The method of scoring comparison of design schemes in interactive design

Today @ Say Qin someone to the students to introduce a particularly efficient and practical method, when encountering more scenes or team of controversial design points can use this method, to help the interaction designers to clarify ideas, reach a consensus and make the most likely correct design decisions.

　　Why is this method needed in interactive design ?

In the interactive design work often encountered such problems, the design of some locations involved in more complex scenarios, to consider more factors, these design points are often the most controversial, because team members may not be able to quickly understand all the scenarios and factors, So only according to their own can think of individual scenes and factors to judge the design, the final team formed a disagreement, everyone can not master all the scenes and factors, at this time, it is likely to make the wrong design decisions, but also affect team morale.

So, we need a way to create documents together, all the scenarios and factors to consider list and discuss the selection, and then on this basis to simulate the user may produce behavioral path, and then along the path of behavior to find the experience of good and bad place, good points, bad points, and finally get the final score of different design plans, High score for the recommended program.

　　When is the right time to use?

Encountered a design point:

> Scene More

> User Status More

> Less impact on this product, no time and manpower for detailed user research

On the team:

> has formed a few alternative designs

> is controversial to the plan

> Long time no results are discussed

> Team members are designers, not trained in professional user research

　　Why not A/b Test?

Cost problem, A/b test is a high time and human cost method;

The need for professional knowledge, from the collection of users, process monitoring to the final data processing, are required to have more professional support of the research staff;

Therefore, A/b test is suitable for more important design points, there are more time and human cost support can be carried out, this method is suitable for the impact of small but more complex design points, not suitable for the research team to study, only by the designer team itself to solve the problem.

So this method is not a rigorous quantitative study, but a quick and agile qualitative study, designed to allow interactive designers to clear their mind, reach consensus and make the most likely correct design decisions.

　　How to proceed?

The following is a design question I have recently encountered to introduce how to use this method.

The problem is the design point is the browser account login interactive design, in the case of poor network, login page prompts interaction should do?

After a long discussion, we get 3 kinds of controversial designs:

No access to the landing page, and toast prompted the network is poor. The main consideration is: The network is not good when users do not waste time and energy to fill out the account and password.

Allow access to the landing page, do not prompt the network is not good, until the input finished click on the landing and then play toast. The main consideration is to encourage users to log on, even if the network is unstable and let users try to log in.

Allow access to the landing page, and toast hint of poor network. The main factors to consider is: balance the above two ways, a hint, let users know that the network is not good, so that users choose to fill in and not fill.

Another point worth noting is that this browser login does not remember the account password function, fill in the account password will automatically empty when exiting. This discussion is based on the design of the account password recording function is temporarily missing.

　　Scene Factor analysis

Analyze the user is in what scene enters the landing, the influence scene factor mainly extracts two, the network poor condition and the anxious degree.

Poor network status: 50%, short term 50%

Long-term network bad scene refers to the user long-term in no network signal environment, such as the need for a long time in the absence of signal restaurants, toilets, etc.;

Short-term network bad scene refers to the user in the mobile state, such as cars, subways, walking, users can not predict when the network recovery;

Because there is no actual data support, can only be based on user group characteristics of the guesses, both cases occur frequency of 50%

Anxious degree: Urgent 10%, not urgent 90%

Urgency refers to whether the user is eager to login successfully. Browser login or not affect the normal use, does not affect the search this may be more urgent functions, user group properties are also relatively casual crowd; but also do not exclude users to install a new browser, and need to synchronize the bookmark to browse a particular site of this relatively special situation.

Because there is no actual data support, can only be based on user group characteristics of the guesses, the two cases occur at a frequency of 1:9

The above two factors stack up, there will be 4 kinds of specific scenarios, respectively:

Long-term, urgent

Short-term, urgent

Long-term, not urgent

Short term, no hurry

The frequency of each specific scene is then multiplied according to the frequency of the scene factor's occurrence:

Long 50% x Urgent 10% =5%

Short 50% x Urgent 10% =5%

Long 50% x no rush 90% =45%

Short 50% x no rush 90% =45%

　　Behavioral Path Analysis

The problem of interaction design is essentially what happens under what scene, so after the scene is determined, it is necessary to analyze what happens under the scene. At this point we put three programs into 4 specific scenes, to see what the behavior of each.

In Scenario 2, for example, in a "long-term, urgent" scenario, we think that the user's behavior path is as follows:

The user did not find the network bad, entered the account password;

Found not landing, exit;

Be impatient to go into the attempt once again;

Found the account password is not recorded, so re-enter

or landing a failure, helpless to give up

After the behavior path is determined, we begin to evaluate the experience advantages and disadvantages in the behavioral path, the advantages plus points, the disadvantages minus points:

The entire process wastes user time-1

Allow users to try to ease the anxiety +1

The fourth step, found that the account password is not recorded, so re-enter the experience is not good-1

So the score of Scenario 2 in the "long term, urgent" scenario is ( -1+1-1) multiplied by the occurrence frequency of the specific scene 5%, equal to-5%, or 0.05. In the same way, we can get the score of scenario 2 in other concrete scenes, and add the total score of Scheme 2.

The following is a behavioral path analysis and scoring for all scenarios under 4 specific scenarios.

Score multiplied by occurrence probability to get total score

Done! is done, the plan seems to be a more appropriate solution. But it's worth noting that scenarios 1 and 3 have the same score before the occurrence of the scenario, so we can clearly see the impact of the scenario on the design, because the probability of the scenario is just a rough guess, so you should also be able to determine the change in the scores of the scenarios when the probability of the scenario changes, In order to facilitate timely programmatic changes in response to changes.

　　Summarize

In this case, the urgency of the user is an important factor in the design decision, and at first glance Scenario 2 is more in line with the user's expectations, but if you take into account the fact that the login is not desperately needed for the browser, and combined with many other considerations, Scenario 2 is not a good design. So it's not always reliable to think about design problems with a quick intuition, because fast intuition is sometimes one-sided, and people distort objective reality based on subjective consciousness. In this example, the first instinct is usually apt to overestimate the urgency of the login to the browser, and thus incorrectly choose Scenario 2, but when you analyze calmly, you will find that the login is not so urgent, then you should consider scenario 1 or 3.

This method is not only a tool to deal with the dispute, but more importantly, it can help the designer to develop the ability of rational thought and logical thinking. I do not deny the role of intuition and perceptual thinking in the design of the evaluation of behavioral path experience advantages and disadvantages of the use of intuition and perceptual thinking, then need to play the ordinary user to intuitive experience of the design of good and bad. But in the scene analysis, the designer cannot use the intuition and the perceptual thought, but should transform into the data and the logic guidance rational thought.

This is why interactive design is usually done by people of industrial design backgrounds, not other design majors, because industrial design is more balanced in science and art, which is similar to interactive design. Industrial design uses rational thinking at the creation level, the user experience level uses the perceptual thinking, the interaction design is similar, but the creation level is not follows the physics logic, but follows the Internet technology, the perceptual Science, the psychology, the sociology and the statistics and so on discipline principle. Interactive design or water is very deep, although it is a new discipline, the future direction of development is full of various possibilities.