Tencent lecture hall-lean Design

Lean design is an effective lean design method based on the concept of lean entrepreneurship, so that the design team can design a better user experience with a lower cost and higher efficiency.

As a designer, have you ever encountered such a situation. When you communicate with a customer, you think you have reached a consensus with him. When you output a complete design draft, he tells you with a frown that this is not what he wants. So what is what the customer really wants?

When you and the team output a large number of complete and exquisite solutions, the customer did not buy the account at all. Is there a problem with communication, or are we making a mistake?

Remove noise from Communication

Communication is definitely the most difficult thing in the world. Some people say that half of the world does not understand the other half. In the face of this reality, is it possible to rethink how to make others accept our design and how to synchronize information and communicate smoothly.

I think this is a question about how to balance costs. Good communication is not just verbal communication, but a concrete solution that both parties must understand. But the root cause is:

1. It is difficult to reach an agreement without a concrete expression;
2. A solution that is too representative and costly is prone to customer dissatisfaction mentioned above.

This situation often bothers designers and affects their work efficiency. This makes me realize that design, as a form of expression, should be used to achieve the most effective expression at a lower cost during the communication needs stage. How can this problem be solved? It's better to go back to where we used to start and use traditional paper sketches to feel the persuasiveness of "talking on paper.

Since ancient times, humans have not invented texts. How do people communicate with each other? Humans instinctively use pictures to express their thoughts and communicate with others. Later, images gradually generate hieroglyphics, until now people use words to communicate. From portrait communication to text communication is the evolution of human Semantic Cognition. Although modern text can quickly express abstract concepts, it is not easy to describe concrete things. This is exactly the case. In the communication process, designers should return to the image if they want to express their intentions in a specific way. The best way to describe an image is to draw a sketch.

 

 

The role of a sketch is different from that of a formal design draft. The purpose of using a sketch is to improve the communication efficiency. The sketch method seems to be passing on the intention: "I can change it, so you don't have to worry about it. Tell me what you really think, because I am not very confident in my shape ." Therefore, the sketch is not exquisite enough to have a sense of design, so that you can simply focus on the surface Implementation of the design method, back to the most fundamental problem: how to make the idea go from 0 to 1, and accurately convey the designer's intent.

Agile design method--Implement ideas

Agility is not just a software engineering development model, but a way of thinking-finding the most problems with the minimum cost and the fastest speed, and constantly improving the solution, agility is "Getting started ". Putting an idea into practice should be an important idea of Agile design. Using Sketch in a specific design process can solve this problem well. Creating a sketch is not affiliated with the design. It is an activity in the design process and should also be the foundation of the design process. The features of the sketch are also very consistent with the concept of "Lean design": you can design a better user experience at a lower cost and higher efficiency.

Features of the interface sketch

 

 

Timely and fast:

The fastest way to express an idea is to quickly draw it out with paper and pen, rather than spending time on language communication. Because pure language communication is always wrong, and people's understanding of the text is more or less different.

Cheap:

The sketch we have drawn is not to use ps, or use other complex drawing tools to test the tool. The purpose of the sketch is to design it to express the demand quickly. In the stage of requirement communication and scrutiny, designers should not spend too much. This is the process of constantly making mistakes and making mistakes in situations. Sketch can be discarded at any time. This is the best way to avoid design costs.

Continuous Enrichment:

Sketch is often not a single one. It is always a continuous and rich display of the designer's continuous thinking process, annotation, disruption, and process. This is the biggest charm of my favorite sketch, it makes me unable to add my "thoughts", but also allows participants to add their "thoughts ". As the saying goes, to do good deeds, you must first sharpen your tools. If I put the design draft in PS, I will try my best to make it as beautiful as possible, instead of simply expressing my thoughts. What I need now is not like this. The role of sketch is to record the process of accumulation of experience and thinking in the lowest cost and fastest way. Its value is extraordinary, just like the "incorrect question set" in the student age. It records the mistakes I have made and can better feedback my design ideas and become future design experiences.

Hand-drawn style:

Hand-drawn sketch drawing follows certain specifications, and the flow line of the sketch gives people a free and open feeling, it does not need to be as accurate as industrial drawing and high fidelity prototype. Hand-drawn style can give people a sense of closeness and humanization, allowing users to focus on basic functions, rather than focusing on the details of the product appearance at the beginning. The Sketch Style of the sketch drawing further shows that these are not the final concepts.

Minimal details:

During the design process, the drafting phase is like drawing a sketch. With a sketch, the layout is black and white, and the general structure of the object is drawn, it is already a successful work. Then, we will continue to refine the building and gradually complete the work into a complete sketch. The same is true for the interface sketch. You do not have to worry too much about the details when setting the module diagram.

Vague and uncertain:

Sketch is not the final purpose of design. Sketch is a way of conversation with ideas. It creates a display chart full of clues without stopping the loose lines. It is not a result, its greater significance lies in promoting and stimulating new ideas in the process of dialogue with ideas, so as to make the existing ideas more novel and unique. The fact that the way of thinking is changed is more important than the sketch itself.

Why should we put this feature at the end, because the sketch feature is similar to the essence of "Lean user experience (lean design. The core Foundation of "Lean UX" is Eric les's "The Lean Startup (lean entrepreneurship Law)"-the lean entrepreneurship law initially advocates rapid development of the least viablePrototypeProduct (MVP), and quickly pushed to the market, so as to verify assumptions much faster than traditional development models, and then upgrade software based on customer feedback ...... The lean start-up process requires us to engage with real customers as soon as possible to verify and eliminate incorrect market assumptions to avoid waste.

"Lean UX" directly applies this idea to product design. When your mind is still in its infancy, you can drop it into a cruel real world for testing. Because the original prototype was a solution built by the designer, it was in a state of exploration rather than final determination. In this way, you can discover the product design errors in advance in this process, so as to avoid the failure of the last great amount of time and resources. If users can express their opinions as soon as possible, you will be able to know whether your ideas can work as soon as possible.

To sum up,SketchAll of these features show that you can use the lowest possible cost and the plasticity of the sketch itself to inspire all participants to think and discover problems as soon as possible. This process is interesting and significant. (1)

 

 

Figure 1: Sketch in Exploration

How to use sketch

Sketch is a tool in the design process. It is vital to make use of it correctly. To really understand the meaning of a sketch, first of all, you must understand that the tool itself does not have much effect on improving the ability of a person. It is meaningful to place the tool in a specific environment and social situation. So how to use a sketch tool depends on how you draw, when, where, and why you want to use it. (2)

 

Figure 2: scenarios where sketch is used during design

Share your sketch

"The combat power of the Wolf group comes from each group of wolves in the group ." -- La de. Kipling

Drawing a sketch is a brainstorm. We can get various ideas. In this process, we want to have a good conversation with the sketch, but don't forget it, sketch is not a result, but a process. Sketch is exploratory. According to lean design, designers should share your sketch during their initial exploration and listen to others' comments as much as possible. Share the design sketch. More importantly, the sketch is a carrier that attracts your colleagues to interact, cooperate, and communicate with each other through visual visibility.

Inject vitality into sketch

When interacting with your colleagues, you can easily record the process of thinking or other details by adding some annotations to the sketch without changing the original article. Like creating a sketch, a cooperative sketch is constantly thinking and trying. You can constantly overturn your own scheme and integrate the existing sketch scheme. At the same time, new concepts constantly inspire designers to review sketch schemes. Because only mistakes targeting the original ideas will promote more good ideas. It makes the sketch alive, which is the value of the sketch in the cooperation process.

Global considerations

The purpose of the exploration is to find a more appropriate answer. One of the predecessors once said that you have never thought about exploring the first n solutions, and you will never get the n + 1 solution, however, divergence and streamlining are equally important. After a lot of Sketch schemes are released, we should learn to think back. It is best to have a better understanding of what you have done through the preliminary conversation with the sketch.

