A layman's product design ramble on: Design everywhere

This article is purely layman YY's crystallization, if has the low-level question, asks the expert to criticize corrected, if the article in the conclusion and the design discipline classical theory coincides with, then is honored. The purpose of this article is to chat software products, especially the design of Internet products, more than traditional products are not even the elegance of the Dongdong to give examples, this incidentally also in the proof of design everywhere, as well as software design and traditional design in the concept and methods of mastery.

Design is everywhere, Design decides everything

Design is everywhere, the human world is designed. If you look carefully, you can find good design and wisdom in life. Now look down on your keyboard. F, J Two keys above the small knot; Laptop power button (not protruding, but concave or at least flat); the mouse wheel (not designed as a button to page up and Page down); Multi-Touch of Apple notebook touchpad; zippers on clothing and bags (easy to pull and close, Sealing is very good), as well as the celestial unique anti-queue machine (one solution from the export queue, in the window surrounded by two major problems, simple to rely on).

Anti-queue Machine

Unfortunately, however, poor design can be seen everywhere. For example, the initial wireless mouse signal receiver is a few centimeters long, if it is with the use of notebook computers, you must often plug, because it is too long, when the notebook into the bag is easy to fold so must be pulled down. More uncomfortable is that the mouse often has no storage bin can put up the receiver, so often the receiver lost.

Now, the dapper receiver has become standard.

Many of the processes in the celestial kingdom are also poorly designed. For example, the Chinese characteristics of the "open proof": If you handle a certain document, you need to run to the Social Security Department issued a Social Security payment certificate, to the tax department issued certificates, to XX department opened YY Certificate ... I can not help but wonder, you check in the system does not know whether we pay social security, whether to pay taxes, why do we have to people running around, not to the data from the system and print to the paper, stamped on the red stamp side to stop?

Design determines everything. First of all, the initial product design, that is, product creativity. Just as advertising creativity is important for advertising campaigns, product creativity is also decisive for products. Product creativity is not good, basically can not succeed. And this initial core of creativity, are very simple, with high degree of partition, a sentence can be said clearly. For example, simply say that Twitter is 140 words of the blog, Baidu Bar is the key word community, sing it is mobile phone KTV. A keen insight into the needs of the user, can produce good product ideas, coupled with sufficient research and development and promotion of operations, can be successful-here is said to be innovative products, and those who copied, follow the product to succeed, the most needed is often a strong operation, channel and promotion capabilities.

After the general direction has been set, we will look at the design of the product. The advantages and disadvantages of product design, to a large extent, determines the success of this product, very few can have a rotten product with excellent technology and market operation means to obtain long-term success. Moreover, most products do not have to have the industry's top technology to develop. Compared with the product, the technology can be quantified, the technical specifications are clear technical framework and hardware and software tools to improve. For example, the page load speed is 1S, this is too slow, we can very clearly optimize it to 100ms. and product design is a soft ability, you can not say that the reasonable degree of this product design is another product several times, or this version of the experience than the previous version of the optimization of a few times, because the impact of the design is often lag time and other factors of interference.

Design is important, so you need to find the right person, but it's hard to get a real product designer.

The ability that a designer should have

Product design is a very special and delicate work, as an excellent product designer, you have the following aspects of the ability.

Careful

Although words such as "careful" and "detail" have been used rotten, it is really the primary ability of product design, and few people really understand the meaning and weight of "detail is the devil" and "detail decides everything".

Careful this feature is difficult to learn, at least it is difficult to turn it into your subconscious way of thinking, it is related to people's character, life, work habits and other factors.

Attention to detail is not a burden, once it deep into your bone marrow, attention to detail is conditioned reflex, you will always receive more than others because of such characteristics of the information, at the same time, as God for careful you a gift, you often pay attention to detail and get spiritual pleasure, Because you can feel a lot of ordinary people ignore the beautiful and moved. In addition, you can design a near-perfect product by discerning the needs of users and discovering potential problems.

Attention to detail can benefit mankind. The small cost of the details, the utility and value of the product will be linearly amplified by the increase in the number and number of products used. For example, a lot of software and web interface of the single option is not by clicking on the Radio box icon next to the text selected, which is inconvenient. It only takes a little code to improve it-the programmer saves a minute and millions of users are unhappy for billions of minutes. This can see how valuable design and technology are!

