User Experience Design: An improved design based on user

Often hear the design team members (or their managers) say, "We need a whole new design." "This is the start of a redesign project from the wrong footing, with the wrong goals and strategies."

In general, a new design will be a bad design simply because the new design breaks the user's expectations. A better strategy is to improve the design based on the familiar design of the user and the understanding of how the system works .

Why internal employees expect new designs

You stare at these things day in and day out. Of course you will be tired of this UI aesthetic. Calculate how much "contact hours" you have spent on your design. If you spend a few years in a design team, you may have been watching for thousands of hours .

Instead, your typical users have spent only a few hours on your design in the past few years. Remember Jakob's Internet user experience principle? "Users spend most of their time on other sites. ”

People are browsing a website for more than 2-3 minutes, so even if users visit your site every day, they will only accumulate 30 "hours of exposure" within two years. In general, even loyal users do not have more than 5 hours a year. In such a short time, users will not be so quick on the site fatigue.

Why users need to be familiar with the design

What is the most important reason? users don't care about the "for them" design ; they just need to take care of their own business and leave. Most people don't like to sit in front of a computer for a long time, they prefer to go to the game and walk the dog--whatever else. Using a computer is probably the same priority as dumping it.

When people visit websites or use software, they are unwilling to spend their time analyzing or appreciating the design. They focus on their tasks, content, and their own data and documents.

Therefore, people like the design is that they are familiar with its functions, and can let them immediately find the need for that function. They are fond of familiar designs.

In fact, whenever you release a redesigned version, be prepared to cope with the flood of angry emails from users. Users hate to change is a natural law, they will complain you remove anything, or let them not to do what they have been doing.

(The receipt of user complaints about the new design does not mean that the design is bad, and if a new design actually provides better usability, people will gradually like it.) Customer complaints are not a reason to cancel all redesign plans; just don't change the design simply to "Keep it fresh". ）

Common UI

If you run an intranet, develop applications, or have a very popular web site, users may actually have a few minutes or more time each week to touch your UI. In this case, you may think that the customer will expect a new design, but it is not.

Those who use the UI regularly become skilled users , and their user experience is influenced by their familiarity . The design approach for novice or expert users is different, and some key availability attributes vary in importance, such as ease of learning and efficiency .

The more people become familiar with your system, the more they rely on routine automated actions. As a result, users with high frequencies also prefer familiar designs.

Ultimately, the difference between the design team and the user can be attributed to observation and use . You watch your design over and over again, arguing about the smallest elements. Customers may repeatedly use the same functionality, but they are actually focused on their tasks, not your interface. Because the user is aware of something outside of your design, the design is less visible in their eyes.

when to update the design

In general, it is better to let the UI evolve rather than provide a fully updated design. I strongly recommend that the Foundation be properly designed at the beginning of the project so that he can survive a small upgrade for several years. Before you release anything, use such methods as quick iterations and paper prototypes to thoroughly explore the design space and make the design elegant.

Another way to do this is to throw everything "on the wall" and see if it's going to be true. In fact, some people argue that it is only necessary to find the best guess and release it, because the advantage of the network is that when you are wrong, you can change it at any time. Yes, that's true, but you're not going to be popular anymore because

• You are abusing your users with flawed design, and you can spend a few days getting the user to experience the new version, correcting bugs, and
• Know that users hate change, but you have to let them endure those changes .

In general, do things in place and change them slowly. However, in both cases, a more thorough redesign is appropriate:

• If you currently have almost no users , make an important design improvement to massively expand the user base. In this case, it is worth considering that the business losses brought by existing customers are relatively small. Of course, whether it really attracts more visitors is still a gamble. Remember the old saying: a bird in the hand is better than a bush. Don't do this unless you're sure you can snare millions of users.
• If your old version of the design has evolved over many years, the overall user experience has become too complex and no unified conceptual structure has been felt.

As a 2nd example, let's take a look at Microsoft Office. The software kit was launched in 1989 to pack together software that was previously sold separately, such as Word (1983) and Excel (1984). By 2000, those basic user interface architectures were 17 years old, and MS office was on the verge of collapse. I often complain that this old thing is a bunch of pieces of functionality--and increasingly complex menus and dialogs that make it impossible for users to find what they want.

While I criticize Microsoft Office for its growing usability problems, I have also said that if I were Bill Gates, I would not necessarily have to redesign it thoroughly. My idea is that while the new design might be a good thing for the user, it might be a bad business: selling an update upgrade package is easier than selling a new user interface. Sure enough, Office 2003 continues with the 20-Year-old UI, slightly changing it to the market.

However, the old design is really too old and produces a lot of functional requirements, which require a completely redesigned user experience. Finally, Office 2007 has finally taken this step. Now, after 2 years of using the new UI, I can't go back to using Office2003 and its previous version. The new design is more advantageous. When it was released, it also received a lot of complaints: users do not like change, a new user interface takes time to adapt.

So unless your existing design is a bunch of patchwork features, overgrown with weeds, there is an urgent need for a new architecture, otherwise it's best to stay in the familiar design that the user likes and avoid the temptation of the novelty design that only you enjoy.