5 design problems that seriously affect the user experience

Today's translation is all about the obvious, but especially easy to make mistakes of the user experience common sense, don't say, light the second question of the Hamburg menu has been so many sites lying gun. If you have a systematic user experience knowledge, read the 5 frequently asked questions, and the effect will definitely increase.

To make products acceptable to users and willing to use, there are many conditions to meet. You need to know what the target group of product services is, what problems they have to address, what advantages your product offers to the solution and the methods they are using now, how you need to guide and help them, and so on.

As a user experience designer, there are many things to consider, from how to attract users to use products, to lead them to get started, and to help them solve practical problems. However, if the end product often makes the user feel incompetent, then all efforts will be put into the water.

In this article, we discuss some common UX design issues, and see how to make users more natural use of the product, to avoid being thrown into confusion and frustration.

　　Question 1: Be creative, not usability

Creativity is a good thing, if you abandon the product itself and the characteristics of the target users, one-sided to creative and creative, in order to smart and smart, then you are taking the user's long-term cognitive habits to take risks, gambling on the most likely is the core value of the product.

Some sort of unconventional, creative approach to navigation might be good for certain types of products in mobile devices, but what about the Web pages on the desktop side? It's really popular to transplant the design pattern of the mobile end to the desktop--creative look, a new way of interacting, a delicate dynamic-- But none of this is to the point where the user finds in a particular product context the confusion and irritation of what they once knew was worthless, and the usability problems of outdated design patterns are still behind them.

As a designer, be creative in the right place and make sure that new ideas are not only available but also easy to use. Provide just the right guidance tips when necessary – the so-called ' just right ', on the one hand, in the face of new design, users can accept a certain degree of learning process, but often is extremely lack of patience, think of our own in the new app when the feeling will know, so do not detail, do not weigh the weight level; , the help information is not less than the user when they have to understand what is what to use when it is absolutely impossible to understand-only to provide a tall appearance and operation mode, knowing that users will be overwhelmed but unable to provide effective ancillary information in the right place, your product will soon make those dazed users feel stupid, Or think your product is stupid.

　　Problem 2: Over-design

If the final interface does not look exciting enough to make people feel different, designers tend to feel that they have done something wrong or less, and that others often use the sense of "lack of design" as an evaluation. In fact, for most types of product interface, clear, accurate, at a glance information presentation way than the overly tangled visual style is more important. The so-called excessive design, which includes overly complex style, also includes excessive simplicity, or any other kind of neglect of product characteristics and information weight blindly pursue a certain style of design ideas.

　　Sassiholford

The navigation in the above diagram page is an example. This site by default is not display navigation, only in the upper left corner of a hamburger icon, the entire first screen is a beautiful picture. Today this style of Web page is not a few, regardless of its content type is not really fit, all in the head placed a huge picture, and important navigation elements are hidden by default to the hamburger icon behind.

Usability is the cornerstone of interactive design, and discovery is the door that products should always be open to users. For many products, the global unified default rendering navigation structure is the most important element in the interface. Users will never fall in love with your style of expression if they have to spend time and attention to find the navigation menu and spend additional interactive costs to make it work.

In addition to the visual style of the problem, at the interactive level, the same need to grasp the "degree", such as in the mobile app to avoid too much custom gestures to use, to avoid in the form too innovative to the user's cognitive load challenges the interactive model, avoid the original applicable design patterns for meaningless transformation.

Naturally, we do not want to make the product boring – it is important to see whether the use of the "not boring" elements is appropriate or not. In the final analysis, we do this kind of design, ultimately for the achievement of products, service users, as well as your design of the interface can be received on the dribbble how much praise, it is not so important.

Recommended reading: "Do not forget beginner's mind!" talk about the past and present of minimalist style (i)

　　Question 3: Think about what you know about the user

Assuming that users have the same ability to deal with problems, assuming that they have the same capabilities, what kind of characteristics they have, including life experience, education background, needs, situation, etc., this is a mistake we are very apt to fall into. The solution is to do some homework before the design begins, that is, we are familiar with the research work, whether formal or informal.

The specific preliminary research strategy is not discussed here, you need to understand the way of the general include:

Personas (user Personas): A characteristic framework that depicts one or more typical target users, including their psychological, behavioral, and professional characteristics, and the association between these characteristics and the use of the product. For example, the role models of novice users often need to show some of their dubious features, while the role models of senior users are more focused on fast and efficient experience requirements.

Experience Map (Experience Maps): Experience maps can help you comb the experience of a typical user throughout the lifecycle of a product, including before, during, and after use, giving you a clearer picture of the overall requirements situation.

User Interview interviews: Go out and communicate with actual users, interact with them, and record their actions, including a degree of real-world research.

In addition, the characteristics of novice users and senior users does not mean that you need to dilute the design plan to only meet the level of novice users. The excellent product experience itself should be flexible enough to focus on helping the middle and senior users to accomplish their tasks efficiently, while also providing the necessary ways to help new users get started quickly.

　　Issue 4: Forcing users to accept the rules of the designer's game

It is interesting to see the user operate the interface in a way that you have never thought of in the process of actual use. As designer Marcin Treder in the interaction design best Practices Book, "Never underestimate the power of the minimum frictional path."

In usability testing, discovering that users are using the product in ways you don't expect is usually a valuable bonus, proving that the test is not done in vain. In the face of this situation, you usually have two choices:

Encourage them to continue the task process in their own way

To stop and provide the so-called official path

It is recommended that you choose the former. If you find that the user in the test has a certain commonality in the operation process, it is best to consider rethinking your functional processes in the next iteration. The user's chosen mode of operation may be more in line with what he expects in the actual demand scenario, and based on the reasons behind your findings, you may be able to explore a truly natural and fluent interface for these target users. Force users to follow the "normative process" you've been sitting in your office, and in practice if they find it hard to adjust their thinking patterns in a short period of time, they probably feel powerless to handle the software.

The existing purpose of both norms and models is to shape products, service users, not to the cart before the horse, practice is the only criterion to test truth. If your perceptions are in fact preventing the target user from accomplishing their tasks efficiently, it may be your idea to change, rather than forcing users to spend additional time and energy adapting to the new tool usage rules in addition to using tools to solve problems.

　　Problem 5: Lack of actual user testing

After updating to iOS 7, users have experienced a general pain in the keyboard problem, and the pain has even continued to this day. Problems include the new space bar is too short, the SHIFT key state table is unknown, and so on, then angered a lot of users.

Apple has been fixing some of the keyboard problems in the next update (iOS 9, which is now officially released), but the damage has been real. It's not clear that Apple has been involved in real-world usability testing when it comes to introducing a completely new operating system, but we can be sure that the keyboard problem since IOS 7 vividly reflects the importance of usability testing in another way.

Formal or informal usability testing can effectively help you detect potential problems that can cause users to become confused and confused enough to feel incompetent once they are posted online, and the benefits usually go beyond your imagination.

During the testing process, there are some issues to focus on, such as:

Whether the task is completed successfully: To see if the user in question can successfully complete the tasks you have set, and how they use the function and handle the error without any help.

Whether the navigation mechanism is effective: focus on the smoothness of navigation and the cost of interaction between the users under test.

Information weight is reasonable: to observe whether the measured user can notice the most important information and function of the interface.

　　Summary

The truly excellent experience comes from the wonderful ideas that are based on reality and the heartfelt care of the users. Products full of design intentions can motivate users to act effectively in a positive emotional state, just as functional designers are around to help them accomplish tasks together.

Whether you are UX design new or industry experts, the goal should be consistent: we design products, the ultimate goal is to serve the needs of the user's task, the entire process to provide a natural smooth operation experience, to avoid confusing them confused, helpless. With this goal in mind, we need to consider a number of common problems in design combat, including the five points mentioned in this article:

Being creative and smart makes it difficult to achieve a truly usable, easy-to-use interface, so that users have to pay too much for their knowledge in order to use the product.

Avoid excessive design, whether it is overly complex or overly simple. "Boring" in the eyes of the designer is likely to be a symbol of clarity and ease of use for ordinary users.

Do not assume that the user understands what you know, and provides a small and effective help guide in the right context.

The process model you have envisioned may not be really suitable for the target user to solve the problem in practice, and to do the necessary research work.

To maintain the test, to observe whether the representative users can use the product prototype smooth completion of the task script, based on the test results to iterate, and then test and verify.