Is the design that conforms to the design specification good design?

Practitioners in the past few years, their own written and help the people of the so-called "design norms" a lot of, this thing is probably in the eyes of China's policy makers-a bunch of farmers in a field to grow food, at first the weather is good, fertile land, but soon the weather became worse, more bugs, land desertification serious, There are a few inner demons who steal food, this must be set a standard, start tell them where to plant, how many wheat to calculate qualified, which part of the land is left to the next season, what kind of wheat to pay bonuses, lazy do not work how to deal with ...

But I understand that the specification is not simply a design into a "industry routines" of the quantitative indicators, but a comprehensive quality assessment of the reference, or even a design can be a determinant of the market. To this end, we need to develop some forms, documentation, graphics reference, interactive templates.

At the same time, design standards to become a design department or a company for the design of the common values of quality, so that all the big guys know what to do is good design, through such norms of education and communication, the formation of a unified understanding of the design quality. The design code is not about what to do, but it's the right thing to do, but there are better places to improve.

Foreign designers in this practice called design tools, is the template application Method (stencil), we call the specification, more biased to the rules (Regulation), but only to learn the simple part of the quantitative indicators. To put it seriously, we Chinese people have always been particularly adept at framing ourselves as a framework to constrain people's acts and ideas for three possible reasons:

1. We are not very good at finding the rigorous logic to solve the problem, even if there are already lessons to be learned;
2. We have always lacked trust in our team members, even if we have worked together for many years.
3. Our business cannot afford the consequences of some mistakes, or even a small risk.

We started by turning a tool into a system, so the problem came out. For a long-term design team, the establishment of a design code needs to establish a set of available tools, and then on the basis of tools to develop into the department of Design Quality construction of the road map, if only to get a "navigation button spacing must not exceed 10px" such norms, as a child urine to hear "Shh ~ ~ ~ ~ ~" sound like , and pee faster.

I'm not talking about this, it seems to me that we are now in the industry to see the excellent design code is not much, now to say, and you communicate:

1. The reason that the design specification does not achieve the expected effect

There are always problems and errors before beginning to formulate and revise the norms, lack of predictability;
After the specification is formulated, the implementation is not in place, the lack of strength and rewards and punishments measures, supervision and control rhythm procrastination slow;
In the process of product design, no further revision of the design specifications, even before the errors are not corrected;

Completely dogmatic according to design code design, such as some teams do or general design norms, many designers according to the requirements of the repeated design of similar pages, similar ads, similar animation, completely Hao no characteristics, no differentiation. -With all your heart, you can see how similar the Internet products are now. I have to say, those bad design norms to be responsible for certain.

2. The most common mistakes in design specifications

Let department leaders to develop design specifications-design specifications are discussed together, in the iteration to improve the correction, because most of the domestic designers have "fear of leadership", so the norms even if enacted is also a bad check, even a lot of leadership is rarely involved in front-line work.
Copy the design code of successful foreign team-such things happen in like "Foreign serve China" design team, the design environment at home and abroad, the difference is very large, the market is also very big differences, so do not copy, not directly translated.
Print out the design code and stick it next to your seat-is this "posters" or "Table of determination"? From the designer friend I know, there are only 2 kinds of things to see next to the seat, one is the schedule, the other is to check whether the cell phone battery is full.

3. The essence of design norms is doing a good job of people

In my opinion, Chinese enterprises as long as there is a design department, to do this design norms, the most important thing is to and enterprise management, team culture construction bound together, a person's development and construction work. Our designers are frankly not so mature, and do not have too much design exercise, the whole of the poor specification where the pestle will only make the designers more reluctant to communicate-"What is there to talk about?" There's no code, just do it.

Design department If the communication is really close, in the design process has common values, this design process is to make, but also the formation of natural "norms", do not need too much text description. I have seen some of the company's design code impressively: "Once the a-c problem in the design, the designer's personal assessment-5 points", OMG, the original product of your home is worth 5 points.

4. What is the purpose of the excellent design specification

• Quantitative indicators:
  Determine the general usability principles and aesthetic common sense to avoid mistakes, and the remedial solution once the error occurs. The first purpose of the specification is to reduce the number of errors in the design process, generally this is for novice designers, good quantitative indicators is to tell his experience, such as: The proposed HTML file output in the Ie6,ie7,firefox,safari to do at least 2 different resolution test, and the results added to the Design specification-reference data; instead of stipulating his direction, for example: testing changes according to the requirements of the Product department.
• Confirm Design Key points:
  The design specification is obtained for the key points in the scope, including design direction and design elements, in order to achieve more close coordination effect of team members through the process of project design. It is a test document that records errors in the process and remains for subsequent experience. And here you can make milestones for project and product design.
• Standard design principles:
  This principle is likely to be for a single project, it may also be the guiding principle of the entire design team, which is repeatedly stressed, repeated, and team members are responsible for this principle, such as: "Ensure that the design output is completed 4 hours before the end of any project", "never allow the design of rough interface solutions, The following illustration shows: XXXXX "and so on.
• The design specification itself also requires availability:
  Describe the same design requirements, can say: "s-class designers for the project Phase1 part of the work, controllable time not exceeding 2.5 cycles, output delivery parts for the ISO000459 program review"; But this description, can understand more people will "interface designer XXX design the project interface High-fidelity prototype, To be completed within 10 working days, May 22 14:00 in Conference Room 5th review.

Do not complicate things, can make things simple people are great, design norms are the same.