Cross-departmental communication improvements for user experience staff

Article Description: Cross-functional collaboration of the user experience.

Since the user experience can not be completed by the user experience, but by the different functions of the entire large team of people to complete the work, there will be a collaboration problem. If the door is closed, let product managers, designers, engineers convened this function complained critical Congress, you will hear the following: Product manager said that designers and engineers do not have the overall picture, the total in a pinch; designers say engineers often excuse the technology and do not want to improve Engineers say that product managers and designers have repeatedly changed their product design and trouble-maker according to their own ideas ... Similar situations appear in a variety of teams because of the lack of good personality or the soft skills to communicate together. There may be reasons for this, but there are obviously other major reasons.

The common goal of a team with a good user experience

Each function of the personnel from their respective professional background, complete the work of this function, we have made their own contribution to the product. Fig. 1 This cartoon shows how different functional personnel conceive the same product, and that these ideas are combined to produce results.

Fig. 1 interface design in different people's hearts by J.max

Although "Everyone has a hamlet of their own", but for the product, the team does not have a common goal of the result is disastrous. Such words as "make the best product" cannot be the real common goal, because it is not clear what the "best" and "best" criteria are. When you put all your goals together and subtract one of the least important goals, the last one should be the common goal of your team. For example, in making a difficult product decision, all the goals and conditions are taken out PK, to the last minute, some enterprises to whether the user benefits for the final standard, and some enterprises to profit as the final standard, and some enterprises to make big Boss satisfaction as the final standard, This reflects the company's common goals and core values. As has been discussed before, the value of the user experience is more difficult to measure, we cannot expect each team consciously to the product user experience excellence as the team's common goal, but we can see that those who achieve real huge and long-term success of products, often are really value the user experience, With excellent or unique user experience as the goal and core competencies.

Of course, the team's common goal on the product also needs to be focused on different product phases. Some products, in the product start-up period, focus on access to new users, through a simple and friendly user experience to rapidly increase the number of users, in the product growth period, focusing on the use of advanced user energy, through the gradual rich user experience to guide users to publish more high-quality content, to initiate more user interaction; In the product maturity, Focus on maintaining and transforming users by providing differentiated user experiences that allow different types of users to not interfere with each other and encourage novice users to convert to advanced users. You can find the user experience focus and metrics that suit your product and build your own specific common goals.

To the best user experience for the entire team in the product of the common goal, is to ensure that the best products in the hands of the most effective way, but this change in the real world often have a great impact on the team. Because everyone's work habits have been formed, may be accustomed to making a cool technique first, and then wanting to use it for the user; may be accustomed to making products according to their own assumptions, not wanting to be unwanted by users, and may be accustomed to copying foreign similar products, whether suitable for local users or not, and may be accustomed to not relying on product quality, And more by operation to achieve success, may be accustomed to the boss or the client to give what, do not take responsibility ... It's very difficult to change these habits, the need for high-level support, appropriate team mechanisms to promote (such as workflow, evaluation and incentive system), but also require the user experience of the work of the leaders themselves have a convincing professional ability, and united with the same belief in the perseverance and perseverance to influence and help more people.

For example, engineers complain that designers are ready to change designs, and designers complain that engineers are unwilling to improve their products according to design. To enable engineers to really understand and support product managers and designers in product design decisions and repeated improvements, the best way is to invite him to participate in product design, experience the process of thinking analysis, design exploration and rapid testing, in the process of understanding the design decision behind the reasons and significance, and the design, Product managers and designers generate confidence. During this time the engineer also often can from the point of view of the implementation of the product to make important suggestions, so the proposal for product design is of course the sooner the better. At the same time, product managers, designers and engineers also need to discuss how to achieve the product can be more convenient and flexible to improve the adjustment later, how to achieve the most efficient products. You will find that the result of this perseverance is that you will have a collaborative, with a strong, executive team.

Balancing individual experience with group commonality

User experience Work It seems that anyone can express their opinions, but don't forget, the purpose of the user experience is to start from the individual experience, to find the group commonness as the basis for design. This is not to say that only the user experience staff have a say in the user experience work, other functions of the personnel's opinion is not count, nor the different functions should not interfere with each other. On the contrary, as long as the right way of thinking, you can effectively participate in the user experience work; people with different functions should be encouraged to have a good user experience for product objectives, to experience thinking for the user, so that the team has a more powerful user experience power.

