A brief analysis of Chinese design experience

　　in China, innovation is a word that is overused. In Ark Design, innovation is hailed as an attitude or belief, the core values of DNA in a business or public sector, which is integrated into the individual life style. Here are some insights into China's innovation and hope to inspire you.

Industry Status

Driven by the Internet industry, the launch of Apple's iphone in 2007 became a milestone in China's design innovation industry, with explosive growth in the industrial design and user experience industries. Design Major in various arts, synthesis, arts and sciences institutions have sprung up (uneven level), it is said that each year a variety of design professional graduates have more than 300,000; at the same time, large companies in the design and user experience of the number of units are also growing rapidly, such as Huawei, Haier, Tencent, Ali and other well-known companies have more than hundred designers, even hundreds of people; In addition, the design consulting industry has gradually grown, in the design of talent and customers more concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and other areas also appeared some have a certain scale and visibility of the design brand.

But there is a crisis behind it.

Talent: Designers need talent and it's hard to be mass-produced like engineers. And the current talent structure in China is the line pyramid: The tower base is huge, people can not find the bottom of the work; The spire is very small, the top of the tower of outstanding talent shortage (pay rise too fast worry), both ends will hinder the healthy development of the industry.

Entertainment: The industry's annual meeting is very easy to have thousands of people to participate, on the contrary, the design department in the company's position is still not and products, technology, even operations and other departments, not to mention the "design-driven innovation." The value of the design is not fully demonstrated if the design department is content to be responsible for execution rather than actively seeking participation or even leading decisions.

Design management: Teamwork is not the strength of the Chinese people, the design is no longer a master will be able to make the time, and let a group of maverick "artists" combined into the perfect dream team, it is more difficult. In addition, the leadership of the design department is often selected from excellent designers, and does not necessarily have a good leadership.

Pseudo-Innovation: Once Upon a time, the word "innovation" has become a cliché because every business leader talks about innovation on every occasion. In the eyes of the industry, there are few business leaders in China that really understand the value of designing, understanding and promoting the user experience. Without strategic attention, lack of policy, resources, human and financial inclination, design innovation faces huge development bottleneck.

High-end Consulting: The United States Innovation Consulting industry is an example, over the years formed a very coordinated high school low-end structure to meet a variety of needs. And China is extremely chaotic, such as manufacturing, many designers from the devaluation, with the sale of Chinese cabbage design drawings, there have been a lot of "design migrant workers." This phenomenon is not conducive to the healthy growth of the industry, nor through the provision of high-value services to the value of design innovation by more decision-makers feel and identify. So, we call China's high-end design company!

Industry trends

At present, we face some common challenges.

The internet, while changing people's lives, is also changing people's behavior patterns, "fast food culture" has become a typical feature of today's society. Reflected in the design will find that the user needs unpredictable, and rapid change, traditional user research methods have been difficult to adapt to today's environment.

The problems we face become bigger and more complex. Most of the time we are not only designing a product, but thinking about and planning a system, sometimes even an entire ecosystem. For example, O2O to consider online and offline, E-commerce needs to be a perfect combination of retailing and the Internet, even a simple mobile application, but also to consider with third-party content, service and application of the combination.

The competition is extremely harsh, the new product launches and transforms extremely quickly. If the pace of innovation is too slow, even if you have a good idea, when you develop, someone else's product has been launched and grabbed the market.

Fusion Design: The integration of hardware and software, product, content, service and ecosystem integration, product and brand integration, business model design and the use of design thinking for government/non-government organizations, these important trends tell us that it is now an era of convergence. In contrast, I think this is the era of integration design, that focus on solving a problem, a certain aspect of the practice is not enough to meet the needs of today's innovation.

Sustainability design: Sustainability has shifted from the appeal of environmental organizations to the values of the majority, from a slogan to a business opportunity that people are willing to pay more for, and from the extra cost to an important part of an innovative strategy that pursues excellence. Green, energy-saving, environmental protection, material recycling, the smallest material consumption, life cycle cost, recycling convenience, etc. are today's design industry terminology and keywords.

The world of Integration: the consulting services industry in recent years (including management consulting, creative advice and technical advice The interesting phenomenon is that ideo will change his position to "business innovation consultation", often say "commercial design", and the Frog will be renamed "Frog" for 40 years, and bravely will " Design "removed from the company name, emphasizing an end-to-end innovation solution from" strategy to creativity to implementation ". And those management consulting firms, such as McKinsey, have more emphasis on the importance of innovative strategies as part of their portfolio, no longer focusing only on quantitative research services, employing user researchers, and providing research services based on qualitative research. On the other hand, it solution providers, represented by IBM and ThoughtWorks, are also beginning to integrate strategy and design capabilities into the team, providing a more comprehensive and high-end innovative solution. From the perspective of consulting services, the "Integration of the world" is reflected in the interesting phenomenon, and the essence behind the phenomenon is "in order to meet the needs of users of a rapidly changing new world, we need to fundamentally change the innovation model."

