Why do you need to move this button 3 pixels?

I will translate the speed of an article every 1-2 weeks, the user experience design, interactive design, internet product design related articles translation, has just begun to translate, inevitably there is a mistake, in addition I will not completely according to the original author's expression in translation, some may be changed to more easily understand the vernacular, there is the wrong place, Please point out that I will actively correct, thank you.

Today's article is about how designers make it easier for team members to focus on design details and sharpen product details.

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When the product is coming online, I (the original author) will become a perfectionist. Every non-aligned element or strange interaction is a thorn in my shoulder. There will be a dozen flawed implementations lined up to mock me. Everything seems to be a terrible thing.

But other members of the team thought the product looked good and had basic functionality. They would ask, "does moving this button 3px really make our products better?" "or argue:" The last time we fixed a very small design bug, little did not feel the product changes. Then everyone started thinking about the other ideas and the next version of the feature point.

If you're like me, this is a really frustrating situation. As a designer, we have the responsibility to control the quality of the entire product, although we are very passive in the team, we can design beautiful, difficult, great details, but not to achieve, test, let them live.

How can engineers and product peers care about the design, with us to complete the design? I've struggled with this problem n times, and here's what I've learned at the moment.

　　 not designed for design

Designers know the gap between "enough" and "pleasing", which is why we are always obsessed with the details. (littlebigdetails.com) But there is always a tradeoff between creating the perfect detail and doing more useful things: ensuring that the details are perfect often means slowing down the development speed of the festival.

So the reason "looks better" is not enough. Designers need to give good reason to persuade team members to take the time to fix the design.

　　 attention to detail will increase the trust of the user

Users judge the credibility of an online product through visual design, copywriting, and interaction. If you believe that the trust of the user will affect your business, then you should pay attention to the details of the design. Check out some academic articles on the relationship between interface design and user Trust, or see this Stanford project on website credibility.

Mint, Square, and simple the three have done very well in the design details and won the trust of the user. They are also just starting products, but users can confidently use them to store financial details, make payments, and keep accounts.

　　 attention to detail will increase the usability of the product

Every time I see MailChimp's logo makes me smile! The non-cluttered Google home page looks very comfortable. Apple's fine-to-every-pixel interface is a very pleasing one. They all ensured the accuracy of the design details and created a positive emotion, but why is this important?

In our brains, there is a strange brain hacker-emotional state. Thought is affected by emotional state very much, feeling frustrated or happy will affect our way of solving problems. When I was in a bad mood, faced with a product that made me confused, it didn't work with a mad button. In such a frustrating situation, even if I try to do the same thing harder, it will not help me achieve my goals.

But when we are in a good mood, it feels like playing with the interface. The world to us is a maze, not a battle, you see what is pleasing to the eye. Even when we encounter problems that confuse us, we are more willing to try to explore and discover other ways to solve problems. Donnald Norman's "affective Design" has made a special discussion on this aspect. The point here, of course, is that excellent product details can create a positive emotional state and make the product easier to use.

　　 deal with your work in bulk.

If your product has a lot of questions that need to be fixed and waiting to be done, changing only one of them doesn't make you or your users feel good. It's like filling a hole and not letting a bumpy road flatten out, you don't even notice the change.

So, the trick is: Finish all the UI bugs at once! If your team is also regularly looking for a day to deal with recent bugs, try hosting a bug fix day. As a designer, you need to make a list of all the issues you need to fix in advance, or submit them to a bug-tracking platform, and prioritize the bugs.

At the time of the bug removal program, everyone can focus on the list of issues. Of course you can't solve all the bugs at once, that's okay. No Kuibu to thousands of miles, after the end of the day, you will find that the product has been significantly improved. This will also make all the members feel great, and will let everyone in the future more attentively to improve the design of the problem.

　　 1.1-Point grinding

The first time I tried to control the quality of the product when I created the product function point, I blew it. The beginning of things is always good: The engineer and I agreed to the design, and then I drew a prototype map to him, the next day he Lezizi show me the program he finished, the results can not bear to look straight, this is where my design ah!

I was angry on the spot, complaining and pointing out all the mistakes. This led to the back he would not like to ask my feedback, the realization of the product quality further worse, I was more frustrated, a typical vicious circle.

Later, I gradually realized that when an engineer felt that a product had been completed by 90%, in the eyes of the designer, it might have only completed 10%. Now, even with a little bit of user interface detail, I feel very happy before the product function is perfect.

When engineers were present, I also tried to build agile feedback and modification mechanisms. I'll say, "When you check this, pull me." "So that we can fix some minor bugs in the process."

　　 Avoid unnecessary customizations

Designing a personalized button in Photoshop is simple-it's just the tip of the iceberg we see. In fact, in order to ensure the perfection of the details of the need to pay a lot of, such as: In addition to the normal state, but also need to have a press, not available state, to prevent the button when the double-click button text highlighting and so on some columns may be used to the state.

I often hit an iceberg. For example, Ajax pages take more time than traditional Web pages, and mobile-customized menus take more time than native. If the team does not have enough time to polish these customized UIs, using native controls may be a better choice.

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These are the techniques I have learned in the past few years to advance the design details. As far as I know, the culture of each team is different, and their attitude towards design quality is different. So some teams are willing to take the time to make the details better, and some teams are more inclined to get the product online as soon as possible.

I am interested in how different teams create their own standards about quality. How did you get your team to agree to some design details and take the time to improve the design details? What works well for you? What's useless? We can discuss it together.

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This article was originally published in Design staff, a blog about entrepreneurship designed by Google Ventures.

Why do you need to move this button 3 pixels?