11 things about how experience design activities converge

"Editor's note" in the past five years, the author @ A dirt thief led dozens of of different sizes of the design activities, the most profound experience is that the correct guidance to make the whole http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/25722.html " > Design Team Symphony. It is embodied in the grasp of the overall situation, the stimulation of the team, the right to the point, decisive and rational decision, embracing the challenges of the mentality and so on.

Experience design is the art of convergence and guidance, interaction and collaboration is also an excellent experience designers must have the ability.

The core of design should be realistic (rational), whether from time or resource cost, it is important to measure a good experience design activity whether it converges to a good design and a minimal delivery plan that can be developed, often because the design itself is often wrongly equated with imaginative creative activity, Convergence is overlooked by many, or powerless, and as a result, the activity is bogged down in endless arguments, aimlessly diverging, or a leader's eloquence.

The core competence of experience designers should not only be the decision-makers of design, but also the guide of the design team, and the meaning of guidance itself is to lead different people to achieve:

quick Agreement; The first version of the product design as small and fine as possible;

This article is to introduce my common method of convergence, I hope to help you in ensuring the accuracy of the design on the basis of improving the efficiency of the design activities.

Agile UX Funnel model

The output of the Agile UX is a sufficient amount of user stories to be developed and an interactive prototype that is sufficient for testing, and these two "enough" are the goals of our entire design process. The design funnel of Agile UX is a complete embodiment of the essence and value positioning, that is, customer hypothesis, problem assumptions (Problem hypothesis), and scenario assumptions (Solution hypothesis).

I assume that there is a client in a scenario (context) that is driven by some kind of drive (motivation), produces some kind of need (Need), and translates into some sort of action target (Goals);

I assume that the above clients will have some kind of problem in accomplishing the above objectives (Problem);

I technology the above customers in the completion of these objectives in the process of meeting the above problems, will choose my solution (Solution);

So the whole design process is sinking at every level, that is, when we qualify a scenario, we don't need to discuss the situation in other situations; When we identify our problems, we don't try to solve other problems, any discussion of other issues should be paused.

[Figure I] this is a funnel of experience design to see how the real world problem is settling into progressively evolving products through the various stages of experiential design.

We tend to put aside the first solution, instead of getting caught up in the solution PK, because you often try to solve different problems for different customers with a solution, any discussion of the solution is a waste of time when a design team does not agree on the customer and the problem location. And often difficult to agree on.

Use coordinate graph

Axes are one of the tools we try to converge. Brainstorming is unavoidable in the design process, and in order to ensure that the output of brainstorming can be evaluated at the first time (evaluation), I often use axes instead of aimless strips.

[Figure II] This figure shows examples of the various axes that are classified as brainstorming outputs.

The horizontal ordinate of an axis can be selected according to the situation, for example, if you are brainstorming a target customer, you can position the horizontal ordinate:

Horizontal axis: Customer potential business value; longitudinal axis: number of existing customers;

Brainstorm for content combinations:

Horizontal axis: The cost of content itself; longitudinal axis: The attraction of content to a particular class of customers;

For example, a certain type of user to a certain type of function requirements;

Horizontal axis: Without this function, a certain type of user is likely to be angry; longitudinal axis: There is this user, we need to pay the cost;

These custom coordinate diagrams help guide you through the classification of brainstorming results and quickly agree on results, not just in design activities, but also in many project management.

using the slider (Slider)

The slider is also a method of evaluating the output of brainstorming, and our approach is:

1. Turn the result of brainstorming into several sliders;

2, invite everyone to carry out the first time 1 to 10 satisfaction assessment, the method is to use the finger the first time to express the score, not to follow the ticket, if there is a large divergence of circumstances to explain the reasons;

3, finally will be the score with a stick to the final state of the slider, we feel at the creative point at a glance.

[Figure III] This is an example of two uses of slider to converge on brainstorming results.

Of course, we must face some people's views are ignored, so we will do this as early as possible to do this design decision-making activities, each brainstorming end need to be convergent, the process of the earlier, the more effective, the success rate is higher.

for Creative

Avoid powerful people leading the entire design and expect the entire design team to move forward in the Blur and trade-off. The way to avoid personal heroism is to try to take apart "design Hero" (designing Hero) so that they and other members of the team to carry out the idea, before everyone completes the idea of creativity is not allowed to show.

[Figure IV] The design group is divided into smaller groups for collaborative design

The purpose of pairing is to allow creativity to accept other people's opinions before forming, on the other hand, we can cultivate the habit of cooperative design and avoid excessive protection of the design.

The pairing method that we often use is "four pairs of Sketches" (4 sketches)--use A4 paper to fold it in half two times and complete 4 sketches in 4 regions to express a solution. The reason why I changed the popular "six-pair sketches" (6 sketches) to four pairs was because of the 4-fold picture.

using the design board

The ultimate manifestation of convergence is agreement, and visualization is always the begotten of fast agreement. In our design activities, we use a large number of design board, the design process is fully displayed on the wall of the studio, design decisions completed around the design board, rather than facing the PPT to convene the design review meeting.

