What is UI? Why do I have to do UI? How do I do the UI?

In 09, the company decided to separate the technical departments from the establishment of production centers, after the production center is divided into UI and program two chunks, I personally have been appointed as the company's chief designer, such changes show the company's technical business of this upgrade to improve the determination of the company, and the leadership of my trust also expressed gratitude, Although the production center of the UI department only set up a few months, the work is also relatively smooth in the conduct, and the actual work of the completion of the effect is also good, especially the completion of a few urgent projects to explain this is a hard war, tough team! These are with the team of everyone's responsibility and the full cooperation between the people, I am also particularly grateful to them, I hope we can continue to guard this unity, this cohesion, there are even more arduous task is still waiting for us.

Although some achievements have been seen in this year, the actual problems still exist, and many old problems are still being exposed, and we must face them. To be honest, from the real UI level, we are not doing enough, some of the old program + page thinking and working methods will still become our daily work in the lead, our current UI is still a long way to stay in the superficial stage. What exactly is the UI? Why do you want to do the UI? How do I do the UI? Believe that many of us are still confused in this concept.

Today saw a news, Ma Yun in Alipay Company's annual meeting to scold let him earn hundreds of billions of wealth "Alipay." There was no stage decoration, no music background, no lighting, and all the Alipay employees in the dark heard a section of voice from the user, all of which came from the phone recordings of the customer department. The content of the recording is very harsh, there is no common praise, "no good word", all are accusations, complaints, frustration, scold, hate, criticism. "Rotten, too rotten, rotten to the extreme. Ma Yun then onstage, and chooses this occasion so to describe Alipay's user experience. As we all know, Alipay is one of the few companies in the country with independent ued department, have a relatively perfect workflow system, talent resources and show stage, their research and practice of user experience is most of domestic companies can not Shi, that is because of these, they have become a lot of corporate UI departments are learning and emulating the object. Not otherwise Alipay is an absolute first-class network application platform in China and even internationally, Ma Yun's Chong crown an angry said simple is for users, when we retire to pay all the aura of treasure, we see in fact this is a user's platform, who can dominate the platform of the success and failure, the answer is only one, that is the user. When the use of artificial subjective ideas imposed on this platform, regardless of subjective how reasonable and level, but users may be ignored, when the user will be ignored, if not to pay attention to, only one possibility, by the user abandoned!

A usability expert, Jacob Nielsen, has seen an article in which he divides the availability maturity of a company into 8 phases: 1. Hostile to user Experience 2. Developer-centric design 3. Sporadic availability of 4. The availability of investment 5. The availability department establishes 6. System's availability Process 7. The integrated UCD 8. A user-driven company. Ma Yun to pay the wrath of the treasure by the user, visible if according to this theory, Alipay has begun to start the user to drive the development of the company's products, Alipay is gradually entering the 8th phase. Come back, also with such standards to evaluate the current stage of our company at present, we will see a lot of problems, most of the positioning of the project will be managers and even the standards of the application of technical personnel to request, the user has become a "customer (with subjective needs and strong minority users)", "Customer" Satisfaction is our satisfaction, in the short term it is likely to achieve a certain degree of effect and satisfaction, but for a long time, due to the design of the initial deviation, angular velocity theory has been magnified over the years, so that the availability of products can be imagined, designed products or youshiwuzhong, or halfway has become a commonplace, It is true that we need to go a long way, need to do and improve the things there are many, many ...

A good Internet product must be user-centric design, 2010 the company's UI department is not only to complete the current interface design work, strict control of product quality, optimize efficiency; and the focus of the task will be to strengthen the company's product design, usability design. This requires the division of responsibilities in the Department, work flow, norms, personnel structure and so on to the great effort. We plan to start with product design and information architecture, guided by the normative theory of concrete work, in the "business structure" clear, "technical framework" stability, under the premise of in-depth to the user and product research and practice, in some key projects in the user analysis and research, the establishment of users, products, designers, three channels of communication, Design to track and analyze the quality and quantity of the user experience. Work goal on one: to user-centric design products, improve products, so that products can accurately grasp the user.

But we will also see from the reality of the company, it may not be possible to produce a dedicated ued department at this time, which requires all the department staff who are involved in product design and user experience: "It is our best practice to give up singles and work with more people for a better product and user experience." "I am well aware of the difficulties and pressures that will be faced in this, but the right route must be adhered to, even if the road is fraught with hardships and dangers, all for the sake of products and all for the user." Quote MA: "A lot of companies, have lived less than five years, live to more than five years of the company did not have such a pain, not such a toss this company is not long, today I think it is Alipay began to face their own problems." ”

The last half copy brother White's words: "It seems that for this matter, at least it is worth us to do 10 years." ”