Introduction to Interactive Design: Understanding product background and restrictions

 

　　

 

[Editor's note] the author @ Liu jinlegene of this article is a great interaction designer. If you do not know the background and special restrictions of the project, it is difficult to make a good design.

For example, actors must be familiar with the script before playing, so it is impossible to give full play with experience without knowing anything. Excellent actors not only read scripts, but also do some other work, such as reading historical books and experiencing role life. The same is true for Interaction designers. Good Interaction designers will also learn about the product information before the formal design, so that they can be well-founded at the design stage.

What do we need to start?

　　1. Understand the market background and collect relevant information

You can query articles in this area online to understand the market environment and development trend of the product. Try to collect market analysis and various research materials as much as possible (not all product managers share them, improve your knowledge background.

　2. Analysis of competitive products and related products

There are not many completely innovative products in Internet companies, so we can easily find competing products or related products. You can analyze the differences between these products in terms of user experience in advance to let yourself know.

　　3. Define product positioning and objectives

This is a very important point and is easily overlooked by many product managers and Interaction designers. The product positioning and objectives directly determine the Product Style and scope of competing products that can be referenced.

For example, to make A website that sells xx products online, competing product A and competing product B are two well-known websites in this respect, and the user experience of competing product A is obviously better than that of competing product B, does that mean more reference to competing product? The answer is not necessarily because your positioning may be closer to competing product B.

Product Positioning is determined by many reasons, including market reasons, legal terms, company conditions, decision-making, and business cooperation restrictions, which are far from the control of Interaction designers. Therefore, before designing the product, you must communicate with the product manager to find out the product positioning and objectives (simply looking at the descriptions in the requirement document may not be enough ).

If you find that the product manager has a vulnerability or is not clear enough, you can ask other roles in the project (such as business and legal affairs) to help the product manager understand the problem.

　4. Understand target users and Use Cases

You don't need to talk about this. You need to know who your users are, the general situation of users, usage scenarios, and usage situations. If the product manager is not clear, you can check related information on the Internet, or ask friends around you to talk about how they will use such products. As long as you have the heart, there is always a solution.

　5. Treat special requirements correctly

Special requirements are some dead rules. For example, xx advertisements must be placed here and xx places must be ......; These places are not controlled by Interaction designers, but limited by various resources. Special requirements apply directly to the design scheme.

Well, once you understand all these, you can sort out the requirements and design the user objectives, task processes, information architecture, and page prototype ......

Author's blog: legene's interactive design blog

Original article: http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/1161626144