Design contradictions say

In the product team often hear people say: "We want to do a concise user interface", while another voice came: "We want to do a powerful product." At first glance, simplicity means a refinement of user interface controls, but how does a few interactive ways express various powerful features? Conversely, strong means rich and powerful, must have intricate connections, how to keep their interface concise? The two seem to be unable to coexist, which makes me suddenly think of contradictory stories, The Merchant of Chu boasted his spear was sharp, and his shield was strong, "Yizi, the shield of the son, how?" the Invincible Spear and the shield of the solid rock cannot exist at the same time, they are mutually exclusive and interdependent. In the process of product design, we will also encounter a lot of contradictions, all kinds of contradictions filled with each of our design details, and then talk about a few of them let me more impressive.

The contradiction between overt function and recessive work

In the age of reading, the eye economy is in the way, people have been accustomed to judging from the obvious things to judge value, believe what you see is what you gain. Boss is likely to be based on the number of product function points to budget allocation and determine the workload of the team, so as to conduct performance appraisal. At the same time, the design sector has blown the "product function to do subtraction" wind, and strive to highlight the key to remove the edge function. So many product team in the attempt to remove some of the functions, for the product to lose weight, it is inevitable to face the boss of the query. "You haven't delivered anything in this sprint, have you been too busy?" the user said. From the point of view of the boss, the research and development team constantly put into development, produce new functions to improve the old function, take out the visible things, is the guarantee of productivity. No new features, but reduced a lot of content, how do you prove that everyone is working hard, the team to pay?

In its essence, I would rather believe that this is a misunderstanding of the concept than that it is a pair of contradictions. The function of subtraction can make the product is relatively simple, streamlined process, to the point, the user efficiency, satisfaction naturally also improve, this is the best account of the user. All-Inclusive's product era is over, in more attention to focus, pay attention to the heterogeneity of today, the team through the covert work analysis data adjustment architecture integration function, refused in order to comprehensive and compromise, it seems that the product has less dominant function, in fact, the delineation of more target users, increased product sales, should be a greater contribution, How can you think that there is not enough work?

The contradiction between efficient workflow and security

E-commerce is a big business, and the design of payment process is very important to the user experience. Here, for example, the payment of online shopping, users in the purchase of goods, we should provide a reasonable way to pay to complete the order. The user's request for payment is convenient and fast at the same time with very high security, this is undoubtedly a group of contradictions. High efficiency necessarily means that the payment steps are brief, the designer should allow the user to complete the payment process in as few steps as possible, however, some procedures need to be added to ensure the user's account security and reduce the loss of the user due to the operation error, but some details, The addition of security certification and validation steps will make the payment process lengthy and increase the cognitive costs of some users.

To resolve this contradiction, the analysis should be carried out from the context of the user environment.

First, for different platforms,

1. Computer:

Fishing procedures, Trojans more than the worm, mainly security, emphasizing the reduction of user pay risk. The display content display is adequate in size, adequate payment details and confirmation steps are provided on the process. At the same time, because of the comfort and richness of the operation, can provide users with a fast payment channel, only to provide key steps to quickly complete the payment.

2. Mobile Devices:

Mobile devices are generally personal products with relatively high security, so there are no more security plug-ins on PCs. Partial payments are generated during the mobile process and can streamline payment steps, focusing on how to help users quickly complete payments.

And then for different scenarios,

1. Large transactions:

Would rather sacrifice part of the process of convenience also to ensure security, in the amount of payment and the number of goods and other important information on the need to repeatedly confirm.

2. Large businesses:

Direct delivery of goods to pay, the user only need to submit contact information can be received when the goods in person to pay, which is undoubtedly the most convenient way of payment. Users do not care whether to open the net silver, whether there is a phishing site, the entire process is also extremely fast. However, this payment method is not secure to the merchant, there will be some users refuse to accept the situation, so does not apply to all businesses.