The practice of Western and Western

Cross-border cooperation

Even under the agile process, the development of new products follows the "research-design-implementation" approach, but there is a disconnect. I think the only solution is the cross-border cooperation of a team of many or even multicultural backgrounds. Designers can explore the essential needs of users as researchers do, and engineers may come up with very good ideas; If the project is to work in parallel from the outset, policy experts, product managers, user researchers, software designers, industry designers, architects, engineers, branding experts, and copywriting, Each person integrates the individual seamlessly into the team, which is the ideal team-working state for the product design.

A team of cross-border cooperation, thinking more than a certain level, but can go to the ecological chain level of all-round thinking. The team's deep cooperation and mutual inspiration lies in the background of the members regardless of what they can be together very efficient, tacit work. Don't stick to the idea of who is the original, the key is that everyone together to create a great product.

As an example: I once had a client who wanted to create a brand new car in China, using a cross-border approach, and the team could think in a holistic way from scratch. For example, the business model: What are the eco-chains and value chains in the automotive industry? What are the opportunities for deconstruction and subversion through design thinking? service mode: The user on the road suddenly broke down how to repair? How to get to the 4S shop, what is the check-in process? How can the new technology be applied rationally: is there an opportunity for the driver to drive? Brand Strategy: Foreign brands are usually through decades of historical precipitation to come today. And in China, the existing brands are still young, so the opportunity to create a new brand? Product Strategy: What are the different needs of Chinese users, for example, 80% of the Chinese people are the first time to buy a car. The first time in life to buy a car, the first road, this and Europe and America is completely different. How to meet their potential needs? PARTNER: Who can work with to help the brand? If the combination of catering services, driving a car to find a restaurant, it is easy to take me to find the place to go, then the catering-related POI service provider is a valuable way of cooperation? and marketing Strategies: How to build a brand? How can brand experience and product experience be combined? How to use social media for interactive marketing? Car system: How the owner's mobile device seamlessly blends with the car, and the driver's relationship with the passenger, etc.

How to talk about innovation with CXO

There is no doubt that innovators need support. Although CEOs, VP and Media have made a lot of impassioned pronouncements, the actual implementation of innovation is a long way away, and there is still a need for continuous effort and a creative team to confront the constant repression of bureaucracy and its own limitations. Power and money often coexist with bureaucracy, and we must use the best tools and methods to break the spell.

Communicating with CXO is a basic skill that we must master. For many years of business practice, I have summed up some of the methods that I think are very effective to share with you.

Empathy is a necessary skill for researchers and designers and can be applied to the analysis and collation of user needs at any time. If we use the same method, CxO as our users, to analyze what their needs are, it is easy to get the magic. You can ask yourself, if our CEO loses sleep tonight, for what reason? Through this analysis, we put ourselves into the role of CEO to analyze the challenges he faces (difficult decisions, bottlenecks, competitive attacks, etc.) and priorities (where the limited resources should be invested in the most important things). , this will help you to find a suitable entry point, the problem that you need to support the leadership to solve (the new product vision needs to support the project, the completed product prototype needs to be reviewed through, etc.) and the company's development strategy, and the CEO headaches issues better combined to win the leadership resonance.

Leadership time is invaluable, so preparation and research before the meeting is very important. Let's say I'm the business director of an excellent design company, and I finally get to the CEO of a big company that needs innovative services. So how do I get started? First, understand the company's strategy. This is really easy in today's internet age. We can go to the company's website and search for news blogs related to investment, expansion, reorganization and mergers and acquisitions to find out what new products it has released recently, to see what its major competitors are doing, to focus on the latest market and trend studies in its industry, and learn what their top teams have said recently at some of the major conferences. It will take only a few hours to find the key challenges that the company will face. And then use their own company's design thinking to solve the business problem of the ability to boldly put forward some very likely effective creative solutions, in order to break the ice, to win the original CEO trust. Then consider how our strengths and expertise with the CEO of the "Pain point" close together, put forward insightful solutions and cooperation suggestions.

