How do interaction designers collaborate with others?

As an interactive designer, how to better collaborate with other people in the project? How to make better use of everyone's time? The team manager explained to me in the way of drawing, some questions have no direct answer, but I think the way of explanation is very interesting, I use the memory to redraw them again, and we talk about cooperation.

Today I talked to my manager about what happened at work recently: What I did last week and what I was going to do this week and next week. Just finished the design Phase 1, and the customer opened a remote meeting, received a lot of feedback, all aspects of the.

Now the project is in a particularly awkward stage: the visual designer has only a few preliminary concepts, the programmer is still preparing the framework, and has not yet started to write code, but according to the original plan, this week will begin to develop. As an interactive designer, a lot of feedback has not yet been reflected in the wireframe, on the other hand the task of design Phase 2 is coming. Although the design has not yet begun, but from the possible process, the task volume is huge, is a particularly complex system, not only to design a new interactive mode, or new ways of working and business model, in the heart really no bottom.

I told my own confusion to the manager: as an interactive designer, how to better collaborate with other people in the project? How to make better use of everyone's time? He explained to me in a way that there were no direct answers to some of the questions, but I thought it was a funny way to explain it, and I drew it back with my memory. Talk to you about the problem of cooperation.

　　What is Agile development (agility)

Let's start with the overall approach to cooperation, and we're using agile development. That's what Wikipedia explains:

Agile Software Development (English: Agile Software Development), also known as agile development, is a kind of new software development method that has gradually aroused widespread concern since the 1990 's, and it is a kind of software development ability to deal with the fast changing demand. Their specific names, ideas, processes, terminology are different, relative to "not agile", more emphasis on the programmer team and business experts close collaboration, face-to-face communication (think more effective than written documents), frequent delivery of new software versions, compact and self-organization team, Can adapt to the requirements of the change of code writing and team organization methods, but also pay more attention to the software development process of human role.

If this method is simply visualized, the following figure:

IXd refers to interactive design (interaction), which refers to visual design (visual designing), and Dev refers to development (Development). ABCDE here represents a different phase or task, and in frog we are called the design phase (direct translation may be the design sprint).

The meaning of this diagram is: When a design phase A is finished, the interaction designer transfers the work to the visual designer for a design, while the interaction design of B begins; The visual designer then makes a visual design of a and then gives it to the programmer for a development; The interaction Designer's B is also done, and then forwarded to the visual designer ... In this way, the biggest feature of agile development is that the designer does not need to design the ABCDE, but starts the software development after the end of a certain stage.

　　What is Waterfall development (waterfall Model)

The opposite approach is called waterfall Development (waterfall Model), as Wikipedia explains:

The waterfall model (or waterfall development process) is a software development model first proposed by W.w.royce in 1970, in which software development is divided into requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing (validation), integration, and maintenance of such steps.

　　Tangle of interactive designers

Agile development is now being used more and more widely, but I do have a sense of the fact that it has made the designers more entangled. Because the task is divided into a small stage, the time is very tight. I think that when task A is not finished, it has to start with B, handing a over to others to do what they need to do. And as the task of BCD, may be the demand has changed, may be the visual or development encountered problems, often have to go back to change a, once the interaction changed, behind the visual design, development to follow. Because there is not enough time to think about a thorough a or even overall, the chances of a design before you change the back are greatly increased.

Even worse, it may be that when you have finished ABCDE, you find that things are far from simple, and you need to do FG and so on to design the whole process (pictured below). What to do?

Unfortunately, there is no direct solution! There are two possible ways to solve this problem:

1. Interactive designers start early one o'clock, the ABC are designed to be similar, before handing over to the vision and development. The reason for this is to give the interaction designer more time to understand the problem, to try to solve multiple scenarios, and to adjust the whole design concept to the point where the visual starts to do a higher fidelity interface (comps).

2. Interaction designers and visual designers work more closely together to reduce the time lag between interaction and vision. See the High Fidelity interface map earlier, there are problems can be adjusted immediately, and then the more mature scheme to hand over to the programmer.

　　Avoid going too deep.

Then talk about my tangled "not yet perfect design will enter the next step" feeling. Before in my mind, the interaction designer has finished the wireframe picture, the entire design basic framework has been set up, including information architecture, interactive model (interaction models), the main template, visual designers are just the online box icing on the cake, express more things. And now the wireframes I've handed over to visual designers are very low fidelity. Some interactive models are not the best choice, some of the pages of the main information has not been added, typesetting is not particularly good-looking, in short, many details have not been finalized. And before the school to do the project is basically a person all the arrangements, finished the wireframe immediately to do the visual manuscript, or even directly to make the wireframe is quite simple good-looking. My manager's advice to me is not to go too deep into a small process. For example, suppose this is the depth you can make as a designer:

Now, as an interactive designer, it's enough to think of a way to get a part of the work out to a visual designer:

Interactive designers are only responsible for the minimum real wireframe, let the visual designers themselves to worry about how to make high-fidelity pictures. There are two reasons for doing so:

1. This demonstrates the respect that interactive designers have for visual designers. Let the vision do what you are good at, do not have to take over, the other people's work.

2. The interaction designer saves time on the details and focuses on the "problem solving" effort. Keep your mind in the "problem-solving" model. contribute to the overall efficiency and success of the project.

　　Primary interaction designers should go wide

The company's expectations for senior designers are different. Junior designers should go wider on the same issue. Suppose the following figure reflects the different solutions for the same problem ABC:

Suppose there is a problem to be solved, just give an example: How to let the user put the goods into the shopping cart? In general, the primary interaction designers will give 1-3 solutions, these three scenarios may be very direct, can be done very in-depth, some more troublesome, do more shallow. After a few options, one will be chosen to explore more deeply. However, if you are a better junior designer, you should go a little wider. The same question may come up with a ABCDEFG7 scheme, in which there are certain scenarios that seem absurd or unworkable, such as E. However, one of the points in programme E is good, and the last option to proceed is probably a part of a, plus the point of E, a groundbreaking good design is born. The foundation of all this is the ability to produce enough ideas to pick.

　　I'm stuck in the mud, you fly.

I think it's interesting to know why the interaction design and the visual design are separate and different people are responsible, the manager makes a metaphor:

The interaction designer lives at 10 times times the gravitational acceleration g equals the earth, dealing with the heaviest and most tangled problems of those (heavy things). Visual designers live in a place where acceleration g equals 1/6 of the earth, and they are light enough to fly. Only we (the interaction Designer) do our best to deal with the problem in G equals 10 times times, and they (visual designers) can fly higher and freer. (Me: So I can see that we're using different hemispheres?) This is partly true, but the right brain is also used when the interaction designer is in the divergence analysis of the solution (the so-called "go Wide").

Draw a simple schematic representation of the following:

Then, let me concentrate on the deeper in the mud, and you safely fly!: