10 steps to make you a compelling user experience

Designer Irene Pereyra summed up 10 great tips to help you achieve an amazing interactive user experience.

Recently, designing a web and app that attracts and retains users is becoming a learning discipline.

Since a lot of people don't know much about computer numbers, I often compare our UX designers with architects. Usually architects are responsible for designing your house, and our UX design team needs to build a comprehensive blueprint of the site that contains the features and functions of the site, as well as everything else.

But these designs are usually not a draft of the work can be done. It takes a lot of steps to achieve intuitive and engaging user interaction. Here's a summary of 10 tips I'd like to help you design an amazing interactive user experience.

　　1. Real design for the user

While online interaction is still at an early stage, we don't really think much about the user experience, and users are willing to take the time to learn how to use the site. If it does happen, people will only complain about the level of the computer or not enough about the Internet. And as more and more websites, mobile devices and tablets appear, users are apparently unwilling to spend as much learning as they used to on the site. Today's users are not as easy to please as before, those unqualified products will eventually be discarded by users.

Designers, of course, want to be able to design products according to their own preferences and aesthetic. But many times this does not help to improve the user experience, and designers and users ' preferences and needs are sometimes different. Think more about what users really need, and then use the most intuitive and effective way to help them achieve their needs. User activities on the Web are diverse: browsing, searching, playing games, watching videos, working, or looking for professional information that designers need to consider. The UX design team's job is to focus on the overall user experience and then ensure that the user's needs are met.

"Design for the user" is the foundation of our website for designing civil War 150, every step of our design must start from the user itself. In the project design, our biggest challenge is to deal with a large number of historical events and statistical data. In order to allow the site to resonate with users, we use color-rich information maps to guide users to the history of the Civil War, which includes "who They were", "weapons of the war", "How They Died", "5 Deadliest Battles", " Paying for the ' War ' and ' West Point Warriors ' a few major themes. By providing users with the information they need, both the war fanatic and the 7-year history students will be able to gain a lot of knowledge and fun in the process of studying the civil War.

　2. Do your homework

Learn and absorb. The more you communicate with your customers, the more you know. To read the requirements document in depth before you design, the area of the customer also need to do a research survey, at the same time thoroughly examine all the content, a comprehensive and thorough understanding of the customer wants to achieve the goal (no matter how small), if you can communicate with the staff of various departments to understand, of course, the more the better. After these preliminary work is done, we also have the most comprehensive and accurate understanding of the project, we can proceed to the next stage of work.

Another more important, the peer may have similar product case analysis, we should be good at learning from. See if someone else's work has the sparkle to learn? Is there any mistake in it that you can avoid? Is there anything in common between your products? Are there any flaws in their design? The answers to these questions will be one of the sources of inspiration for your project.

Some of the types of cases you can analyze may make you feel dramatic. Maybe you're designing an app for a stereo device, but refer to a product that sells cat food. But it's also helpful for your design, because the user behavior on the Cat food website and the audio device website is likely to be very similar. In addition, you can learn from a variety of industries with very valuable experience in the user experience.

3. Be a user advocate

We often think of users as customers, although this is not really the case. Any project will require a number of business goals, UX designers are responsible for achieving these goals, but also to let customers understand the needs of users. A good digital product can always find a balance between meeting business goals and user needs.

　　4. Forget Nancy, think more about user type

When we start building content, personas (persona) become very important. Look at the entire content of the site and think about what the user wants. This helps determine the priority of the content and ensures that the content we build is user-centric. But the traditional personas are built in this way-"Nancy, a 28-35-year-old woman with an affordable car, a computer for 4 years, mainly for email and 30k-50k, she wanted to buy cheap tickets to visit her mother in Florida." "-Such personas do not have an in-depth understanding and performance of actual user behavior.

Translator Note: Persona is the character, which is the sketch of the real feature of the target group of the website, and is the comprehensive prototype of the real user. We study the target, behavior and viewpoint of product users, and synthesize these elements into a group of descriptions of typical product users to assist the decision and design of products. Simply put, persona is a truly effective number that is processed on the basis of a great deal of research, abstracting characters from roles, scenes, and plots to form one or more virtual roles. (Source: Baidu Encyclopedia)

On the contrary, we group different user types according to the behavior of the users on the Internet, such as "browsing information", "comparing shopping", "Killing Time", "finding professional information" and so on. This grouping will make it easier for you to understand why our users use Web sites and apps, as well as text usage, user search content, and time usage. With this information, you can design a better Web site or app based on the user's behavior pattern, and the information about the user's network name, age, occupation, and income level becomes irrelevant.

