For a product put on the market, the product itself must be considered when designing, and the business model must also be considered. So what kind of logic should be used to design the product to balance the relationship between the two?
Today I wrote an article on how to talk about design logic, the following. 🙂
My wife said that after two years of marriage with me, I probably know what interaction design is about. (I often tell her what design I am doing)
My dad introduced me to his friends a few weeks ago, saying that I am a man-machine intelligent. (HCI and AI are still a bit far away, alright lol)
Therefore, to family and friends, designers often don’t know what they do. …
The boss of Yahoo once said:
When I worked at Apple, I remember the panic Steve Jobs inspired simply by walking the halls & asking “What are you working on?”
That’s what it means. In fact, many people can’t say clearly what they do and what their value is in one sentence.
I think the designer must have no problem at this point, because the ability of brief language induction is too important for the designer.
I have written some articles on design guidelines and design speculation before. Many friends asked me if it is a bit complicated and a bit professional, can I say it simply and clearly. Indeed, for the designer’s original circle, these ideas may not be a problem; but for the large group of designers facing the designer, many design topics need to be summarized in a simpler way of speaking.
Imagine this scenario:
A technician asked: Why does this product require an expert interview?
A marketer asked: How to reflect the brand in design?
A friend asked: You obviously graduated from science and engineering, not art, why do you want to design?
A business line leader asked: How is the uniformity of this product design done? Where is the problem?
A product manager asked: I always hear you say Affordance, what does it mean?
…
Maybe every designer has his own way of answering. I usually answer these questions satisfactorily. At the weekend, I think, I can actually answer it in another relaxed way. Just like an article about a speech I wrote before, it uses a picture familiar to the audience to describe it.
So, today I will discuss with you how to complete such a description. Analogy, metaphor, humor, no matter what, use a way that the audience can understand clearly the key points, logic, and ideas that the designer wants to express.
It’s not elegant. Let’s use public toilets this time. Everyone has been in public toilets. I assume that the audience is male compatriots, and my example is a men’s toilet. So here, the men’s toilet is a product, and the male compatriots who enter the men’s toilet are users.
1. What is user experience?
Your expectations of this toilet before entering the toilet, your experience of using all aspects of this toilet after entering the toilet, and your impression of this toilet after coming out of the toilet. This is the user experience.
2. What is consistency? Why is it important?
In the case of Tencent, the hand in the toilet was stretched out and the water came out automatically; in the case of Huawei, the hand in the toilet was to press a button and the water flowed for a period of time. When I first moved from Tencent to Huawei, I often stretched out my hands and waited for water to come out of the washbasin. After waiting for a while, I realized that the washbasin did not come out automatically.
Then imagine, if a toilet has 3 washbasins, one is for automatic water discharging, 1 is for water discharging by pressing the button, and the other is for discharging water by turning the button. Will the user be crazy?
In addition, from the perspective of the toilet, installing three sinks with the same equipment method will also save costs. This is consistency.
3. Everyone is talking about making the user experience the ultimate, how can the user experience of the product be the ultimate?
Products should achieve the ultimate in core functions.
A simple example is the automatic water outlet function of the toilet washbasin. This function is available in many toilets, it is very simple, stretch your hand over, the water flows out, wash your hands. However, different toilets have very different user experience. When the hand is stretched over, the recognition acuity of the machine, the speed of the water flow, the amount of water flow, the duration of the water flow, the sound of the water flow, etc., are all dimensions that affect the user experience of the hand washing scene. I remember that in the washbasins of many toilets, I stretched my hand over to wash my hands. Various methods could not trigger the machine to recognize, and the water could not come out. The most impressive is the bathroom sink in Germany. You stretch your hand over, the machine recognizes, the simple beep, the water speed and the amount of water are appropriate, and then it stops after a period of time. It happens to be when your hands can use hand sanitizer. reasonable.
Therefore, when actively expanding new functions and features, you still have to go back and concentrate on the user experience of the core scenes to achieve the ultimate.
4. I understand the learning cost of user experience is very important, but is it OK to make the user make a mistake once? The user will understand once it is wrong.
When you go to the toilet, the toilet usually has a sign, which is divided into men and women. If the male and female signs are too abstract for you to understand, you may be in the wrong toilet. This is the cost of learning. When a male compatriot enters the women’s toilet because he read the wrong sign, and is beaten out by a group of female compatriots, do you still think it is acceptable for the user to make a mistake in the cost of learning?
I understand that there are no alternatives to many products, and learning costs must be incurred, such as complex operation and maintenance products. But from the product designer’s perspective, there is no learning cost. It is the starting point to prevent users from making mistakes, and facts cannot be used as an excuse to interfere with the original intention of the starting point.
5. What is cognition? What does Affordance mean?
The information structure, interface, and elements of the product need to be able to easily give clues for users to recognize and use.
When going to the toilet, the male and female signs at the door of the male and female toilets can be distinguished by the user without thinking about it. This is a good cognitive process; conversely, the user has to look at the door for a long time to understand, even two. It is not a good cognitive process to distinguish between male and female toilets by comparing the signs of each toilet.
6. What is design in line with nature?
The design should conform to nature and conform to people’s usage habits in the real world.
Suppose you go to a toilet. The door is pink to the left and dark blue to the right. Even if the dark blue wall is clearly written with the three characters “women’s toilet”, it is estimated that many male compatriots will go wrong. Because some users will distinguish between men and women based on people’s definition of colors in the real world. Therefore, at this time, the design is not in line with nature, which will cause confusion to users.
7. How to reflect the brand in the design?
Good product design should convey feelings and brand sense, surprise users with memory, and let users have a brand imprint.
In a Thai restaurant, the dining area and facade are very Thai, and the toilet is decorated in Thai style, which is a brand sense. A restaurant’s toilet allows users to chat, “The restaurant’s toilet is very interesting, very different, and very good to use.” This kind of dialogue is word-of-mouth.
8. What does it mean that users are irrational and biased?
Users will divide their life experience based on their own experience. Sometimes it’s an experience, sometimes it’s seeing a piece of news, and sometimes it’s listening to a friend. Then the user will choose to judge life based on this experience.
Is this reasonable? It is also reasonable and unreasonable. From a scientific point of view, when the sample size is insufficient, the conclusion may not be accurate.
For example, users may think that the toilets in the airport are not clean, and the toilets in the hotel are not hygienic. Even if a seven-star hotel keeps the toilets clean, it is difficult to reverse the prejudice of users. In other words, the importance of brand and user emotional imprinting is also reflected here.
There are many more design questions, and you can try to answer them with the example of the toilet.
As long as the designer has a certain understanding of profession and life, he can try this method.