3. VIP Customers:

As a result of a large number of transactions before the successful case, the user and merchants to establish a good foundation of cooperation, at this time the payment process should be convenient and rapid, such as the establishment of VIP channels, so that the VIP customers smooth completion of transactions as soon as possible. What, a security issue? Past trading has brought a lot of tacit understanding, both sides of the contact method is also clear, the security here is relatively not as important as the previous large transactions.

The contradiction between the road and the simplicity and the design without connotation

Millet recently announced the Millet mobile phone, its appearance, with the Millet design team words is:

"No design is the best design. ”

Some people think that this design with simplicity for the United States, put aside all the other useless decoration, to the original ecological appearance, so that users pay more attention to its function and performance. Other people think that its appearance is not characteristic, the simple copy style lacks the connotation, is a kind of failure design.

Regardless of who is right and wrong, its design has undoubtedly led to a paradox: a well-designed product, it seems to be not designed, whether it is boulevard to Jane or no connotation of design?

Let's take a look at the difference between the two sides:

Avenue to Jane after a long period of research and deliberation, the design to do very simple, simple and God is not simple. For example, the design concept of the original institute, Apple's product design style.

No connotation of the design is not their own precipitation, quick success of the copying of others, although can learn its shape, but always can not learn its God, this Yue no connotation. For example, some of the domestic mobile phone, such as some TV shopping ads inside the invincible products.

The key to solving the contradiction lies in how to achieve minimalist design on the basis of rich connotations. We can in the early stages of design to put all the value of the content into the design concept, and then do subtraction to see what content can simplify the merger, which has no effect on the target users, on its basis quweicunzhen, appropriate to leave the white, to the user think and imagine space. We believe that such a number of iterations of the "slimming" products must be the boulevard to the best interpretation of the design.

What is the appearance of the millet mobile phone, the answer only after the listing through enough users to experience and then from Word-of-mouth learned.

The contradiction between design-driven demand and design to meet demand

We all know that in the face of demand, product design is divided into two stages:

1. Mining demand and meeting demand

Users know what kind of products they want, and we need to help them design products based on these specific requirements, which is designed to meet the requirements phase.

2. Create demand and lead demand

Users don't realize what kind of products they need, and we help users create these needs in advance and lead them to a better user experience. Users sometimes do not know what they want and do not prevent them from accepting the new product you create, which is the stage of design-driven demand.

At present, most products are located in the first stage or between two stages, then how to define the use of the design to drive user needs, or design to achieve user needs, is also a contradiction.

Only the products designed to drive demand may be too avant-garde to satisfy the appetite of the taste buds of the people and unattractive to the public. For example, Nintendo in 1995 launched the Super concept of the game machine Virtual Boy, it gave up the 2D of exquisite gorgeous and 3D of the scene, will sell points positioning in stereo imaging, using the head wearing binocular body and polarization image display system to display stereo game screen. The machine has become the biggest blunder in Nintendo's history because it is too advanced, deviates from user needs, and has a red-screen experience.

And only focus on the design to meet the needs of products, even if you can get some users, but can not grasp the essence of demand, so that can not provide a further experience, in the long run, is also unable to achieve success. Shanzhai machines are dedicated to copying the functions of other mobile phones, and are not always able to walk in the forefront of innovation and lead demand.

Requirements can be presented by the user, but not by the user. After all:

-Users cannot know exactly what they want until the product is designed;

-The user does not know what product is feasible;

-the needs of various types of users are complex, lack of unity.

The best way is to combine the two, in order to meet the needs of users, based on the evolution of technology, from the user experience and emotional needs to start, design heterogeneous products, so that users can meet the same time to bring them surprises.

Most intuitively, before the April 2010, most people were unaware of their need for tablets (though there are already tablets like Tablet PCs) until they experience the ipad. The ipad, while leading the public into the tablet era, has also satisfied users with the need to quickly browse the Web, read E-books, listen to music, watch videos, and create the Apple myth with the iphone.