　5. Less is more

I believe that we understand the truth, many people will feel that there is no need to explain. But many websites and apps still don't apply this principle correctly. In fact, the key point is to minimize the content of the user needs. Those who have no value, confuse the user's content should be decisively deleted. You need to be very clear about how you want users to use your site or apps to guide them through your site. Also, users always want to be as simple as possible, and the faster the better. If you do not use the button to automatically jump out of the following content, users must be very welcome.

Give me an example! We've done a project with the Google team-"things ilearned about the Web and Browsers." The difficulty with this project is to get online users to feel the tactile experience in actual reading. We have added a lot of interactive features to the project: Instant Search, flip-through animation, enhanced page illustration, off-line mode, bookmarks and lights out mode. We try to be simple, interesting, content and full, so that users can enjoy a comfortable reading experience. It is our design from the user's point of view, users can be in the process of browsing the Web page happily to acquire knowledge.

6. Think of yourself as being working for Fisherprice.

Translator Note: The title of the original text is "Pretend you ' re working for Fisherprice", where the Fisherprice should refer to the first toy brand in the United States-Fei Xue. If the translation is wrong, welcome the criticism to point out.

Our CEO David Martin has said that I agree-"all interaction should feel like Fisherprice." In other words, when you design large items (such as children's toys) or a digital experience tailored to the "coarse-fingered" user, you will find that it is also accepted by other users.

In the design, try to use larger size buttons, sliders, and fields to replace the traditional input fields. This can effectively improve the user participation and reduce the bounce rate. Isn't that what a UX designer is after?

The design of the label is also very important. When you need to prompt the user to provide registration information, the wording should be simple, direct, accurate, which can reduce a lot of unnecessary trouble. It also allows users to emotionally force themselves to complete a set of registration processes. Of course, this means the increase in user volume, traffic, order and yield.

The world has lent a helping hand to the 9 magnitude earthquake in Japan. We have developed a platform with the Google team to share Japanese messages with users all over the world (message for Japan). Inspired by Fisher Price, our web site uses large buttons to divide these messages into two broad categories-"love" and "Hope", while also using large input fields to call people "Write Your message" and "Make a donation".

　　7. Inspired by the tablet computer

Translator Note: The original title "Take Cues from tablet".

Given the increasing popularity of tablet computers, it is also necessary to simplify our interactive design. Ask yourself if the design works perfectly on a tablet computer. If the answer is yes, then congratulations, your design already has 2 basic building blocks for a strong user experience: A clear hierarchy and intuitive presentation.

We worked with CBSNews.com to create a "elegant and visually rich online news experience (an elegant and visually rich online journalism experience)" for American audiences,--60 minutes, In the process of design, we consider the structure of the hierarchy and visual expression and other problems.

　　8. Design your UX

Design is not a simple version, add some placeholder text and then a navigation bar is enough. This involves the visual hierarchy, content layout, white, positioning and size, and so on a series of problems in the online block diagram design phase should be resolved well. On-line block diagram design, if you can design according to the real design criteria, then you are in the right direction.

　9. Working with various departments

The design of user experience in isolation can not create a good work, and many problems in design can not be solved. Learn to listen, collaborate and become a bridge between customers, users, and internal teams. Only in this way can the user design the best user experience while satisfying the customer's business needs.

Remember, you are not a person doing design. UX designers, visual designers, and interactive designers have worked together to create a successful project-a goal that requires a lot of collaboration and a multisectoral effort to accomplish this. When everyone can share the passion in the work, do their best, speak freely, often can create miracles.

　10. Don't give your homework a grade

Design is rarely a hit, in the follow-up process of the project to do the preparation of iterative design. I always insist that the designer should only make quantitative analysis of his work. It is important to track product performance and understand where the user is falling, which should be done in-house. And only by letting the third party to carry on the qualitative analysis of the user data can guarantee the objectivity of the project test environment. If this is done internally, it will be hard to get the real data you want, as if you do your homework and then revise yourself. So, if a designer wants to get a real objective answer, let someone else do the user test and then apply the data from the test to the next iteration design.