What is interactive design?

First tell a story, Xiaopeng is a salesman, afternoon out to visit customers, after the discovery has been six points more, very hungry, small Peng want to go home to cook their own food, but it is too hungry, go home again to do long subway, but also in the vicinity to find a small restaurant to eat it, so look around, Found the opposite side of the road 200 meters in front of a McDonald's, so across the road, along the way past, to McDonald's to a set meal, whirlwind to eat.

Here's the thing, the story:

What is a goal?

Small Peng hungry, want to fill their own, this is the goal;

What is a task?

It's a task to go home and eat in a nearby place. Tasks are more abstract, there may be many different tasks to achieve the same goal, it is the use of the product to achieve this specific steps, a number of steps together to achieve the goal, such as go downstairs restaurant-order-eat-checkout-leave and so on five tasks.

What is behavior?

Cross the road, go to McDonald's, push the door in, queuing, ordering, waiting, eating, these are actions, behavior is the specific action of each task, such as eating when you use chopsticks or knives and forks, sitting by the corridor or by window, behavior reflects the user's operating habits and the level of awareness of the event. is to be able to see the specific operation of the user, professional point called "Use Cases", now called "Behavior" bar. These three are important for user experience and interactive design, which determines whether the interactive work behind is effective and directional.

A common problem is that goals and tasks are easily confused. But this is normal, because there are three concepts, a little bit more. People's understanding of things is basically two yuan, such as "right-wrong" "good-Bad" "Beauty-Ugly" "think-do" and so on, old D guess, the most familiar thing is human beings, our body looks like an overall symmetrical object, left right hand, left ear right ear, so people for two things are most familiar with, Once it's over, it's a little hard to understand, how do you differentiate it? Very simple:

Target--why, why do

Task--what, what to do

Behavior--how, how to do

For a funny analogy, the story of an elephant in the fridge. It's a task to put an elephant in the fridge, the first to open the door, the second to put the elephant in, the third to close the door, this is the behavior, but why do it? In fact, to prevent elephants from going to the zoo's get-together, this is the goal.

Of course, the goal is to be able to continue to abstract, such as home for the new year for what? The goal is to reunite with the family. What's the purpose of being reunited with family? is to get affection and love, rise to this altitude, don't rise, don't ask old D get affection and love is for what, old D answer not come up, can only say, this is human nature, do not go around to "whether is chicken egg, or egg raw chicken" This dead end.

In addition, the task can be continuously subdivided, for example, the elephant in the story of the three steps can also be said to be a task, but there is no meaning, open doors, closed this is already a very clear operation for a person, there is no need to refine to stretch the hand-grasp the handrail-pull off-such details of the action. The operation is a common user to see how to do things, the task is to be decomposed before the specific operation of the matter.

Defining tasks and behaviors, we can throw a question: how do we do this?

If you can't do it right away, it's a task, and if you can do it immediately, it's behavior. Usually, goals and tasks can be transformed into each other, and this level of goal may be the last level of the task, is it a bit difficult to understand?

For example, "booking" is the goal of the New Year home, but it is 12306 registered login, search tickets, booking, pay the goal of the task.

What does the three elements have to do with the previous five levels? Previously learned the user experience framework of the five levels, can be used to analyze, decompose products, from the business perspective and User dimension degree together to analyze, is a large frame, interaction design work mainly affects the structure layer, the frame layer, to the range layer, the performance layer also has certain influence, But it will have less impact on the strategic layer, because the strategic layer is basically a long-term stable thing, if it is a wrong strategy, quickly abandoned by the market and users, and the development of the strategic layer is usually determined by the company owner, the interaction designer does not take such a heavy responsibility.

It's interesting, however, that the strategists at the strategic level usually focus on the business side – what the company wants, what users want to focus on is not enough, so there is a pattern of interaction designers from the strategic level to focus on what users want-the user's goal, this can be as an interactive designer and user experience a high pursuit of practitioners.

What can interaction designers do to support users in achieving their goals? is the scope layer, the structure layer, the frame layer. Interaction designers through the understanding of user goals, analyze the needs of users, and then give the ability to meet the user's goals (of course, many product managers are doing this thing, it does not matter, then do it together), and then according to the user's task of these functional units to do reasonable organization, the information to do a reasonable presentation, This phase is primarily the planning of the user's path (which subtasks the user's task can be divided into, what steps are needed to build the information architecture (the classification of the pages), and then to determine the details of each node on the path or the specific content, so far, what the interaction designers do is not for the user directly perceive, Then according to the results of the previous link to determine the framework layer, here is the specific page.

A lot of times, some interaction designers just draw the page layout, tangled in some specific details on the page, such as check box or radio button, click the button menu is from the top or from the bottom surface, or to draw a flowchart, Figuring out whether this process can be less than a few links and so on, these jobs are necessary, yes! But this is only the initial level, even the wrong way. Interaction designers create a good use experience for the user, so tangled out of the scheme sometimes users do not care, look at this thing is not their own want to go away, even if your button interaction to do a lot of excellent and wonderful, to achieve the goal of users, not meet the needs of users, all work is meaningless.

Therefore, from now on the design of the work to promote the level of user goals to think about, and then in the task and behavior of the design, first look at what users want, and then see how to do the function and structure to better help users achieve goals.