Interaction Design Dimension: Single page interaction and system level

Article Description: interaction designers are a big and small career, and it all depends on you.

Interaction designers are a big and small career, and it all depends on you

Product Manager and Interaction designer has been the topic of continuous, some people think that the interaction designer can be counted as half product manager, but also some people think that the interaction designer's living space is too small, basically become a broken paint, and so on the whole. Before, I wrote 2 articles roughly to express some of my views on the relationship between the two, and in "the Product manager I understand" I think the product manager needs to focus on 3 aspects of product design, engineering technology and product operation; on "PRD writing based on Axure" I outlined how a product manager could make a more presentable "break drawing" without the help of an interactive designer. Today, with some recent project experiences, summarize how the product manager works better with the interaction designer.

First of all, I understand that interactions include 2 levels of interaction, single page interaction and system-level interaction . Single-page interaction is the most common positioning of interactive designers, for example, a registration and landing page to achieve the ultimate, a search box experience to do the best, and the system is the interaction between the various pages of the interaction between the various pages of how to better link together, now obvious interaction designers talk about this topic.

According to the traditional waterfall model, requirements analysis – product design – Product development – Functional testing – Release and maintenance, the next node in this process must be fully buttoned up before it can begin. So in most cases it is the product manager first to do the requirements analysis, and then start to write enough detailed (attention to this extent) product requirements documents, interactive designers based on PRD documents to do interactive design, finished delivery to the visual designer to do the results, and finally pay the technical staff to do the development. In this process, from the beginning of the demand to the final development of things often difficult to ensure the accuracy of the delivery of their needs, but also to the interaction of the designer's living space greatly compromised. So, the most common situation is "I obviously want to be the holy, but in the end you gave me a grandchild monkey." To avoid this, we tried to improve the process as follows:

1. Requirements Analysis Stage

The product Manager produces a research report in the product research and requirements analysis phase that describes the project background, project benefits, the core requirements of the user, and what functional modules we need to use to meet the core needs of the user. In this process, product managers only need to consider how to maximize the most elegant to meet the needs of users, do not need to consider the technical implementation of the difficulty. Be sure not to let some technical thinking make your mind rigid or limited!

One of the important things a product manager needs to do after the entire requirements analysis is to determine the difficulty of the requirements implementation with the development engineer, which needs to be implemented immediately, which are to be developed over time, and which are not achievable at present. Then the need to do a second screening and analysis, while trying to find alternatives, the current can not be realized temporarily into the demand pool, into the Engineer Research and development plan.

2, the first transmission of demand

After the requirements analysis iteration is completed and the review is passed, the product manager needs to begin to manipulate the requirements and make the first pass. Generally include the prioritization of requirements, how to turn these requirements into an operable product, and how to display the form. At this stage, you need to output 2 things, a requirements overview and a product architecture diagram. Requirements overview Mainly to the requirements analysis phase of the team members after the reunification of the summary, in fact, is to continue to accurately describe the "Resolution of what the situation of what the problem", and the product map is the most important output of this stage, he is the foundation of the entire product, Includes which modules are included in the product, and how the relationships between the modules are.

The Product Manager delivers the requirements overview and the product architecture diagram to the interaction designer, who is required to complete the paging of the requirements, including the logical determination of the page under the product architecture, and the interaction logic of the single page. For example, it's like a product manager offering a bead to an interactive designer and telling the interaction designer how to set up the beads in tandem, and what the interaction designer needs to do is to concatenate the beads and show them to the user in the most moving form. In this process, the product manager needs to give the interaction designer enough trust, but only if the two are consistent with the core requirements of the product, the interaction designer will lead the Bead series, and the product manager can take the direction. Finally, the product manager and the interaction designer accept the prototype review, complete the product requirement document and make the second delivery.

In the process of product design, relative to other aspects of demand transfer, product managers will need to pass to the interactive designer link is most important, interaction designer understanding of the needs and grasp will directly determine the effect of subsequent demand delivery.

3, the demand for the second to third time delivery

After the delivery of the product needs to meet the core needs to be recognized, product framework and product logic are confirmed, in the next transfer process, mainly related to visual designers, development engineers, the problem has been small, facing a core problem is the scheduling period. This can be done directly in the "elements of the user experience" approach, "it is not possible to complete this phase of work, to begin the next phase, and to complete this phase at the end of the next phase."

Image source: Elements of the user experience

In addition, due to the particularity of mobile devices, mobile Internet product design is more different than traditional web design, interaction designers, visual designers provide the effect is not like web design can be completely simulated on the real machine. Therefore, in the mobile product design, must join the interaction designer, the visual designer's true machine effect confirmation.

After a long ramble, in fact summed up is such a few points:

1, to meet what people in what circumstances of what the needs of things, must be delivered in each of the process is accurate transmission, at the same time the whole team to form a unified understanding;

2, professional people to do professional things, interaction designer is the most important part of the process of demand transfer, preferably by the product manager to put forward a preliminary product demand outline, by the interactive designer to improve the outline, and then pass down

3. It is not possible to complete the work of this phase until the next stage is completed and the phase of this phase is complete at the end of the next phase.

4. The particularity of the mobile device product design causes the final effect of each link must be required to do a return on the real machine

5, interactive Designer is a big can be a small occupation, this, completely depends on your own