5 design problems severely affect the user experience

Today's article is all about the obvious, but especially easy to make mistakes of the user experience common sense. Don't say, light. The second issue of the Hamburg menu has allowed many sites to lie on the gun. If you have a system of user experience knowledge, please read the 5 FAQ mentioned, the effect of a significant increase.

To make products acceptable to users and willing to use, there are many conditions to meet. You need to know what the target group of product services is, what problems they have to address, what advantages your product offers to the solution and the methods they are using now, how you need to guide and help them, and so on.

As a user experience designer, there are many things to consider. From how to attract users to use products, to guide them to get started, then to help them solve practical problems. However, if the product often users feel that they can not manage, then all efforts will be put into the water. In this article, let's look at some of the common UX (user experience) design questions to see how to make users more comfortable with their products and avoid being thrown into confusion and frustration.

　　Question 1: Be creative, not usability

Creativity is a good thing, if you abandon the product itself and the characteristics of the target users, one-sided to creative and creative, in order to smart and smart, then you are taking the user's long-term cognitive habits to take risks, gambling on the most likely is the core value of the product.

Some sort of unconventional, creative approach to navigation might be good for certain types of products in mobile devices, but what about the Web pages on the desktop side? Now it's really popular. Porting the design pattern of the mobile end to the desktop, creating a creative look, a new way of interacting, and a delicate dynamic But all of this is to the point where the user finds in a particular product context that their previous perceptions are confusing and annoying when they are worthless, and that the usability problems of those outdated design patterns are still behind them.

As a designer, be creative in the right place and make sure that new ideas are not only available but also easy to use. Provide just the right guidance, when necessary, to the so-called "proper". On the one hand, in the face of new design, users can accept a certain degree of learning process, but often is extremely lack of patience, think of our own in the new app when the feeling will know, so do not detail, do not point to weight. On the other hand, the information of help can not be less than the user must understand what a thing is, how to use the time is completely unknown, but only to provide a tall appearance and operation, knowing that users will be overwhelmed but not in the right place to provide effective auxiliary information, Then your product will soon make the dazed users feel stupid, or feel that your product is stupid.

　Problem 2: Over-design

If the final interface does not look exciting enough to make people feel different, designers tend to feel that they have done something wrong or less, and that others often use the sense of "lack of design" as an evaluation. In fact, for most types of product interface, clear, accurate, at a glance information presentation way than the overly tangled visual style is more important. The so-called excessive design, including the excessive complexity of the style, but also include excessive simplicity, or any other ignore the characteristics of the product and the weight of information blindly pursue a certain style of design ideas.

The navigation in the above diagram page is an example. This site default is not to show navigation, only in the upper left corner of a hamburger icon, the entire first screen is a beautiful picture. Today this style of Web page is not a few, regardless of its content type is not really fit, all in the head placed a huge picture, and important navigation elements are hidden by default to the hamburger icon behind.

Usability is the cornerstone of interactive design, and discovery is the door that products should always be open to users. For many products, the global unified default rendering navigation structure is the most important element in the interface. Users will never fall in love with your style of expression if they have to spend time and attention to find the navigation menu and spend additional interactive costs to make it work.

In addition to the visual style of the problem, at the interaction level also need to grasp the "degree". For example: in mobile app to avoid too much custom gesture use, to avoid in the form of too innovative, so that the user's cognitive load to bring great challenges to the interactive model, to avoid the original application of the design pattern of meaningless transformation.

We naturally do not want to do the product boring, it is important to those "not boring" the use of the elements of the appropriateness of the degree. In the final analysis, we do this kind of design, ultimately for the achievement of products, service users, and the design of the interface you can receive in the Dribbble how much praise, is not so important.

　　Question 3: Think about what you know about the user

Assuming that users have the same ability to deal with problems, assuming that they have the same capabilities, what kind of characteristics they have, including life experience, education background, needs, situation, etc., this is a mistake we are very apt to fall into. The solution is to do more homework before the design begins, that is, we are familiar with the research work, whether formal or informal.

The specific preliminary research strategy is not discussed here, the way you need to know roughly includes:

Personas (user Personas): A characteristic framework that depicts one or more typical target users, including their psychological, behavioral, and professional characteristics, and the association between these characteristics and the use of the product. For example, the role models of novice users often need to show some of their dubious features, while the role models of senior users are more focused on fast and efficient experience requirements.

