Product Design: The process experience on the front light back weight

I make products, like the first light after heavy. This is my favorite principle, if it can count as a principle. It is a fairly universal principle, and it is meaningful to understand it from all angles.

Front light back weight on process experience

Before light weight most let the user perceive, is the process experience on the front light weight. It is reflected in the user to solve the requirements, complete the task of the process.

For example, in a relatively perfect Taobao open shop system, the steps to open the shop are as follows:

• Choose what kind of store to open

• Fill in the details

• Upload verification material

• Online Exams

• Fill in shop and merchandise information.

The user completes the task step-by-step in the process, first only makes the light quantity choice (choice question), then does the blank question, then is prepares the material, the study knowledge and the examination, then is finally completes opens the shop. The user experience on the process, from the front is very light, to the back of the more and more heavy. This can not throw away the needs of the product design side, in fact, precisely because the product design side has the inevitable, inevitable needs (the need to verify the material to identify the authenticity of the shop, the need for online testing to ensure the quality of shopkeepers), product flow and experience is sure there will be a heavy step or a few steps, at this time, should be the light step in front, Let the user do it step-by-step, in the face of heavy steps, it is not so easy to give up. In addition, before the heavy flow of light, but also in line with people online life, even in all tasks completed in the process of first pick soft persimmon pinch habit.

Pre-light post weight on functional planning

function planning on the front light weight, refers to the planning and structure of product functions in the process, should first set up the key, lightweight core functions, so that the positioning of the product to achieve the basic realization of products to solve the problem is basically resolved. In other words, you should first give the product a skeleton, and then expand the tissue, muscle, blood and fur. This is actually the most Test Product Manager foundation of the place.

In the early stage for the product to build a lightweight but highly scalable framework, the following can be added step-by-step more in-depth, auxiliary and peripheral functions, to solve more subdivision problems and similar problems. About the lightness and weight of functional planning, a blog post has been discussed in more detail before: the light and weight of the product

Front light back weight of user interface

The front light weight of the user interface is one of the most profound reflection of the front light weight. This is the best place to test product designers. In the design of the user interface, follow the principle of light weight before, meaning that the need to hide the complexity as far as possible, hidden behind the screen, displayed in front of the user, is only a button, a list, and so simple as possible elements. This complexity may include implementing complexity, and the complexity of the functional organization.

The complexity of implementation includes:

• How do you consider which items are in the front and which are in the back of the list?

• What to provide and what to remove when providing users with information and knowledge?

• How difficult it is to make this function, you need to think about it, but you must decide to do it, do not shrink, hope that the user how grateful, so that their pay is not overlooked.

• And so on, there must be a lot of angles, after all, I did not try to fully.

Separate examples.

The first, about the sequence of items in the list, you need to consider this, but do not need to always be afraid that the user does not know that you have spent your mind, you do not need to give reasons or even values. Positive examples can look at the Baidu search results page, you will find that Baidu gives the project related information, only the project (each search results) of the description, there is no reason why the project will be sorted in this position, there is no PageRank score or the number of external chain or anything. Because the user does not need to know this information, you provide him with information, he consumes time in your product, trusts your results, you can work on how to make the best sort, but don't think about how to get users to trust you, and the user trusts you because your sorting results are reasonable and not because you give " The results of the ranking of this site is true and reasonable effective and fair 10 reasons. A lot of negative examples, afraid to offend people, others may have their own consideration, I will not mention.

The second, on the provision of information when the screening, you need to consider this, but the same, do not want to tell users, you have to remove the project, if the user actually need information, the wrong is not you, you are because of the product design what to consider and the necessity. For example, we know that many products will provide the creation time of a project, the initiation time of a comment, the recent modification time of an article, and so on, when Smart products show this time, there will be "5 minutes ago", "11:23", "Last Night" and other forms, here, Product designers have made a unified choice of information removal, for today's previous date, in the Project collection page, is not given a detailed time, that is, do not give "last night 23:13" to keep the page refreshing.

Third, the declaration of the difficulty of the implementation of the function. A very famous example here is the realization of the background transparency of the animated GIF expression inside the micro-letter. The implementation of this feature is the first time in the world, the team spent a lot of time, but these are ordinary users do not need to know, you just need to tell them, this feature is what it is good (if not too much, then you spend so much cost to do). Similar examples include the cost and effect of performance optimization, the choice of a functional experience, and so on. The reverse example I would like to mention the mobile browser competition HTML5 scored two phenomena.

The complexities of functional organizations include:

• How to tailor the elements to the user's line of sight?

• Does interaction imply the need to prioritize and, if necessary, how to differentiate?

• One or two-level list, one or two-level headings how to classify, how to organize?

• When needed, what is the function and what elements are needed when (what scenario)?

• Wait, wait.

The first, about the element typesetting, you need to consider this, but do not need to put the reasons for this row to the interface to tell the user, you designed the heart. For example, you can think about the huge version of Tencent, why the previous page on the left side of the Tencent product collection, to put on the right side of the page.

The second, about the severity of the interaction hint, this example is a lot of, for example, you will always see that the login button is always a conspicuous color, and the cancellation button is often white.

The third and fourth, on the list and the title of the organization, as well as the need to appear in the judgment, also can look at this blog, "Product light and heavy".

Pre-light back weight on technical architecture

The prior light weight of the technical architecture has in fact become a common rule for experienced product teams. Whether it is QQ, micro-letter and other large products, or the alarm clock, 8684 bus and other mobile end of the tool-type products, have been intentionally or unintentionally to apply this rule to the bone (perhaps not summed up before the light weight of the four words, but the practice is so).

Technical prior light weight, can make the product get quick update, rapid iterative error testing, the advantages of the selection of batches of experiments, the disadvantage is a little more traffic loss (after all, the same logic, curing in the client, and put on the server every time download or update load, the former will make the network packet slightly smaller lines of code). The benefits of light and weight are becoming more and more important to people, and the disadvantage is becoming increasingly unimportant.

The same example, QQ clients are considered very heavy by many users, but in fact, QQ the number of existing functional groups, if not to take advantage of the former weight of the method, weight is more difficult to imagine. For example, you may have been on the internet bad, open many windows on QQ, found to be a blank, this window, although it appears to be a client window, is actually using the WebView control to wrap the Web page. And anecdotal rumors, this approach, QQ is a few years ago from the MSN Learning, when the QQ team found many windows of MSN clients, today a form of tomorrow, obviously did not update the version but changed the function, to the technical team an analysis, just learned this practice, and carry forward so far.

Another good example is the micro-letter, the micro-client implementation of the function is actually very much, the technical architecture is very complex, but strict before the light weight, so that the micro-letter in a minute to control a lot of business logic, product rules.

The ultimate level of technical architecture on the front light weight, there is a familiar name, called the cloud architecture. That is, the client only acknowledges the role of input, all implementation logic is on the service side, all in the cloud. This is the future.