
The average person probably doesn’t think twice about what it took to design their favorite gadget. About the countless iterations, all the prototypes and features that failed. Great design is, as the pros say, invisible. If you notice a functionality (as opposed to using it intuitively), there’s something wrong with the product.
智能手机和平板电脑没有旋钮和皮带；他们具有光滑的人体工程学轮廓和几乎坚不可摧的触摸屏。有一个原因：我们每天使用数百次使用它们；任何旋钮或皮带都可能掉落，折断或迟早被撕下。但是像Loop这样的设备不是智能手机或平板电脑，与持有任何一个设备都不一样。它的底部有一个较重的底部，有两个旋钮，可以通过图像和选择通道导航，在下背部的杠杆杆，就像灯光调光器一样，可以控制屏幕的亮度。
“We found that tapping an upright-standing device would knock it over, or at the very least it would feel flimsy. It just doesn’t feel right,” Ethan tells us. Of course any issue can be solved, but the team wanted to communicate that this really is a different product from the others. “The knob communicates that message visually,” he says. “Sure, it’s a more traditional mechanism, but newer design is not always ‘better’ design. Tapping and flipping through photos is not efficient. There’s something fun about the tactile experience of actual knobs on devices.”
伊桑衷心同意。“每个人都对旋钮感到满意。人们自然而然地伸出旋钮，而不必担心用智能手机像打破旋钮一样。这是一个不同的对象，需要不同的心理和心理结构。
他补充说：“重要的是要有我们自己的角色，但我们还需要采取公认的公约以进行照片共享，并确定我们如何最好地将其整合到循环中。”
The company has tested the product with their own families, and is seeing equal levels of comfort among all generations. “The recipient [of photos or videos sent] doesn’t have to do anything, which they love,” says Ethan, “and the sender shares on their own terms.”
Similar to the concept of an album, users can organize their photos and videos into channels, which can be shared or made private. The channels are linked to dynamic sources like Instagram, Facebook, or Dropbox iOS Photos, which automatically update the channels with fresh images coming in from the user side, so there’s more than one way to flow your photography into Loop.
Breaking the Habit of Excess: Can We, and Should We?
循环的问题仍然存在，他们会保留产品专门用于摄影和视频，还是会屈服于“做更多的事情”的诱惑？
Ethan laughs. “Everyone always asks us, will Loop do more? Like, play music videos, or see online content, or someone else’s photos the way you can on Flickr. The new design [of Concept Three] wraps it around the personal television concept, which lets you tune into things you want to see even if you’re not paying explicit attention to them.”
好的，但是循环会多任务吗？
“We haven’t made up our minds yet what else, if anything, this device will do. Brian and I come from a background that focuses on nailing that one thing, and as a startup, you do have to stay focused. At the same time, we are running powerful hardware, and with that the walls that come with traditional, non-software products really break down. So we’re curious about what has yet to come and what we can connect to in an elegant way.”
