Design and expression

We often emphasize the communication ability in the work, and product, development, testing and other roles of people need to communicate, and leadership, colleagues need to communicate, communication is a two-way process, and communication needs both sides have a good ability to express. A product, she wants to face is the final user, the user can understand this product, will use this product even likes the product, largely depends on the designer to the product annotation, then this core ability is the designer's expression ability.

Whether it is interactive design or visual design, a large part of the designer's work is the business logic through the appropriate way to interpret, the core is the need for excellent accurate expression, and expression is not limited to the visual elements of the performance layer, such as icons, text, control, interface layout, In the different stages of product design expression has a different embodiment.
This paper attempts to illustrate the manifestation and importance of expressive ability in different stages from the following points.

Performance model (expression of mental model)

The ultimate goal of products is to meet the needs of users, user needs based on the user's psychological model, the performance model to the extent of the close to the user's psychological model, often determines the extent to which the product has been recognized by users.

People tend to explain what happens in their own way, and the designer's interpretation of the function needs to take into account the experience and usage habits of most users, or the expectation of new product use, and find the most effective and understandable way to express it.

For example, in Google Earth software, click the plus sign, the world is pulled closer, closer to the user, click the minus sign, the earth is pulling far away from users, of course, you can also use the mouse wheel to control distance.

Figure 1 Google Earth control view controls

So how can I understand the corresponding relationship between the minus and the spatial distance? Recall that we commonly used to look at the software, click the plus sign to enlarge, click on the minus sign is to reduce the current picture, where the plus and minus sign and zoom out to form a corresponding relationship, so I can learn from the previous experience to understand the meaning of Google Earth this control, This model of performance is consistent with the design of the user's mental model.

Figure 2 ACDSee Zoom in and zoom out control

The understanding of the same product by different people may be different, just as there are 1000 different images of Hamlet in 1000 minds. In product design, as long as we can ensure that users can form a simple, effective cognitive model, the performance model is reasonable.

Simplifying interaction (better expression of behavior)

Many times, we have to face a lot of information and functions need to be communicated to the user, but we can not let the interface is full of buttons and information, we need to do subtraction, may be the user temporarily unused functions or the use of low frequency features hidden, it is possible to group logically similar functions, reuse part of the interface Or you might be using one control to implement more than one function to accomplish more tasks.

Give an example of an iphone. We all know that the traditional mobile phone has a huge physical keyboard, when users do not need to input, the keyboard is actually not much use, the iphone's touch screen using a virtual keyboard design, the user needs to input when the keyboard appears, greatly saving valuable screen space, At the same time, the interference of user task flow has been minimized.

Fig. 3 Virtual keyboard for Iphone

Rich feedback (rich expression of detail)

In the communication between people, sometimes the language will appear poor and weak. In the love of men and women, women do not need to speak, a look can let the other person to take the hint; talking to strangers, holding hands in front of your chest, reflecting the threat they pose to me, instinctively need to seek protection; in human communication, communication media is rich and complex.
In computer and human communication, the tools we can use seem to have a lot of limitations. We cannot expect computers to speak, nor can computers understand our complex language and posture. In the software interface, is commonly used is a cold dialog box thrown to the user, if the copy design is not good, users will have a huge frustration, as the Windows Error message dialog box, accompanied by the horror of the sound, will let me feel very frustrated, accompanied by irritability.

Figure 4 Error message dialog box

It seems that people are accustomed to using dialog boxes, and the dialog box becomes a standard. In "About Face 3", Cooper talks about modeless visual feedback (RVMF), which is to provide timely and richer feedback through visual means without interrupting the user's flow through a dialog box. In this respect, the game software is doing well. Empires, for example, with the escalation of civilization, the icons of architecture and soldiers will be bigger and more gorgeous, and when the war takes place, there will be smoke, flames, and the destruction of the buildings until they fall. In short, the game provides a rich simulation of the reality of the visual and auditory and other channels of feedback, bringing the user's experience is real and delicate.

In fact, think more, with the development of computer technology, human-computer interaction is far from limited to the vision of this dimension, people need to enrich the natural feedback, only a visual latitude feedback is not enough. The popularity of the Wii, the wide application of touch screen reflects people in the continuous pursuit of natural interaction in the field of progress, perhaps there will be more and richer feedback in the future to achieve communication between people and computers, and we will have more channels of communication between computers and computers than through dialog boxes.

How important the copywriting is (the expression of product characteristics)

Copy design is an indispensable part of product design and an important means of conveying information. The quality of copywriting can sometimes have a huge impact on the product.
To see a news headline:

Three national trade market layout Yuzhong

This title has two ways of understanding, which makes it easy for users to misunderstand.

Look at one more example of QQ space:

Figure 5 QQ Space Mall Home

"Dress Up Home" is my space to decorate the home page, or dress up the home page?

We also see in some SNS website some quite personalized copywriting, active the atmosphere of the website, also bring some fun to the user. Look at the example of a white society. He can be based on the characteristics of the user community and time information to generate some and users can resonate with the copy, tick the reference to write something.

Figure 6 White society writing mood Tips

In google Mail's spam list, if you don't have a spam message, the following text appears:

As you can see, a good copy design reflects the quality of the product, and the style of the copywriting should be consistent and consistent with the user-group characteristics of the product. For example, the development of software tips should be as clear and accurate as possible, such colloquial text as "awesome" is not appropriate here.

In summary, the expression ability can be embodied in the understanding of user needs, product interaction behavior optimization, can also be reflected in the provision of more user-rich and natural feedback and unique, excellent copy design, etc., the expression of this concept throughout the entire design process.

For designers, accurate and clear ability to express is a basic ability, but also a very important quality, at each stage of product design need to pay attention to the rationality of expression, expression is not only about the layout so simple.