Before the advent of the Blu-ray disc, most users have been satisfied with the 480P quality of the DVD, which is a big difference compared with VCD. Without the development of technology, design pioneers to advance 720p,1080p and other higher resolution requirements, I am afraid that everyone will still live in the DVD era, and high-definition images missed.

The contradiction between product fast on-line and high quality design scheme

Before getting the demand, I will consider a very long time, first study the market, survey users, analyze competitors, build models, come up with a lot of solutions, step by step, very want to open a good head, improve the design quality. Although this discreet design pattern is true, however, in the rapid iterative market competition, under the challenge of agile design process, you are still in the development stage, people have the initial prototype on the line to rob the first users, and then you still do the concept, people have been based on the previous user feedback updated version, While retaining users, they have won more users, finally, you hold out a set of the more rigorous and no flaws of the plan, on the line after a look, the competitor has been sitting on a large number of loyal users, and users want to be a far cry from your products, you have to push down again ... So, you spend a lot of time crunching things out of the competitor's fast-online product second kill. Of course, the quality of the rapid iterative design must also withstand the test, can not be random nonsense users, put half the tone of the scheme up. Here, how to handle the quality of the design and improve the speed of the product on-line becomes a pair of contradictions.

Here, I do not have an absolutely suitable method, can only talk about some personal feelings. In the past, small companies to pragmatic light process, to win efficiency, large companies heavy flow of light speed to steady victory. Now, with the rise of Internet products and agile development, this situation has changed a lot. Any products are fastidious about excellent design and rapid occupation of the market, the product is good or bad, more through the market to verify. The designer obtains the demand, carries on the fast context design (rapid-contextual designs), does not seek the perfect, only then through the feasibility test, the usability test and the value test, can release the initial version to receive the trial, obtains the real user's feedback first, evaluates the effective suggestion and quickly realizes, Continuously adjust the design and real demand gap, and then use parallel deployment or incremental deployment of the way to update the version, after several rounds of iterations, the quality of the design scheme will be greatly improved, but also has a certain user base.

Summarize

There are too many contradictions in the design process, in addition to the above points, as well as:

-The contradiction between concise interface and complex functional requirement

-The initial version of the function is too little and meet the user's large demand contradictions

-the contradiction between the product function 28 law and the long Tail theory

-Listen to the contradictions of user feedback and blindly follow the user's suggestion

-The contradiction between general design pattern and individuation

-to beautify and maintain the essence of contradictions

......

And so on contradictions.

This is a contradictory world, so is the process of product design. How to deal with all kinds of contradictions, not only is the core challenge of designer work, but also the key details of product design. It is always a complicated thing to use universal rules in concrete examples, this article is not the absolute method of solving contradictions, and expounds a kind of solution when encountering such contradictions. Designers in the face of every contradiction will be in their own way to respond, here hope to provide a framework and ideas, so that we can more frankly face them and actively to solve.

Through the previous discussion of contradictions, we can find that we generally start from two directions to solve:

One. Conflict resolution

To eliminate contradictions, so that the contradictions between the two sides no longer exist. For example, to strengthen communication and mutual understanding of the starting point and position, on-demand analysis and for different scenarios to provide solutions, comprehensive consideration to grasp the focus of product slimming and so on.

Two. Contradiction restriction

In the case that the contradiction will exist for a long time, we can adjust the power of both sides to achieve the balance of each other. For example, to meet the needs of the user at the same time the appropriate input power innovation to lead the user needs, the use of feasibility testing, usability testing and value testing to maintain high-quality design while speeding up the product release rhythm, early access to user feedback and quick follow-up, and so on.

The above two methods are closely related and can be converted to each other under certain conditions. When some contradictions can not be resolved, we have to use the power distribution of both sides to promote contradictions to balance the direction, and when some contradictions between the power gap is too big to balance, we have to find ways to strengthen communication to make trade-offs, to help eliminate contradictions.

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