Visual design: Visual designer meets development engineer

I am a first into the Internet visual designer, and the previous design experience the biggest difference is: a design of the final finalization will be challenged in many ways, from the product manager, from the development, from the test ... Wait a minute. How can you deal with the other team members in front of them? The following article gives me great inspiration, especially to share with you.

Product managers, development engineers and market planners, and other products stakeholders believe that visual designers have no prominence in the entire team. Is this assertion correct? What other examples can we use to prove the importance of visual visual design to these stakeholders?

Although visual designers face different obstacles in their careers or in a product development process, the following 3 points are often mentioned:

Visual design is how to make things more beautiful
Doing popular things can improve the quality of visual design
We start with a single element to evaluate the visual design effect

　

Visual design is how to make things more beautiful

Although only a handful of people still cling to the idea, it has long been the idea that visual design is the cream of the cake. This is like the final step of the visual design analogy to the product packaging on a suction draw the bow.

This view may have originated in the industrial age. At the time, industrial products began to show different designs, and modern industry designers such as Remont Rovis (Raymond loeway,1889-1988, France) began trumpeting their product aesthetics.

Clearly, visual design can actually improve the presentation of a product, but it can deliver more information to the user. Through the arrangement of different elements, visual designers also convey the core value of the product to the user:

What is this?
How do I use it?
Why do I only use it?

The above 3 issues are particularly important in the design of interactive products. Here's an example to illustrate.

Figure 1 to Figure 3 presents a different visual arrangement of the same Web site, based on the same visual elements-fonts, colors, gradients, and pictures. Different layouts have a direct impact on the main function points.

Figure 1

Above, we can see clearly that the main function of the page is to view customer contact information. Then the user can edit, delete, or write notes for the contact information. In Figure 2, the page focuses on communication between the customer and the company, and then the user can browse, edit, and delete customer information.

Figure 2

Finally, Figure 3 is designed to focus on the editable nature of user information. The ability to view and track customer information in real time has been weakened.

Figure 3

These 3 different visual presentation scenarios tell us the 3 main tasks of our users: View customer contact information, manage and update this information, and keep customer records. In each scenario, the basic elements of visual design are the same: colors, fonts, gradients, and pictures.

Visual design can do far more than beautify the interface. It also shoulders the function of transmitting the core function of the product. "What is this?" "How do you use these features?" "How to use it more efficiently?" ”

Doing popular things can improve the quality of visual design

Like the current popular web site "make my logo bigger" for customers, product managers often ask visual designers to focus more on some detail in typesetting. These comments, while helping us to grasp the focus of the design, also exposed another misconception about visual design: "To improve the visual effects of this site, you have to do this a bit larger, the font in bold, red!" ”

However, the importance of any element in the page depends on the environment around it. For example, put a large red circle on a page and it will be noticeable. If you put the same circle on a 10-pink round edge, it will not be so eye-catching. Therefore, the importance of determining an element should be based on the overall design. We should not focus only on an element to improve the design. If you do this, the overall balance of the page will be corrupted and the hierarchy of page functionality will be confused.

If you promise each stakeholder to adjust the different details of the page one at a time, you make a choice between the user's needs and the product's needs, but in most cases the two requirements cannot be met at the same time. Figure 4 and Figure 5 are comparisons of two different download pages. Firefox's page has a bold download button to trigger this behavior. Other elements of the page, such as product features, will not be so obvious.

Figure 4

Figure 5 is the download page for flock, and there are 4 places that can be clicked to trigger the download behavior: The top-right corner of the page, the bottom of the left menu, the top-right corner of the news plate, and the footer position. If not because every download detail is enhanced, flock may be like Firefox--only one download button.

Figure 5

　

We start with a single element to evaluate the visual design effect

If we focus on just one element rather than the overall page, it makes local adjustment difficult. "Can you make the logo bigger?" he said. "Can you change the color of the title?" "Can we change a picture here?" ”...

These scattered suggestions can really help us understand the customer's intentions, but customers are rarely concerned about the impact of this on the overall page design. Changing a color may require a redefinition of the page's hue, and the designer needs to ensure that the new hue does not affect the user's focus on the main task. Changing a picture may mean adjusting the elements around it at the same time, because the visual focus of the original image is probably gone ... Wait a minute.

A final visual design manuscript should be based on balancing and adjusting the relationships of each element-delivering the core value of the product at the same time. So, when a designer adjusts an element, he must reconsider the layout of the page to not break the original balance. In isolation to complete a small design, together and can not say that this is a complete design.

The page elements of an Internet product are particularly susceptible to being evaluated independently. Because it may be a separate module to do the test, a member of the team may also think I just have to do the part of their own, the overall project is done. Figure 6 shows the possible results of an independent design.

When we look at the head of the page alone ebay logo, PayPal provide security tips and the median camera promotional ads are, will feel good. In fact, when these three are on a page at the same time, they are more like competing with each other and are too eye-catching.

Figure 6

Hopefully these examples have demonstrated the value of visual designers in the team. But to allow more team members to agree that visual design is not just about style, fashion and so on, visual designers need to improve their own experience, at the beginning of the project to show the importance of visual design for the whole project.

　
"Common Visual Design Misconceptions"
by Luke Wroblewski
Original link: http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2008/11/common-visual-design-misconceptions.php