Huawei Design Director: How to make design decisions

Perhaps the most vexing problem for designers is design decisions.

Why are you so upset?

There is a saying. Now many companies are very focused on user experience design, which is a good thing. But most of the companies that ultimately do product user experience design decisions are not design-born. It's not a bad thing, but it's a problem, and the problem is that the dimensions of the thinking that come from different professional backgrounds are always slightly different. It is very important for designers to make design decisions, or to assist superiors to make reasonable and effective design decisions.

For example, a market-born boss may be more concerned with revenue; a skilled boss may be more concerned with technological innovation; a brand-name boss who is concerned about the brand effect of the product may be more.

Is it reasonable to judge the quality of a product design purely from the only point of view of the user experience?

I personally think that is the ideal state.

What is the ideal state? for example:

Buy train tickets online 10 percent.

There is not a single advertisement for a mass of free information websites.

Play online game props all free.

Music products do not have VIP users, we can not spend money to enjoy the same service.

The VIP room of the airport terminal can go to rest.

Make a very idealistic design manuscript, and then let the development brothers to achieve the never-ending, even some of the recent functions can not be implemented to continue to try.

The product design lifecycle has no time points, no resource constraints, no technical reviews, no cost controls.

Of course, the ideal state is difficult to exist. The real state is that the result of a product design is the influence of many factors, such as user expectation, market strategy, brand strategy, business appeal, revenue pressure, technology bottleneck, resource input cost, time, company value orientation, leadership style, team culture and so on.

Therefore, the designer must make the effective design decision, first must understand such not ideal, or say the imperfect state, is the normal.

Next, from this imperfect state to find a balance, to find a breakthrough.

1th, understand others.

For example, to discuss a product design point, a product manager who values clicks and exposures is talking to you about how your design will affect his KPI, you don't have to be strong on the user experience first, the user likes is the king of the logic down, but should be from the product manager's perspective to think about the problem, think, Whether there is a way to allow the volume of KPIs can be maintained or even upgraded, but also to improve the quality of the user experience. Admittedly, there will be compromises and frustrations when there is no perfect balance. But considering a design decision from the perspective of swaps, at least it is a good start and will win the respect and trust of co-workers.

Understand others, bring the requirements of designers need to have a certain breadth.

We can not understand how to use JS programming to achieve a dynamic effect, but we should at least know the current trend of the mainstream product dynamics, to know a practical effect, cost, technical platform requirements and pressure.

We can not understand a product page to achieve how much economic benefits, an ad should be sold 1 million or 1.5 million, but we have to understand the value of this page is divided into two, one for the user, one is for advertisers, that how to choose depends on our product business value understanding, A comprehensive solution that comes from two perspectives on users and advertisers.

More details, the interaction designer can not understand how to stroke an icon, but to understand the entire icon in the interface to show the meaning of the product design to meet the expectations, business expectations, interactive logic expectations.

The breadth of knowledge has a process of accumulation, slow and painful, but the sudden burst of value is surprising.

2nd, enough professional.

A truly powerful designer is one who has the right to have credit to make a design decision without ignoring his position or background.

In the whole environment, designers of young people, we are very difficult to life experience, experience to convince a lot of colleagues, so we rely on a professional enough.

The profession manifests in each link.

Give a simple example. You are an interactive designer and do a page design. You will certainly make a page layout based on your business complaint and your own professional guidelines. You will be able to design where each module is placed, what each module puts, the arrangement of pictures and text, and so on.

Make sure you have all the questions you need before you come up with this design manuscript for review.

This is not to say that your design manuscript needs to be perfect, but you have to make sure that your design drafts are considered everywhere.

Cooperative colleagues will ask a lot of questions:

Why is the picture on the left?

Why is this position picture put 2, that position picture put 3?

Why is the font of this text paragraph bold?

Why is the carousel 3 pieces of content, not 4?

Why does the advertisement position appear at the bottom of the first screen rather than the second screen?

You don't need to answer every question correctly, or many of these questions have no standard answers at all. But you have to make sure that you have thought about it, and that you can say your logic and your thinking principles in every question.

Trust me, your judgment will be more and more accurate after a project has accumulated experience.

Conversely, if there is any question, your answer is: "Sorry, this question I did not think of" or "Ah ... This is so-and-so said let me do, I am not very clear ", then your professional degree will be questioned by others and greatly discounted."

The establishment of professional degree of appeal is very intuitive.

The first time you do it, you do it right, or you feel right about others. Do it again for the second time. The two-time experience has allowed most people to believe you.

In other words, it's hard to change your professional influence if your first judgment is wrong, or if you give someone an unprofessional impression.

Of course there are many things to do, such as designers do products have their own design principles, design culture, macro thinking, micro-innovation, detailed grasp, etc., designers can do a lot to expand their professional appeal. But each designer should start from the first step to do well, a product design every detail, must be everywhere in the designer's professional.

3rd, enough occupation.

Professional performance you are a valuable person who can provide value for the product design team.

Professional performance You can be a cooperative person, can let the team to you at ease.

One of my basic requirements for graduates is: do not have a typo anywhere in the design manuscript. This is an example of the detail requirements of a professional degree.

Our designer, born romantic, unruly, is a very beautiful thing. These advantages can lead to some unreasonable places. Most professional designers don't have these problems, but I also want to list some of the things that designers should pay attention to:

The meeting should be positive feedback, actively output the design side of the meeting minutes, and enumerate the executable.

Work out a little more outward, even if you are an introvert.

The rationality of the quarrel, the time of confrontation, the compromise when the compromise.

Don't immerse yourself in things, learn to show yourself and express yourself.

Do design when the process should be reflected, do not only give a result, sometimes a result does not necessarily represent your complete thinking process.

To sum up, to precipitate, can not finish a design project immediately go into another.

Always remember the work, most of the task is rational, logical, most people are not, so on the matter to people have to conform to their own personality habits of coping methods.

Sometimes it's a little bit more urgent.

Sometimes you have to accept mediocrity.

4th, have courage.

Designers often can't make decisions blindly, because they don't know the whole product's shape, business model, target dimension. It might not be a good time to make a decision purely from a user experience.

But when the designer has a certain degree of preparation, have the courage to make decisions.

Of course, after the decision is wrong, you will certainly be affected. So you need to be cautious.

But when the results are right, the positive value is very large.

Have the courage to make a decision, must not rely on cavity blood, but rely on peacetime understanding of the business, experience accumulation, the result of the pre-sentence, plus a little luck.

5th, there is a little style.

Knowledge breadth has, professional degree also has, professional degree is also high, also have enthusiasm and courage. In the end you just need a little style.

This is something unique to the designer.

We do not need to be like business people to wear a suit every day. We can have a lot of interesting ways of working.

With the strength as the basis of the style of presentation, will be a designer charm building and influence of the construction of the additional sub-item.

There are a lot of these style points, some examples:

In a serious discussion, you can tell some jokes to ease the atmosphere.

Having a big fight with someone doesn't make anyone angry.

Can use very interesting ppt to show the idea.

You can keep smiling and be patient when you are angry.

Can quickly on the whiteboard to express ideas on the diagram.

A reasonable range of earrings, tattoos, alternative hairstyles, cool dress.

Know "the wisdom of weakness, fools to be brave" truth.

These will be a possible label for you, and with your basic abilities, your overall acceptance and memory will be good.

Finally back to the title of the question, how to make design decisions?

With more than five points of accumulation, you as long as not silly, not tantrum, reason, have their own satisfaction with the design of the draft, to reach a everyone OK you are also satisfied with the design decision will be difficult?: