Reflections on the construction of "influence" of the first-order experience designer

Some of the domestic just practitioners, even the user experience designer who has worked for several years, after doing a period of design, will more or less create some confusion: he seems to lack enough discourse power and influence, always be product managers and technical team led by the nose; spend a lot of time doing something that is not high in technology. Physical life ", but not the equivalent of the return; the product is on the line. Successful, we all feel that the Product manager or technical team credit (especially some of the UI is not strong or no UI products), and some ignore the ued behind the pay ... So many designers who are eager to have more "influence" have chosen to become product managers, although some people have done a great job in the new position, but I have never felt that this is the right way for everyone.

For first-time user experience designers, although there will be some job responsibilities and experience constraints, but in the design of the foundation and professional ability has been relatively standard situation (note that this article is the next to all the content of the preconditions, is a time to accumulate the process, if detached from this foundation, While talking about all kinds of communication skills is just a castle in the castles, there are also ways to help us build our own persuasion and influence gradually in our projects. Instead of trying to get influence all in the hope of "more than a few years" or "Turn the product", it is better to start now to seek and practice self sustained accumulation and rapid progress.

　Analysis of the self, choose the appropriate environment for their own play

Maxima often and bole is not often, even if it is a talented designer, if go to a not conducive to the display of their own ability and ambition of the environment, will be everywhere subjection, play the ability, or even the indelible confidence. For the first-order user experience Designer, recognizing the ego (including but not limited to strengths, weaknesses, personalities, ideals, etc.) and then striving to match a suitable product design environment can lead to more rapid and significant progress and more effective implementation of the goal of building influence.

One thing to note here is that the company's choice is not to look at the "industry first", "transnational giants" a kind of glamorous titles. Some of the companies that look good in research and development (many of the industry's judgments about the quality of it internet companies are based on research or product perspectives, for the designer is entirely another matter, perhaps because of its "technology has absolute right to speak," the internal does not necessarily pay attention to the value of ued, which is not necessarily good for designers; Some giants have a strong internal team, and the difference between different teams may be greater than the difference between the two companies ... Blindly covet the company's name and welfare and other "vanity" and "comfort", and not to focus on and drive to solve some of the potential problems such as "research and development do not understand experience value", "product direction is not clear", "the personnel status quo does not think enterprising" and so on, the possible consequences is in the envy of outsiders have been standing still, slowly being overtaken by people, Become a frog boiled in warm water, let alone gain some influence.

I have been in touch with the design of various types of products in the past 19 months, and I can clearly perceive the difference in the status, inspiration, and excitement of different types of product projects, and it is because of this multiple experience that I am more aware of my strengths and weaknesses. Like I'm good at logic, like analysis and design process structure has a certain challenging products, and perceptual thinking is not my director, the visual basis is not good enough to create a visual impact to attract more people to use and so on weak; Do some simple process structure, mainly rely on interface vision (such as marketing, diversion nature of products) TOC product design, I think of business goals and the embodiment of the solution is weak (lack of awareness or conscious but can't think of a good solution, cannot break through), the advantage also cannot play out; but instead of Tob products, I am willing to actively study and comb behind the business logic, And to the project's business objectives to think and propose effective solutions to convince others, "disadvantage" turned into "advantage." Orange-born Huainan is Orange, was born in Huaibei, compared with the "reputation outside", "high achievement" these imaginary things, "suitable for their", "can avoid weaknesses" environment can better help us gain influence, the premise is that we have a certain degree of analysis and understanding of the ego, rather than follow the drift.

　Second, learn to change position, thinking about the way of expression diversity

A designer generally 50% of the time in the design, another 50% of the time in communication, in addition to their own design plan to be reliable, correctly understand, communicate and convince others is also very important. Communication (especially the level of listening) has not been my forte, but I have been trying to improve the place, although I dare not compared with others, but compared with the past or enhanced, and I feel the most effective point is "learn to change position."

We understand that products and research and development will not easily accept and develop your solutions simply because of "the design experience is good" and "This design is nice", they will consider more restrictions. If in the early stage of design, can fully and comprehensively consider these, from a more solid (in addition to the user experience, I also considered the business objectives, find cases to study whether the technology can be achieved), the essence (good-looking, experience good concrete can produce what value, can bring each other concerned about what things, how to verify) Perspective to the problem and output solution, and expressed in the process of communication and review, the impact on the project team can be another level.