Details of the decision Google. Think of Google into China that year, its domain name of the self coined word "Google", the vast majority of Chinese people shut out, because for most people, at that time the word correctly spelled out is almost impossible--alone this detail, basically can decide he cannot succeed. Although later aware of the seriousness of the problem, the introduction of the Global shortest domain name "g.cn", Chinese characteristics of the Web site "265.com", but it is too late.

Logical thinking Ability

Since any product has an operation step and a conditional branch, and the design of products to take into account the complete flow of logic than the product interface to show more complex, so, if you want to design a slightly complex products, product designers if not carefully listed tables, painting function flow chart, state migration diagram, it will be a problem. That's why it's often the case that a lot of people are meeting to review product design documents, and the product manager can't talk about the problems of product process faults, dead loops or poor conditions.

In addition to mastering the system design thinking way and tools, product design details often need to have a good logical thinking ability. For example, now to design a thermos, if you can not directly make the inference: "Insulation cup → water is very hot → can not directly drink → need to pour out to drink → Extra to carry a cup is not convenient → The cover of the Cup is designed to cover and cups dual-use", then it is difficult to achieve

Reading data requires IQ. Products on the line after the need to pay attention to a variety of statistical indicators, such as installation, activation, PV, UV, step, bounce rate and so on, to be able to see from a variety of data comparisons and changes in the problem and then improve the product, these need enough logical thinking ability. The vast majority of users will not directly use their own products of the cool and uncomfortable to tell you, through the data can be their emotions with the normal distribution show out.

Innovation ability

This is also a high-frequency vocabulary. Innovation in product design can include creative new products and innovation in the details of existing products (ie, the famous micro-innovation). To a large extent, innovation is not the invention of what is not on Earth, but you found that a user's needs have not been satisfied, the user each time to pay a lot of effort to complete one thing, you designed the corresponding products to let him use. From another perspective, innovation can be seen as a "detail-oriented" by-product. In addition to the individual needs to maintain curiosity, the rich exploration spirit, innovation also has the law to follow, there are many molding methods and tools, such as brainstorming, reverse thinking, combination and so on.

Iterations

Iterations, which come out of the realm of mathematics and computing, now exude a strong local flavor. For product design, iteration is wrong to change, constantly change, quickly change. This is not so much a product design needs to have a quality, rather than a method should be mastered. Internet products because of its special technical form, so that its update cost is low, there is no delay in delivery, this has to say is the Gospel of Internet designers and researchers: online found bad to get rid of the face of multiple scenarios at a loss with A/b test.

The level of the designer

Depending on the ability to compete, product designers can be divided into four levels.

Junior Designer

Such designers are just beginning to design products, they have a great idea of the design of the product, but because of the lack of talent and experience, leading to the basic function of the product is not very reasonable design, the user's subjective feeling is "bad use", "use one or two times do not want to use."

The following cotton slippers can be considered to be from the hands of junior designers.

It seems to work well, the shoes of the pleasant goat design looks noble and introverted. But it has a fatal design flaw, is a little waterproof function is not, because the base is also covered with flannel, so when you wear in the bathroom and so on the ground wet place for a while, feet wet-water from the soles quickly yin up.

A good design should look like this:

Compare the design of the two remote controls as follows. This looks very high-end on the left, but it is inconvenient to use, it is the most commonly used channel increase and decrease the volume or increase button on the lower part of the remote control, but did not put people conveniently picked up the position can be comfortable operation.

Intermediate Designer

Their products are often designed to be very basic functions, but not intimate. One important reason is that they have only designed features that fail to take into account the use of the scene, which means that the tentacles of the product design do not stretch any further. For example, it is like they designed a variety of shapes and functions of building blocks, but not directly for users to build houses and cars.

For example, the demand for "using a mobile phone as a flashlight" is designed by a mid-level designer: there is a "flashlight" app in the phone, which has an obvious toggle button on and off, and the flashlight should be turned on rather than off when it starts. However, the user scene is: In the night of pitch-black, he is eager to illuminate the world in front of him! According to the design, he had to unlock the screen, find the app in many app seas, and then open the app. This is too much trouble, anti-human ah! To see the intimate design of millet mobile phone: In the lock screen state long press the desktop key to open the flashlight.

Senior Designer

Using advanced product designer to design something, intuitive feeling is:

A. It's easy to get started.

B. It's fun to use.

C. Have stunning features

D. Very thoughtful.

E. Be happy to use it again and again

This product experience is fluent and takes into account most of the usage scenarios.