When you are commenting on the product's user experience, think about it, are you the target user? Does your opinion represent the target user? There is a joke, a technical support engineer received a user call for help, said not even the Internet. The engineer said, check that the red light on your "cat" is not bright. The user is very surprised to say, my family does not have the cat! Read this joke, you may laugh; But in the actual work, many people do not realize that the user and their knowledge background, thinking style, behavior habits are different. There are a lot of examples are developers feel that their products are very useful, but users will not use, and some products can be improved through timely, retain users, but many products have disappeared.

Any individual experience is a clue to the group commonality of experience. Thinking about the reasons behind the imagery and asking the target user to do the testing will help you find the answer faster.

Equal emphasis on creativity and executive power

This is a place for designers to tangle: exploration and creation means uncertainty, no best, only better; however, the product has the release date, has the research and development plan, the product user experience work execution must be certain. This uncertainty, one certainty, creates contradictions.

Try a lot of solutions, but the delay can not choose a better solution, or attachment to the details, will affect the development of the overall situation. But this kind of situation is often only the designer individual problem, better improvement. The other is more serious impact on the overall situation, because time is tight, emphasis on executive power, give up the exploration of problems and solutions, directly propose a solution, start immediately, completed on time. This can seriously affect the quality of the solution, even lead to rework, haste and waste. But what about the time limit? On the one hand, we need reasonable planning time. The product design time a little longer, on the surface is the development of the implementation of less time, but in fact, because the product design to do better, the development of the implementation of more efficient, fully can be in less time to make better results. On the other hand, changes in working methods need to be changed. For example, usually at meetings, the meeting will only discuss, will do the design, a few days to meet again, a look at the design is wrong, go back to redesign, the next meeting to see, so long feedback cycle, waste of time is also more; if it is a meeting to do the design, in the top of the discussion side on the whiteboard to draw the interface effect map, what the problem on the spot to find out what comments , the design is basically OK, and then the execution, the efficiency and the effect is much better, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Whiteboard culture behind, is to encourage cross-functional collaboration, encourage rapid design, rapid validation

Improve communication

It says a lot of ways to work, but in fact the soft skills such as communication skills are also very important. Whether it is the people who love to connect with each other, or the Europeans and Americans who are more independent, it is useful to pay attention to the way of communication, to pay attention to the emotional and psychological needs of others. And those of you who work with you are your companions and comrades, and should be your friends. Of course, there are a lot of books in this area, and there is no discussion here.

In fact there is another level of communication, the language you speak with your partner, the tools you use, the way you do things, which is also a communication.

The designer told the engineer that the distance between the two lines would be increased by 3 pixels. Engineers there is a bit of trouble, because the distance between the two lines is mainly by row height, font, font size, and other factors together, to the different browsers, operating systems to accurately allow two lines of words to increase between 3 pixels, but also really have to move a little brain. But in fact, the distance between the lines may not need to be so accurate, in fact, the designer only told the engineer, the row height from 120% to 130% good.

Designers used to make design tools Photoshop, in order to facilitate control of the design effect, you can build a number of "layers" to place the design elements, but also to create a "folder" collation to place "layer." A designer with good working habits classifies the layers into folders and names the folders and the main layers. This way, when the designer edits the file over a period of time or when a couple of designers collaborate, each person sees the file, and it's easy to understand the structure of the file and find what to edit.

A designer usually gives an engineer a design note that marks the color and size of the element in the interface so that the engineer can implement the numerical programming. Some designers will mark a large number of space between the elements of the interface, this is 1 pixels, there are 2 pixels, there are 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 pixels. In the face of such dimensioning, engineers will be miserable because they need to look very carefully at and set dozens of different spacing. But in fact, is it important to distinguish between 1, 2, 3 pixels, or 7, 8, and 9 pixels? In fact, in a set of design, spacing is also a can be standardized items, such as a total of only three kinds of spacing: small spacing of 3 pixels, 6 pixels in space, large spacing of 12 pixels. This in the design to consider the specification, not only to make the design effect more clear logic, but also greatly simplifies the programming implementation-even do not need to give a callout diagram, as long as the engineer to tell the three kinds of spacing size.

Improving communication at work is not just a soft skill, but also a tool and method that can be used in a real way.

To enable people of different functions to realize that products need to be the best user experience in the hands of the user, and as a common goal, adjust the work of the method and process, so that the user experience thinking really into the work of the team, perseverance, you will certainly get quality products and quality team.

Author Wu Zhohao, creative Workshop user experience Director, has created Google's user Experience team in China. This series of articles will share its experience in building a user experience team in different environments and discuss how to build a user experience force in the enterprise.