To do some design reviews involving dynamic interaction effects, I used static drafts for the first time. The result will be a lot of time to explain and let everyone "brain fill" effect, not necessarily good results, or even some research and development will be understood as a completely different things, and I only wait until developed to know; Also often find this explanation very tired difficult to understand and restore feelings. After changing to the "listener" angle, I basically as long as the time allowed to do dynamic demo demo, significantly reduce their interpretation and understanding of the cost, while the effect of "cool" additional effects, but also often let the product and business side faster acceptance of the program, if the use of the dynamic tool is the kind of " Use this to make the dynamic effect will certainly be able to achieve "rather than" unrestrained ", the front side also easier to pass.

I have recently discovered a new trick, "associative analogy", when it comes to persuading others through words or words. Take Tob products For example, in my previous article, I mentioned the example of convincing the front end with similar components in a TOC product, and you can actually use more scenarios where the design is controversial: for example, a TOB product is not a user, maybe you think a user point A should go to B, But some people have to say point a go to C reasonable, want to get a user test is too troublesome, then if you can think of a familiar use, in this controversy exists similar mapping of the product case (not even if the online product this form), and then an analogy to lift out, The other person may be able to better the user perspective to feel and understand your point of view, and then be assimilated influence.

　　Third, continuous precipitation, regular learning input and reflection output

Here the "precipitation" I mainly talk about summary writing. I have since joined Ali to cultivate a regular writing habit, most of them are based on the usual learning experience and practical reflection, usually weekly also write weekly summary, this precipitation brought me a lot of unexpected wealth before. Writing as a "re-learning" process, help me to organize the system of settling a lot of mistakes made, trampled on the pit and realized the methodology, insights, help me get rid of endless confusion and repeated mistakes, exercise my logical thinking and expression ability ...

In addition, writing let me really understand the meaning of "Iven", let me get to know, make a lot of good friends in the industry opportunities, found a lot of similar to their own experience, like-minded people, no longer because of their own personality on some special place and feel lonely. Many people are I have always wanted to know, but at that time is always shy of active accosted, but through writing, active voice on the internet, but got the other party's active attention. And in the internal, I through writing honed the ability to control the text, can also be in the foreign brand publicity and other aspects to the team to bring more contributions to play their own advantages for the team to create more value (Welcome to our team public number "37 Point 2 degrees Experience", search Ali-ccoux can). Thanks to writing, I have come out of my own small world, got a better circle of friends, and brought more value to the team, which is a building of influence.

　　Iv. drive change, process optimization liberate self and team

In fact, in some large companies, the workflow is far from the external imagination as perfect, but there are a lot of duplication of labor, inefficiency, low technical content occupy energy and other issues, these work let us exhausted, but not the equivalent of the right to speak, the impact of the level of return. But there is no meaning to complain, but also change the status quo, and some excellent designers in addition to product level innovation, the internal workflow of innovation and improve the same attention, by driving the internal process of innovation and optimization, to their own and team colleagues from the redundant, inefficient labor emancipation, Instead, you can devote more energy to thinking and implementing more valuable things, and to exert greater influence on the same work.

For example, some components of high reuse platform products, if each iteration is interactive out of the vision again, in fact, the efficiency is very low, a lot of visual workload are wasted in repeatedly dragging controls rather than creating. A lot of teams inside our company have found this problem, the use of a set of visual norms, so that interaction designers can be based on existing controls directly out of the high fidelity to the front end, and visual designers as long as the design of new components, quality control, can be more energy to better display the visual value of things.

For example, the design manuscript annotation, a clear, complete annotation or need to spend some energy of the designer, but the price is not necessarily high. (Some front end may not be how to look at all) someone will be driven to set up a set of automated processing tools to mark, as long as the design of the manuscript file to drag, to generate a automatically labeled all the information, click on the component to view the document.

In your spare time, you might as well take a moment to examine your current workflow, products, interaction, vision, front-end together to explore a more efficient way to cooperate, liberate themselves or liberate others, put our energies into more valuable thinking output, let those low cost of repetitive manual labor to hell!