[Figure V] a variety of design boards that display all the design processes on the Great White board, and the design process is always centered around the storyboard.

To control the funnel model of Agile UX, the simplest design board you might need is the following:

Typical user distribution, user map, user experience maps, design prototypes, User story identification,

This five-piece will basically: who design? Solve what problem? How to solve? How to plan? Four questions are answered within the design team.

optimism cap and pessimistic cap

In the process of designing activities with customers, there is often an endless attack--one side is too aggressive about a program, the other is overly sensitive to a scheme. Challenge or protection is not a good design mentality, in order to solve this problem we often use the classic optimistic hat and pessimistic hat.

[Figure six] there is a "worry" and "like" collection of design Directions in the collection

We have to control the design board, asked everyone to wear a "pessimistic cap", the fear of their own brainstorming, affixed to the design of the surrounding. Note Here are two details:

1, to everyone said: "Now is the time to worry, please write your concerns on these designs," Here we do not say that you "do not like" and just worry about, to avoid becoming wrong or challenging time;

2, let everyone write all the worries and then stick to the design scheme, to avoid when someone found that their design has too much worry and uncomfortable.

After the pessimistic cap, we will invite you to put on the "optimistic cap", and put yourself on the other side of the program like brainstorming, and affixed to the corresponding design scheme around.

Finally, we will be with you on the "worry" and "like" to sum up, here, many situations where everyone's thinking has begun to converge to a certain one or two design, design direction unconsciously determined down.

from a start

The product is alive, and it is slowly evolving, at the very beginning we want our design team to focus on the simplest and most core experience, in order to avoid into the future of the excessive discussion, we often at the beginning of the education design team, our products in quantity is the "one" Services-Any discussion of a number of users or content that is relevant should be properly stopped.

Sometimes we appoint a member to be "a picket," and any discussion that has to do with the needs of multiple or massive users and content can be stopped by him.

Take the design of Sina Weibo as an example, the following discussion should be properly stopped:

user group; search; content sort; fan list;

It should be noted that this does not mean that we do not consider these in the design, so this stop should be when the discussion comes to concrete implementation details or disputes. Before the basic experience is complete, it is wasteful to discuss the details of the future too much.

as late as possible to propose the solution

The least likely to agree is the details of the solution--not good enough; The easiest to diverge is the details of the solution--I think that's better. To avoid getting too caught up in the details of the solution prematurely, we are asking the design team to present the solution as late as possible.

And this point in time is that we have a complete agreement on the assumptions and problems of the customer in the value set, that is, we have decided to solve the problem for such users.

as late as possible using electronic means as a tool

Similar to the proposed solution as late as possible, there is "as late as possible using electronic means as a tool". In order to avoid unnecessary details of the discussion, as soon as possible convergence, we require the design of as little as possible to appear too much detail, in our core design concepts, information architecture, page flow to achieve the basis of consistency to avoid using the computer as an auxiliary tool.

[Figure Seven] the results of the non-electronic design of the various low fidelity are shown in the figure

We use paper prototypes and sketches as much as we can, and we use computers for more detailed design only when the complete conceptual model is built.

Simulation VC Pitching Activity

Convergence helps form small, refined product designs, and we often refer to the core MVP (Minimum viable product) in Lean startup to guide the design team to make the design as small and complete as possible.

When the design occurs directional differentiation, we sometimes organize two teams to simulate VC pitching activities, this activity, the team members are required to deal with the characteristics of the VC show their design, these characteristics are:

VC does not understand technology, but care about you to solve the problem of analysis and judgment; VC focus on a complete story rather than function; VC is unwilling to invest large sums of money in the first stage; VC is interested in the future;

For these features, the team members are asked to show:

the design of WHO to solve the problem, how to explain the design in the way of the story, the most complete design that meets the minimum input, the MVP;

[Figure eight] shows the VC pitching we invite participants to simulate quickly

We will give designers 10 minutes to use PPT, story statements, prototype display, and even sketch of the way to tell the whole team, the end of the time to give questions, and eventually the whole team to vote to determine the final design plan.

don't waste time arguing about assumptions.

At the outset, we will build a consensus that we should not waste time arguing about assumptions. All of our design activities are basically based on the assumption that the value positioning we define is a combination of three hypotheses.

The majority of any disputes over assumptions are unnecessary.

The discussion we want to avoid is: "I don't think your plan is fun", "I don't think your design is used by anyone", "I think users will do that."

The best way to do this is to either find proof that the "user will use it" or to follow one of the solutions to get online first time. As experience design to get the guide to avoid such a discussion, since everyone is on the assumption of the design, or stop to verify, or fast online validation, in their own does not violate the basic principle of interaction on the basis of arguing which is better, not much significance.

wrote in the last

Experience design activities are not simply the use of stickers and hand-painted, it is the convergence and guidance of the arts, through interaction and collaboration, the full play of the design team's ability to reach the first time to agree, design a small and refined products for the continuous evolution of the foundation. Hope to help you, soft advertising or to write, summoned to develop in Chengdu has Drupal or WordPress experience front-end development, if the design ability is too good, welcome to join our team.

Original link: 11 things about how experience design activities converge