NetEase Beauty Design Director! How does an interactive design rookie get started?

Most beginners have two major difficulties in their first self-study design: Am I fit to do this? How do I get started? With these two kinds of questions on the road, learning effect is difficult to guarantee. Today to share an article from the NetEase beauty design supervisor of the Good article, with personal experience and years of experience in design, for you to answer these two major problems!

@ Liu Jin Legene (NetEase ued Director): First of all, a self-study students will have the problem-

Am I fit to do this?

"I'm not majoring in art, am I fit to be a ue/ui?"

"I majored in art, I want to change careers to do ue/ui, what needs to learn?"

"Do interactive designers have to be hand-painted? Do you need to learn to program?"

This is I heard more questions, I would like to answer here: whether it is to do UE (User Experience Designer, currently refers to the main interaction or with research), or do the UI (visual designer), in fact, there is no absolute professional threshold. There are a lot of Daniel in this industry, and their majors are completely irrelevant to the design. Of course, if you are a design-related professional, in the employment will have a certain advantage.

The designer of Internet products needs to have a comprehensive ability, if hand-drawn, or programming, of course, there will be bonus points, but this is not necessary.

As for the suitability of the line, I think the most crucial question is whether there is interest and talent. You can ask yourself the following questions:

Are you passionate about all kinds of fun and novelty products?

Do you usually like to use a variety of products and study whether it works well?

Are you more likely to find out about the various problems in use and find ways to solve them?

Are you full of inspiration and creativity?

Do you enjoy thinking about problems, clearly listing solutions, and finding logical relationships?

Do you have a sense of excitement when drawing sketches?

Do you like to communicate and communicate with people, to show your ideas and ideas?

Generally speaking, is your idea easy to be recognized by others?

Will you strive for excellence and always ask yourself to exceed your expectations?

......

If all of your answers are "No", consider whether you are right, and if you are sure you are interested in the business and have some talent, then you can start thinking about getting started.

Rookie how to get started?

For my own experience, I was still at school and stumbled upon a position like "interactive design". Because of my own science and engineering background, have a certain logical thinking ability and inductive ability, love to think about solving problems, especially to deal with complex difficult problems, and I have studied a few years of design courses, very interested in design. So intuition is perfect for this position.

But the light is not suitable, but also have a certain basic knowledge. I remember the first time and a group of students to a foreign company interview internship UI designer, the interviewer asked: if you want to design a page, how do you think about it? Next to the students came up and said: "Well, I may draw a flower or something ..." The interviewer's face mutated, interrupted: "You should consider the needs of users." The interview, we had a few failed, and finally hired an industrial design professional students. Later I learned that this major is not interactive design, but it belongs to the relevant professional, the course also contains some human-computer interaction, interface design content.

So, in order to become a professional interaction designer, I gave myself a plan: read a large number of related books, accumulate professional knowledge, and then strive to find an internship opportunity, after graduation logically become an interactive designer.

But in fact the implementation of the difficulties: The book has seen a lot of but because there is no relevant work experience, a lot of things can not really understand; the interaction design position is basically only in a few big companies (now much better, some small companies also have this position), the job opportunities are few; although there are no interactive design majors in the school, But a large number of industrial design graduates are also seizing the position, the competition is extremely fierce.

After 8 months, I finally got a job interview with a big company. But there I was at a loss: plus I have four candidates, the other three are industrial design professionals, and everyone has more than six months of relevant internship experience. I was in a funk.

In the interview, a girl is late for more than half an hour, so that the interviewer quite dissatisfied, more people did not think is, her turn to introduce themselves, the tone of aggression, not only exaggerated the emphasis on how good they are, but also intentionally or unintentionally belittle opponents. The other boy, although the professional background and internship experience are very consistent, but feel not too much passion and thinking, mediocre performance. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The written question is very simple: do you think there is a bad design of your mobile phone? Please make suggestions for improvement. The interviewer sent two pieces of white paper to each person, the other three people immediately fen-pen disease painting, began to flow in the big white Paper flow diagram, wireframe, I can not help feeling: have work experience is not the same ah, by contrast I really is a pure rookie.

I'm not going to draw a wireframe. I decided to answer the question in my own way: I think the design must be reasonable, not entirely in the form of expression. So I'm going to start by stating some basic uses of the phone, such as I think most people will use only 3 functions--phone calls, texting, alarm clocks (that's about 09 years). So to solve the design problem, you should focus on troubleshooting these 3 features. Finally, I chose to "send a text message" this function. I put myself in a real-life use scenario, describing what happens when I finish a specific task (which, of course, must be reasonable and often happens). And the current design how to interfere with my completion of this task, I think should be how to improve the more reasonable ... Finally wrote two large pieces of paper. Look at their own crooked, and then look at the next three exquisite line block diagram, was really want to cry no tears ...

However, the final result was unexpected, I defeated the other opponents, got the opportunity to go to this company internship. It can be said that the company's interactive designers are Daniel, more than 10 years experience in a few people. Then I asked one of the interviewers why I could get this opportunity, she said: "We don't really pay much attention to manifestation, we focus on thinking." I think you have a good mind. Some people may indeed have experience, but the light will draw, lack of necessary thinking is not.

Later, in the internship process, I quickly learned to draw a paper prototype. But most of our work is still the basic work of thinking, analyzing and organizing documents, not much time for drawing. At the same time I also noticed that the company of these Daniel are usually very low-key, humble, good at standing in other people's point of view, to colleagues very enthusiastic. Focus on nature, reasoning rather than appearances when considering a problem. Therefore, learning to do interaction is actually learning how to behave, the inner fix determines the height of your future.

Figure 1 Example of a paper prototype

So as a rookie, in the beginning do not worry, slowly accumulate their own professional knowledge, not only to read, but also should try to look at some of the design of the article on the website. Because books may be biased and the articles on the website are more practical. Usually pay more attention to cultivate their own thinking and ideas, rather than eager to paint, more research on some good products, thinking about the reasons for doing so, these are the designer's daily homework.

Of course, the most important thing is to find an internship or formal work, accumulate project experience. If you can not go to a large company to small companies, small companies can not go to the initiative to do a virtual project, or optimize the existing product, it is important to express their own ideas, rather than just show the design results. To apply these things as their own works will also bring some opportunities for yourself. After the project must pay attention to the timely summary, write diary, blog, write reading notes, etc. are very good habits.

Reading and actual combat projects continue to be interspersed, timely summary will allow you to improve the level quickly; Conversely, if the light reading does not think, or light do not summarize the project, you will find that they have long been in situ, there is no real improvement. "Learning without thinking is useless, thinking and not learning is dangerous", the truth is in fact everyone understand, but it is not easy to do. There is no shortcut to study, the right way to learn is the biggest shortcut.

In addition, if you can make some peers is the best, more and more people to exchange the benefit of their own. Now there are also a lot of free exchange activities, such as the Mobile Internet Innovation Conference, hiued, Ali technology Carnival. There are some higher fees, such as UPA, interactive design experience day activities, but if you are a student, you can apply to volunteer, you can meet a lot of industry experts. One of my colleagues was working as a volunteer when he met his current leader and got his present job.

In general, this is probably the following figure:

Figure 2 How to get started with a rookie