From sketch to interaction prototype

Starting from the idea brewing in our minds, we will explore our ideas through sketch, and then use prototypes to verify our ideas. The main purpose of prototype technology, like sketch, is to save time and cost to further verify your own ideas. I personally recommend that you explore multiple ways with a sketch solution (3 ). Then, we can further verify our scheme by using a lower-income real-original model that is more accurate than the sketch. The lower-income real-original model can be drawn through software, many predecessors have summarized and shared many prototyping tools (axure, fireworks, and AI). Here we only need to find the tools suitable for ourselves or a specific project. You can sort out the preliminary process in the process of drawing the basic subsistence allowances. Of course, these are not for users, but for the early ideas as much as possible.

 

Figure 3: Sketch in Exploration

Next, we can make a paper prototype. In addition to the previous user research sessions, we will be able to access real users. Here, we will be able to access users who actually use products in the future, usability tests are conducted using the paper prototype. A host is required to simulate the behavior of the actual operating system and convert the paper prototype into a functional prototype. When a user wants to perform an operation, the host finds the next screen or conversation element from the pile of paper.

 

A "paper prototype" looks like a sketch, but it is not a sketch. "Paper prototype" is a prototype design method, while hand-drawn sketch is a design representation. Low-cost and fast scrutiny of many ideas in mind by drawing a sketch, and then usability testing by using a "paper prototype", in the process of drawing a sketch and usability testing, the design standards are strictly different. If the sketch is exploratory, the prototype is to extract the final answer to the problem.

After these efforts, we have verified our design scheme with the minimum cost in the shortest possible time. We can further develop a dynamic interaction prototype to test our solution, so that the experience can be smoother and some details of the experience can be found.

Designers always say "user-centric" and follow the advice of "understanding user needs" before design, but do we know that the user level is enough to solve problems in the design process? Designers and customers are not real users. We need to talk to people who actually use products in the future. In a project with user research engineers, designers may not be able to access real users from start to end. Is this really "user-centric? My answer is no.

In order to allow users to participate better, they must demonstrate the proposed solution to users in an understandable way, present abstract standard documents to users, or verbally describe what we want to do, users cannot be involved in the design process at all, because their understanding of this document is far inferior to the understanding of the specific prototype. Participating design through paper prototypes can inspire users to propose their ideas and modify the paper prototypes. A paper prototype is developed from a sketch. Although it is more advanced than a sketch, It is not final. It is just a creation, and it retains the sketch to some features, it will make the user feel that it can be modified, and I can still give up my ideas without fear, and everything will be too late. It should be noted that "users are not always right", which requires professional thinking from designers.

It seems that the entire process is too complicated? Some people say that design is subjective in many cases and there is no perfect solution. However, we can make some efforts to make our design more rational and reduce the risk of making mistakes, saves cost for product development. In addition to the special nature of the project, I think these processes are indispensable. Things are constantly changing. I believe that with the growth of the designer, some things will become mature and the sensitivity will increase, just like learning painting when I was a child, to draw a "circle", you need to use guides. After practice is born, you no longer need guides. No matter what you want to do now or in the future, keep thinking and consciously sum up mistakes. I think this is the greatest fortune in your career as an interaction designer.

Dream designer's feelings

Before I liked interactive design, I once dreamed that I was a dream designer by heri adni in "dreamspace. Although in a dream, its experience is real, how interesting it is. Or the magician in The Wizard of Oz, the magician used luoxi to cheat her in a false environment, but the experience was real. Dreamland designers and magicians "manipulate" all these things behind the scenes. Everything is true to the objects who experience the environment. In the real environment, my feelings drive me to like interactive design, and I cannot build a dream without magic. However, I like to use paper and pen to express my emotions and thoughts when I first came into contact with painting, the experience design allows me to use paper and pen to build a world with the object of experience, and hopes to use these as the basis to implement the products that really love users. This makes me happy, and I hope that what I do will make the experience happy.