The five of user experience design

I was interviewed by the Business School magazine a few days ago, today put the finished article published first, the latest issue of the magazine will be published, I will put the article first in the blog, it is a recent new blog post, blog or can not be deserted AH

Here's the text.

Alibaba senior Interactive Designer Song Lei

How to design a product with excellent user experience is an interactive designer always faced with a difficult problem, "good product design must be based on the user's deep understanding of the needs of" this sentence by many designers as a design tiantiao; As to how to discover and understand the user's needs in the design, and thus designed with excellent user experience products, Alibaba's ued team in many years of product design practice summed up the important five principles.

1. Empathy: So-called empathy is the idea of transposition. Designers in the design of products to be able to do transposition thinking, experience the user's position and feelings, and stand in the user's perspective to think and deal with the problem, put himself in the relevant user scenarios, understand the user's behavior characteristics and behavior differences.

In our Ali department website, Taobao station above mainly C-class users, Taobao many designers themselves are C-class users, they will be more easily grasp and understand the needs of C-class users to guide the design of products. This is a challenge for our business-to-business designers, and an opportunity because it is very difficult for business-to-business designers to gain enough B-user experience from themselves and not be able to grasp and understand the needs of Class B users, our team emphasizes the empathy of the designer and the ability to think in a position. We will require designers in peacetime more attention to accumulate user experience, skilled use of their products, analog B users to carry out related operations, will often let designers go out to the user please come in and other channels and user research means so that designers can thoroughly understand the user needs. So that our designers can be very objective, in-depth and comprehensive understanding of users and related needs, but also to avoid relying on their own experience and arbitrary behind closed doors.

I remember when I went to college to learn the barrier-free design course, in order to experience and understand the needs of people with leg disabilities for the ride, I would tie my legs together or sit in a wheelchair and actually experience the situation of people with leg disabilities on the bus. I think the designers who have had this experience are sure to take the real needs of people with disabilities into consideration when designing products for people with legs.

Empathy is the basis of user experience design, only so that designers will be able to grasp the needs of users more thorough design of the more intimate products. When our users see the product, they say, "This is what I want," and I think this is the best user experience design.

At the same time need to explain that empathy is not omnipotent, is not all accurate, more flexible application and effect of the output, on the one hand, the designers need long-term product design experience accumulation and long-term in-depth contact and understanding of users On the other hand, designers ' analysis of user data and user behavior and the use of relevant user research methods are needed.

2. Simplicity is good: simplicity is not equal to simplicity, it is a deep understanding of the user needs, based on user action, information architecture and other factors after careful consideration of the user interface, the interface is not the product function of the simple "stack" and the interface information of the messy "place"; is a meeting user specific needs, With smooth operation, pleasing interface.

Remember in previous years a lot of Web site registration page, arranged a lot of users need to fill in the required or selected form, it appears that the page is particularly cumbersome and complex, in fact these are not what users want, users need a page on only a simple two required items, you can allow users to complete the relevant form of the fastest speed, So as soon as possible to complete the website registration of the Concise page. But we design a complex registration page that forces users to do things that don't make sense to users, based on the considerations of keeping user data, business, and operations.

And then look at the current site registration page basically only a few simple need to fill in the user registration information, and even some sites in order to enable users to complete his goal faster, canceled the registration link, the real convenience of the user.

Simplicity is good, essentially to let the designer know that the average user will only have one main task and main flow on a single page, so do not use other minor factors or complicated visual elements to disturb his visual attention, interfere with his judgment, the more concise, users feel better, so for the user experience is good.

3. Give the decision to the user: to let users know that the decision of the product is in the user's own hands, do not and the user to snatch control, to be cautious to help users to make some decisions, many times still want to let the user to judge, and to operate.

Many times the site for business, marketing and other aspects of consideration, will help users to make decisions, will guide users to do something he did not want or dislike. These actions seriously interfere with the user's progress and the completion of user goals.

For example, in the SNS website, when the user edits a content to publish successfully publishes the Success page, this page automatically jumps to has sent the article List page. But some users are actually sent to see the article details page to understand the reply or message, there are some users want to edit a new article, or a small number of users want to return to the home page. So the system automatically jump to the published article list page let many users feel inconvenience, so that users have a very poor experience. In fact, we can publish a successful page without any jump, in the page to add a few users may want to go to the page link. This is to give the decision back to the user.

The decision to return to the user, is reflected on the user's respect, so that users know that the product is in the hands of the user, the product is only to assist users to complete his previous set needs to complete the goal or task, only this is to give users a sense of respect, security, to bring a good use of

4. Help users to do something: in the user in the use of the site, many places we can help users to complete some things, this can make users more worry more efficient completion of his need to bring to the goal. Internet users compared to traditional industry users, the site is easier to collect users of relevant data and users use the site's behavior trajectory. This helps us to understand the user and help the user do something. For example, in the next single page to fill in the logistics information when many users do not know zip code, through the user to fill in the provincial and municipal system can automatically complete the general postal code, so that users successfully completed registration. But help users must have a degree, not too much or too little.

For example, in MO website users after the successful purchase of goods will be a successful shopping page prompts, through data analysis and user survey, found that most of the users will want to see the order details, see Order acceptance. So when the page of successful shopping is generated, the system will automatically jump to the Order Details page to help the customer complete this click.

But it's not that this is the same thing, with the change in time and environment, if the Order Details page to find the number of clicks down, and continue to shop and find other items of clicks, these data can reflect the information is that users do not want to jump directly, then consider the automatic jump page cancellation.

In addition, if the seller in the release of products to select the category, if the relevant category has been published several times before, the system will now release, according to his previous release of the class directly to give him the category, at the same time give him a choice of all types of purposes of the entrance, easy to sell quickly sellers.

Help the user to do some things, in fact, is to make full use of some of the network system operations, speed on some of the advantages of assisting users to complete relatively complex tasks on the Internet, users can quickly and easily complete the task.

5. The user is also unceasing growth: Our user's experience also will develop with the Internet industry and the website development, the user's experience is also in the unceasing accumulation, also in unceasingly accepts the new thing and the new interaction way. So do not use a static view of the user, do not think the user is too stupid, also do not think of the user too clever.

For example, there are hypertext links in the text passages of general Web sites, and their forms are generally expressed in the form of colors that are different from the normal text next to each other and underlined. Before there will be a designer to think that the user will not know that the place is a hypertext link, so will be given a special tip text to tell the user that the site is a hyperlink, in fact, as the Internet continues to penetrate into people's daily life, the basic use of the standard of hypertext link style, Users are already familiar with this style and interactive mode, and if you add text to the link, it will hinder the integrity of the user's reading.

Also do not have to think of the user is very professional very smart, Web page technicians usually on the Web page code, server and other technical issues are very familiar with, so also take it for granted that users are also aware of these technologies. When the user entered the wrong site, the page will display a "404" error, which for ordinary users will be very confused, users do not know what this represents a mistake, what this means. Will guess whether the network failure, is not a page problem. Then if we replace the "404" Error with "the page does not exist" and so on, the user can clearly understand what happened. This example fully illustrates the bad user think too smart, are senior users of the Internet.

The last thing to say is that none of the products in the design can meet all the needs of all users, even before doing a lot of research and preparation work, the new product on the line is still impossible to achieve a full range of functions, can be on line 50% function, but this part of the function of the experience is good, After the actual operation of the user data and feedback to optimize the upgrade, the Internet product culture is a beta version of culture. The essence of user experience design is a process of product continuous optimization, there is no best, only better.

Source Address: http://www.uxsong.com/?p=719