Five interactive design skills that visual designers should cultivate

In the 2016, Visual + interactive designers have a higher job value, although most visual designers do not have formal interactive basic training, but don't worry, today @iriolee translated this smashingmagazine, sharing 5 ways to improve your interaction skills, Try it together.

Now, all web-based design people need to have a basic understanding of the principle of interaction design. Even if you don't have formal training in the direction of human-computer interaction, user experience design, or human factors, you will still greatly improve your chances of success as long as you understand the fundamentals of these disciplines. This is particularly noticeable for visual designers. Most visual designers have formal or informal training in art schools or in training institutions.

While these institutions are focused on designing communications, both types of organizations often fail to provide a strong foundation for interaction design. For you, having a broader set of skills not only makes your design more successful, but also makes you more employable (i.e. you become a unicorn). There is no way to say it in detail here, but before you start, there are five key strategies that are worth understanding and implementing in the next project.

　　1. Take the initiative to talk with your clients

The most important thing you need to know when designing an online experience is your audience. Knowing who they are, what they do for a living, how old they are, how they work, how they understand the web, and how to use it, and on what devices, these all provide valuable insight into their pain points, and you need to be responsible for resolving their pain points.

Setting a clear constraint on your design can also help in your design process. For example, if your audience is primarily using mobile devices to access the network in a hospital, your design must be responsive to these devices and the environment in which the devices are used. In addition, you should understand your audience on the basis of a communication design and discover the user's sensitivity to such elements as color and font (physical or cultural, for example).

To understand your audience, you need to have a direct conversation with the target user. These conversations may occur in different forums. The most objective methods, such as questionnaires, are good, but there is nothing better than talking to your clients face-to-face. Depending on your job objectives, finding a target audience can be as simple as going to a local café, spending 5 of dollars on a gift card, and chatting with a customer in a café. Most people would love to spend 10-15 minutes sharing their opinions and exchanging a gift card for a café. Other ways to discover user methods, such as, post ads on the Craglists Web site, pick names from your customer list, contact your trade Organization (for example, for specific user types like nurses), and take time to places where your users will spend their time (for example, music lovers will appear at concerts).

The initial conversation may be embarrassing, but as the number of times increases, the pace of conversation gets closer to the problem. The user model is also starting to appear so that you can customize each interview question to make it more appropriate. The lessons you learn from these activities can be used to help you create user role models-such as a collection of typical user performance for your design, which can provide a context for your future design decisions.

　　2. Determine the direction for the user

Now that you have an understanding of who your users are, it is important that you set the direction for them when using your design. Orienting users can provide a non-static experience for them. To effectively provide this experience, your design should tell the user three things:

1 Where are they now?

In the context of the Web site, the key to any online experience is to understand what the user is dealing with. If users are clearly aware of where they are, they are more likely to understand what you need them to do on the current page. For example, if users know they are on a product detail page, they should expect to see a link to the purchase, and perhaps some options for other products.

2 How did they arrive

If providing the user with a clear current location can provide an environment for your intended user behavior, you should also show the user the path to the process and provide a safety net. Safety nets are users who have a comfortable understanding of their actions, and if they go to the wrong place, they know they can go back to the place and try again.

3 where they can go

You have identified where the user is and how they are arriving so that if they go to the wrong place they can backtrack and try another path. But if they are ready to move on, or if they think that the backtracking path does not provide what they want, it is necessary to let the user know what options are available at this point and not to put the user in a dead end.

There should always be an option to move on. There is a good example of no results when the search results page. You should let users know that there are no results to match their search queries, but there should also be options to help them find answers (such as related search terms). The way users travel can be reflected in the navigation of your site, but it can also be implemented as situational support.

Situational support is clearly clickable interface elements, such as buttons and sliders.

(as an introduction to situational support, we chose Norman's example of the design of everyday life.) It's a bit outdated, but it lays a solid foundation for how product designers should look at their products.

Clear site Orientation provides users with a comfortable feel, while reducing the chance for users to make mistakes and increasing the likelihood that they will recover quickly when they do make a mistake.

　　3. As simple as possible

Visual designers may be driven by aesthetic pursuits to add an element to the layout, but not necessarily to serve the purpose of interaction. Although aesthetic elements are likely to polish the experience and add goodwill, you should consider choosing a simpler design when designing an interactive experience.

Simplification means that the elements of the screen are reduced to the most basic part that can facilitate the user's task. Start with this as a baseline, then add a small amount of decoration. You have to consider the brand of a good website. The brand not only reflects the aesthetic, but also reflects the experience. If a website is beautifully made, but this beauty makes the user unable to complete the transaction, then the site (or brand) will eventually fail.

Aesthetic elements always have a place in any experience and are powerful, but it is vital that you first make sure that the experience is available.

　　4. Design a Dialogue

Visual design training focuses on the design of communication, and the interactive design focuses on the feedback loop-essentially the conversation between the user and the website.

When you hone your site experience, you provide a way for the system to communicate with users when they do the right thing or do something wrong, to make sure that your experience clearly shows whether the user is successful or not, and the actions that the user must perform to complete the transaction.

You will use your visual design and communication skills to build a visual language for this type of feedback dialogue, ensuring that no matter what part of the user's experience, any information from the site is consistent in design and presentation methods. Different information may require a different approach, the user will quickly learn the entire system, and then the user and the site dialog began to appear. In essence, you are the experience of the humanized Web site (and the company behind it), proactively predicting the needs of users and providing information and actions that can mitigate user frustration.

▲think Vitamin website has been keeping conversations with users

　　5. Workflow: Understanding Premises and Successors

Visual design is beautiful, but also static. Interaction design is a series of workflows that build between multiple pages and multiple states. When you design each individual page, consider what the user can do on this page and how the next step is to import into the workflow. If you've just added a registration form to the page, think about what happens when the user presses the Submit button. Does the page refresh? Will there be a confirmation page? What if the user clicks the "Back" button? These experiences are components of the workflow. Each page or state is only a small fraction of the user's click Stream. The challenge is that each user may have a relatively unique click stream, depending on how they arrived at your site and why they came to this site. You have used your understanding of the user as user oriented, and you have provided a concise interface to create a successful conversation with the user: Now you want to make sure that each interaction has a logical next step. The next step should be to adapt to the experience and visual language you have created so that the experience will feel complete and consistent. These elements can increase the credibility of the brand and increase the user's trust in your design.

　　Tip: Get to know your "material"

Designer Jonathan Ive, the designer of the ipod (along with other products), has promoted the idea that all types of designers must understand the materials they are using. This also applies to interactive design. Understanding the composition of the web's "material" is critical. A cursory study of HMTL, CSS, JavaScript, and related techniques will enhance your understanding of the media and provide you with a more realistic view of your design. The best related resource you can find is the developer who will implement your work. Talk to them regularly about your design and feel whether your suggestions are feasible under the technology they use. A better approach is to start learning the basics too. You don't need to be a star programmer, but if you know enough about how your work works, it can greatly help you shape your interactive design.

　　Summarize

Interactive design is a multidisciplinary discipline that connects static communication to form an experience. The core of the design website is to understand the basic principles of this discipline, so as to create a site that is not only aesthetically pleasing, but actually solves business problems and brings pleasure to users. This article touches only the surface of the interactive design-related problems. But for any type of web designer, it is necessary to consider these basic dimensions when designing any transaction or interaction.