A seasoned designer concludes: Several main methods of interactive design

Article Description: Genius design is most likely to be used by experienced designers who have experienced various types of problems and are able to summarize solutions from previous projects.

When you start learning interactive design, there are often abbreviations, similar, but not exactly the same, which makes people easily confused. Like UE,UED,UX,UXD,UCD ... When you see these abbreviations, it's not hard to understand that the first you should be referring to the user, and D means (design), but what does the middle letter mean? In fact, these nouns refer to the several main methods of interaction design.

where UE (d) =ux (d) =user experience Design (user experience), Ucd=user centered design (user-centric). It can be said that UE (X) d is a relatively broad design area, that is, user experience design, he is not specifically a design category or direction, but a user research, interactive design and visual design, and so these can enhance the user experience of the design of the collection of categories. User research and visual design of these categories has been a long time, when the interactive design to join in, it formed the new design category, UED. and ued only one word of the difference between the UCD, the meaning is very different, UCD is the user-centric design, refers to the interactive design of a more popular design method, but also it product interaction design most commonly used to a design method. So, from a level perspective, UED (UXD) > Interactive Design (iteraction) > UCD.

At the same time, there are several other design methods that coexist with user-centric design (UCD), such as activity-centric design (active centered), system design and Genius design (Genius).

These design methods are not good or bad, but the application of different occasions, each designer has their preferred method, but it is best to be flexible application, for each project using the most appropriate design methods.

1. User-centric design (UCD)

The philosophy behind the user-centric design is simply: what the user knows best. People who use products or services know their needs, goals, and preferences, and designers need to discover and design them. In UCD, the goal is very important, and the designer focuses on what the user ultimately wants to accomplish. Designers define the tasks and methods of accomplishing goals, and always keep in mind the needs and preferences of users, which must penetrate the entire project and introduce users, user research, focus groups, participatory design, and usability testing across all phases of the project.

Another point to note is that UCD designers must not bring their preferences into the design, which will cause the project to deviate from the established track, the design of the product may conflict with the user's needs. "You are not a user" is the mantra that UCD designers need to recite frequently.

At the same time, UCD is not omnipotent, Jobs said "People don't know what they want until you put the product in front of them." "Indeed, over-reliance on users leads to a narrow vision of products and services that are too mediocre." Users can only provide demand, these requirements can not constitute a product, the final product needs the designer's fine carving to complete.

2. Activity-centric design (ACD)

Unlike UCD, ACD does NOT focus on user goals and preferences, but mainly on behavior around specific tasks. Compared with UCD, ACD is a microscopic method, which acd the target into small task branches, and then studies and designs these tasks. For example, in the design of some professional products, the user is more focused on the function, rather than experience, when combined with ACD design methods, the task and activities of the study, observe the user's behavior (not goals and motives), designed products will be more functional. Therefore, the purpose of ACD is to help the user to complete the task, rather than achieve the goal itself.

ACD's focus is on task, and ACD's risk is to focus too much on tasks, and designers may not look for solutions from a global perspective. There is an old design maxim: If you start to design not a vase, but a flowers thing, you will get different results.

3. System Design

System design is a very theoretical way to solve the problem of design. It uses some sort of established arrangement of components to create a design scheme. The concept of system design is more close to the realistic model of the product, that is, the way the product is actually running. Therefore, the system design method is more suitable for the design of hidden products or background running products, because they do not need too much to interact with users, the most important thing is to maintain stability and rapid. System design system is not necessarily a computer, but also can be people, equipment, machines or objects, all of which can use the system design analysis methods for analysis and research, but also to understand the interaction between them.

System design is a kind of macroscopic design method, which is very suitable for large and complex products or services. But for small projects, system design is too cumbersome.

4. Genius Design (Genius)

Genius design relies almost entirely on the ingenuity and experience of designers to make design decisions. Designers try their best to judge the needs of users and design products based on this. Genius design applies to projects that are not subject to large-scale user research because of privacy issues and that do not have enough money and time to do user research. Therefore, the success or failure of a gifted design depends largely on the experience and ability of the designer.

Therefore, genius design is most likely to be used by experienced designers who have experienced various types of problems and are able to summarize solutions from previous projects