OnePlus Reveals How It Designed the Revamped OxygenOS UI

OnePlus has been testing a new UI for OxygenOS on the OnePlus 5/5T in the beta channel for quite some time now. The new UI introduces a cleaner and much more modern interface to the devices and if you’ve been wondering how the company came about with the redesign, then you’re in luck.

In a post on the OnePlus forums, the company has highlighted exactly how it ended up with the redesigned UI after careful consultation with the users.

In the post, a staff member wrote:

“Our aim was to know our users. What do they want? What are their pain points? What do they think a good OS is? We redefined our user groups, put out surveys and conducted interviews. Then we analyzed the results. That’s how we pinned down key words that lit the way forward.”

The OnePlus UI design team focused on the following keywords to develop the new user interface – Flat & Minimal, Reduction, Bold & Clean. Working with these keywords, the team first slimmed down the UI and gave it a more minimal design so that the “users could focus on the important things”.

The team then focused on reducing any clutter, prioritizing a more natural feel than a cool look. And finally, the team highlighted what was important, by making it bold and centered, and cleaned the UI of any unnecessary fluff, as is seen in the above screenshots for the recorder app.

The base design which was achieved following the aforementioned keywords was then tested with the users and naturally, a number of issues cropped up with the new design. OnePlus then ironed out the issues and launched multiple rounds of surveys to get an idea of what the users liked and disliked, making use of the feedback to further improve the design. The resulting UI was preferred by around 80 percent of beta tester.

If you’re a OnePlus 5/5T users running OxygenOS on the beta channel, you’d probably already be familiar with the new UI. However, if you’re using a different OnePlus device, you might have to wait a while to get the UI overhaul mentioned above.