Experience Map (Experience Maps): Experience maps can help you comb the experience of a typical user throughout the lifecycle of a product, including before, during, and after use, giving you a clearer picture of the overall needs situation.

User Interview interviews: Go out and communicate with actual users, interact with them, and record their actions, including a degree of real-world research.

In addition, the characteristics of novice users and senior users does not mean that you need to dilute the design plan to only meet the level of novice users. The excellent product experience itself should be flexible enough to focus on helping the middle and senior users to accomplish their tasks efficiently, while also providing the necessary ways to help new users get started quickly.

　　Issue 4: Forcing users to accept the rules of the designer's game

It is interesting to see the user operate the interface in a way that you have never thought of in the process of actual use. As designer Marcin Treder said: "Never underestimate the power of the minimum frictional path."

In usability testing, discovering that users are using the product in ways you don't expect is usually a valuable bonus, proving that the test is not done in vain. In the face of this situation, you usually have two choices: 1, encourage them to continue the task process in their own way. 2, to stop, to provide the so-called official path.

It is recommended that you choose the former. If you find that the user in the test has a certain commonality in the operation process, it is best to consider rethinking your functional processes in the next iteration. The user's chosen mode of operation may be more in line with his expectations in the context of the actual situation, and based on what you find behind the research, you may be able to explore a truly natural and fluent interface for these target users. Force users to follow the "normative process" you have envisioned, and in practice if they find it difficult to adjust their thinking patterns in a short time, they will probably feel powerless to handle the software.

The existence of normative model, the purpose is to shape products, service users, not the cart before the horse, practice is the only criterion for testing truth. If your perceptions are in fact preventing the target user from accomplishing their tasks efficiently, it may be your idea to change, rather than forcing users to spend additional time and energy adapting to the new tool usage rules in addition to using tools to solve problems.

　　Problem 5: Lack of actual user testing

After updating to iOS 7, the use of the keyboard has caused users to experience a general pain, and the so-called pain has even continued to this day. Problems include the new space bar is too short, the SHIFT key state table is unknown, and so on, then angered a lot of users.

Apple has been fixing some of the keyboard problems in the next update (iOS 9, which is now officially released), but the damage has been real. It's not clear that Apple has been involved in real-world usability testing when it comes to introducing a completely new operating system, but we can be sure that the keyboard problem since IOS 7 vividly reflects the importance of usability testing in another way.

Formal or informal usability testing can effectively help you detect potential problems that can cause users to become confused and confused as soon as they are posted online, and the benefits usually go beyond what you think.

During the testing process, there are some issues to focus on, such as:

1, whether the successful completion of the task: to observe the test users can successfully complete the tasks you have set, to see how they do not use any help hint of the situation is how to function and handle errors.

2, the effectiveness of the navigation mechanism: pay attention to the users of the test to use the navigation and the smooth degree of interaction costs.

3, the weight of the information is reasonable: to observe whether the measured users can notice the most important interface information and functions.

Summary

The truly excellent experience comes from the wonderful ideas that are based on reality and the heartfelt care of the users. Products full of design intentions can motivate users to act effectively in a positive emotional state, just as functional designers are around to help them accomplish tasks together.

Whether you are UX design new or industry experts, the goal should be consistent: we design products, the ultimate goal is to serve the needs of the user's task, the entire process to provide a natural smooth operation experience, to avoid confusing them confused, helpless. With this goal in mind, we need to consider a number of common problems in design combat, including the five points mentioned in this article:

1, showing off creativity and cleverness is difficult to achieve a truly usable, easy-to-use interface, do not let users in order to use the product must pay too much recognition.

2, avoid excessive design, whether it is too complex or too simple. "Boring" in the eyes of the designer is likely to be a symbol of clarity and ease of use for ordinary users.

3, do not assume that users understand what you know, to provide a small number of effective guidance in the appropriate situation.

4, you envision the process model is not really suitable for the target users in the actual solution to the problem, to carry out the necessary research work.

5, to maintain testing, to observe the representative of the test users can use the product prototype smooth completion of the task script, based on the test results of the iteration, and then test and then verify.