Design is productivity: making it easier for users to find information

　　Design is productivity.

Menghong

I have recently launched an online roundtable forum on the theme: design is productivity. This online discussion is far from a simple demonstration of the aforementioned proposition, ranging from the personal cultivation of the designer to the combination of design and technology trends. In fact, designers share more than they know what they expect.

The following text is selected from this discussion:

　　New trends and design of science and technology

Interactive design is certainly inseparable from the development of hardware and software. What is the direction of technology? Moonmonster, Baidu's Shanghai Mobile Internet user experience leader, summed up 13 potential trends, including the intellectualization of private goods, the changes in smart home appliances, the war on set-top boxes, voice, body sense, and social syndrome. He said:

If you try to draw a circle, the middle is a person, from the user recently, the core of the circle is the privatization of some equipment, and some of the outer ring is the PC, home appliances, etc., so if a company can occupy the private goods circle in the core position, it will also mean that it brings amazing market and opportunity.

"Man is the yardstick of all things in the world"--Protagoras. The design was created from the beginning of the human use of tools, with the development of human civilization, a number of years, the tools have been turned upside down, but during the period of people always, the modern operation of computers and the original use of stone axe primitive people in the physiological characteristics of almost no changes, hands, five senses, the brain ... The nature of design has not changed, and people as a standard can still measure design.

and BRI Design founder horsepower, from the "Less is more", "form following the function" and other classical ideas, combined with the evolution of scientific and technological trend prediction Design:

Most of the time, the design is like a game with the user, you guess you guess guess, guess you lucky. The user's cognitive costs are high. Now and in the future, interface design is trying to reduce the user's cognitive costs, the information architecture flattened, so that users more easily find information. Different user scenarios (such as browsing without explicit intent, positioning/searching with a clear purpose) need to be better supported.

From the perspective of information architecture and interactive flow, no matter how the trend of the future changes, in the final analysis, all of them are reducing the cognitive costs, so that the content of the interface is more direct and convenient to present in front of the user. This implementation can also become Flat design.

Interface design should not be too much to rob the user's attention, as the Louis Sullivan design of the building, as streamlined to no longer streamlined, any interface elements, must be functional services, must have its purpose. Simplicity and cleanliness will remain the mainstream for some time to come.

Design trend is a wave, the final result is aesthetic fatigue, aesthetic utility gradually reduced, just as the marginal utility in economics decline, until the next trend appears. I have joked summed up: "Flat long will be convex, convex long will be flat, round long will square, square long must circle ...".

Google Glass, Leap Motion and so on new technology, the emergence of new products, is the interactive feasibility of the interval to continue to push outward. Now, although there is no such thing as an interactive device or technology that can really produce the epoch-making impact of the invention of the mouse, we can see that the lightweight and sensitive interaction continues to bloom.

　　The self-cultivation of the designer

So how should a good interaction designer grow up? Rigo Design founder Zhu Yin shared a pattern that he and the designers often discussed: 10%+20%+70%.

Designer's growth of 10%: participate in meaningful industry summits, participate in meaningful professional exchanges or training, focus on industry dynamics and knowledge, expand professional vision. This level of help to improve the designer will probably be in 10%;

The growth of the designer 20%: The design of the mentor, in your design road, there will always be the stage of the short or knowledge structure of the missing corner. At this time, the search for a good mentor, but also friends in you when you encounter a professional bottleneck, platform period, creative vacuum period, to the road on the way to guidance, or experience sharing, are valuable gifts in your career. This level of help for a designer's ascension is roughly 20%;

70% of the growth of the designer: daily work. Daily seemingly mundane work, from the confusion of encountering every problem, to the process of every difficult solution, from every thought process to each round of team collaboration and design iterative polishing. The success of every day's work by the experience and lessons learned, is to help designers really improve the maximum of 70%. It is also called: to listen to Thunder in a silent place.

Be clear about what your goals are, understand what your strengths are, and leave the rest to focus and persistence. One word is good: persistence is a long process, but fortunately, we are not in a hurry.

The horsepower mentioned above also shares some of his thoughts, such as:

If the skills involved in the user experience domain are simply divided into: User research, product (concept/function) design, interactive design, visual design, engineering technology, I think any interaction designer and visual designer, and so on, should have a whole combination of skills, but which part is more or less the problem.

No greater enthusiasm than to act immediately.

Become geek. The interaction designers themselves need to be superuser, which means that they need a lot of, even crazy, to immerse themselves in the product with a variety of products in the relevant fields.

Beyond the user and back to the user. After mastering a lot of information, you need to be able to return to the user's perspective. Interactive designers never represent themselves, but represent the user, they want to become the user at any time, dynamic switching.

Interaction designers need to work with different roles and synergies with the team, and with the other team members empathy. A simple design may mean that the development of the brothers to work overtime for a long time, so the question is, this design is good? Is there an alternative design that can make the project cost-efficient?

Find a good project, a good team. There is no good chance, you can not come out. These projects should be a space that can give the interaction designer full play. A good team must pay attention to the role of interaction design.