Let me give you a few more examples:

	Basic Functions	Working with scenes	considering the design of the scene	Notes
KTV Song	can be in accordance with the singer, song name and other ways to song, you can delete the point of songs	One song at a time, to sing in a row, too tired, others embarrassed	Add an "Scrambling order" button to disrupt the song order
TV Exchange Channel	You can press the number to any one, and below the screen you can see the next program message	Most people have a preference for program types, such as just want to see a variety of arts, TV, sports and so on, so you have to change the channel, to find the category he wants to see the program	Add an interface that is sorted by program type, listing all the stations currently playing this type of program, and even having a program search box
Phone Alarm Clock	You can set a one-time and repetitive alarm clock; you can set the alarms week X-week y these days effective	Due to the existence of holidays and lieu, the set of working day alarm clock should not ring when it should ring.	Get the annual national holiday schedule, define an accurate, intelligent "working day"
Map app	Can search the location, choose Bus, drive, walk route	Often driving or taking a taxi home/company, you need to open the app, enter the name of the home, search, selected as the destination, switch to the driving route, click "Get Route" ...	Let the user preset home, the company and other commonly used locations, on the mobile phone main screen, press the "Home" icon, you can automatically give a home from the current location of the driving/bus routes
Mobile app listening to songs	Can play, pause, select Previous/Next, random play, etc.	While walking with the mobile phone to listen to music, encounter do not want to listen to songs need to cut songs, need to unlock, click the next one, lock screen, very troublesome.	Like an ipod, you can flip a phone and cut a song.	Cut the song so convenient, those who have high power out of the cottage machine users play the Divine Comedy, will not be able to stand at any time
Mobile phone scan two-dimensional code	Start the phone inside the two-dimensional code scanning app, you can scan	Users need to first install the two-dimensional Code scan app, when needed, start this app, click the Scan button	Mobile phone camera built-in two-dimensional code scanning function, users do not need to download the app alone: need to scan when the camera Start button can be	The complexity of the operation seriously hinders the rapid popularization of two-dimensional code applications.
Insulation Electric Kettle	Easy to add water, heating, heat preservation and drainage	Users want to drink water, but boiling water and no way to drink immediately, the user again a monkey anxious	Add a few stalls to the selection of insulation, such as 60 degrees, 90 degrees, and "then boiling" button.	60 degrees of water to drink up just, not cold not hot-enjoy the small happiness at any time

Senior designers will also design some small features that make the user feel pleasantly surprised. For example, in the Millet phone, when you just save a new number, and later want to call him or text messages, he unexpectedly appeared in the recent call list and the most recent SMS recipient list there! This kind of intimate small function, will bring a surprise to the user.

God Designer

The product experience designed by God's designer must be very fluid, and God can create new scenes and ways of using them. A few years ago, it was thought that the operation of a computer is the time to enter a line of commands the person who invented the graphical operating interface is a god-level designer; When people think that a mobile phone should be typed as a physical keyboard, abandoning the physical keyboard and assembling the iphone with the big touch screen is a divine design.

Pull, Roll screen automatic page, also is a great design, it broke through the "next page" button of the old tradition, is very suitable for page greedy browsing, you need to do is to constantly rotate the wheel and slide fingers can be.

God's designer can also solve n problems more easily by ingenious and simple design. Now widely used user registration strategy "will email address as user name", but also a good design, it resolved the account name duplicate, authenticity verification, secret mailbox and other issues.

Product interaction

Products to the complex implementation of the interactive interface to hide, the internal circuit and code can be wretched some, but the interface should be decent and easy to use.

Physical shapes are easier to perceive than planar logos (text and icons): Most headphones are left and right with "L, R", and OCD sufferers, like me, need to see each other carefully before taking it. A good design is to design a bump in the "L" area so that you can pick up the headset to distinguish it from the touch.

The headset of the convex point

In terms of expression, there are several rules:

Color is easier to distinguish than text.

The figure is easier to understand than the text.

A list is easier to understand than a large paragraph description.

Tables are suitable for displaying "multidimensional comparisons of multiple objects."

The same rules apply to any email or document you write.

Do not throw professional terminology and complex operations to the user. You are designing software for users, not designers and developers. Also is the scan Trojan, clean up the trash file, 360 called it "computer Checkup", and hit the score, also said "you defeated the number of users in the country", all this makes the original very esoteric technical operation become easy to understand, such packaging, will also increase your use frequency.

Let the user quickly on the ground hand, quickly understand what this product is doing and can start playing. If the product has a more complex setting, hide it first and follow most of the situation. High-level users who are good at exploring can fine-tune the Setup interface.