30 years ago, Jobs told Hartmut: "I have only one request, please help me design a computer that is as sexy as Bob Dylan's music." "I hope that through our joint efforts, China also has such a ceo! of user needs

Doing design research in China

Discover or verify: The front section and a domestic internet giant's design department head chat, the main work of the company's research team, known for its emphasis on the user experience, is to test the existing design, not to do the demand discovery, to discover the hidden needs, potential needs or unmet needs through heuristic research methods, Provide designers with the basis of design and inspiration. It amazes me. Lenovo to many companies will use the research team collectively known as the UE team, it is more worrying. I contact the user experience is starting from the frog, the information from the first day is: The user experience is a whole, through the product concept, interaction, vision, animation and even sound design methods to communicate to the user, in order to achieve a pleasing, beyond the user expectations of the overall experience. "To seek creative inspiration to do with research" is the domestic use of research still need to solve the basic problems.

Quantitative or qualitative: in the "Data mining" hot today to talk about the nature may be questioned by many people, but I am still a strong supporter and advocate of qualitative research. The traditional quantitative method can sum up the statistic law and development trend of the existing things, but can not provide valuable decision basis and design inspiration for those who "eat crabs for the first time". When you are doing something that no one else has done, or even someone else is afraid to do, you want to seek decision support from the analysis of the past, which is tantamount to impossible. Qualitative research, which is carefully designed and carried out by a professional researcher, can be really helpful. In short, quantitative research to solve "what" and qualitative research to solve "why", with a knowledge of the nature of the problem, you can find a new solution to the decision to provide support, and provide guidance for product design and development throughout.

Users, markets and technology: Under the premise of "merging the World", through the trend analysis of the innovation industry, it is concluded that design research is not equivalent to user research, and should be included in the market and technology research should be easily recognized. In the face of an innovative challenge, in the early stages of project and product planning, there is a need to ask "what are the unmet needs of users?", and ask "what has changed in the market environment of our industry in the past few years?", "Where are the chances of us going beyond our leading rivals by subverting the business model?", also ask " What new and seemingly unrelated technologies can be used for me? "," Do we have the potential to deliver the technology platform to the fullest and build strong technical barriers for our competitors? And so on.

"Small Steps Run": Recently, "The World martial arts, only fast not broken" become a lot of Internet Product manager's mantra, I also agree to a large extent, with "trial and error Spirit" and "rapid iteration" as the main feature of the "small step fast" model may be the Chinese people's only important contribution to innovation theory. As the basic characteristics of the Internet industry, whether Google, Facebook or Tencent, Millet are the pursuit of fast, but according to my observation, at this point, not only the Chinese people do not lose the West, even have advantages. We have a few advantages, so we should cherish and flourish. "Small run" can also be applied to user research. How to exploit user insights in 2 weeks or less than 6-8 weeks is a challenge that must be addressed. Of course, it must also be pointed out that fast is not everything, micro-letter is not from the QQ iteration out of the MIUI, before the birth of two years before the closed design and development of the unknown; On the other side of the line with fast iterations, The strategic layout and medium and long term product planning based on the trend analysis and judgment should be what the big Internet companies must do.

Integrated Design and Marketing

The experience that exists between the product and the user can be categorized into two forms: the product experience experienced by the user in the process of using the product, and the brand experience of the user through the brand, marketing and sales. Designers and engineers are in charge of the former, while the brand, marketing and sales colleagues are the core of the latter. Today, the marketing experience and product experience, more than ever, should be in the same vein, inseparable.

Further speaking, the product finally wants to express the core, only a few words, is to really convey to the user's value. These values are embodied through design, realized through good technology, and recognized through business models, and should still be reflected consistently through the media and propaganda channels. Products into a 360-degree experience, only a core value constantly through a variety of ways to be repeated, and finally stay in the hearts of people, eventually sublimation into a brand. It is as if you know a person, not only from the appearance, but also from temperament, behavior, talk to all aspects of the understanding of him, and finally summed up his "What a person" conclusion.

Therefore, for designers, the design of products is no longer just the design of the product itself, but need to be in a new product from the bud to the listing of the overall system to think. In order to achieve the integration of product experience and marketing experience, a variety of responsibilities and division of labor must be better integrated together, it requires designers in the product to consider how to promote products, products behind the brand value. This is not to say that design has become more of a side-branch, on the contrary, it will help you better think about what the core value of the user is, the brand's kernel and the product's DNA should be consistent. Frog design in the 1990s for Lufthansa a full set of experience, meticulous to all aspects, from the logo, vi/ci system, fuselage spraying, check-in experience, terminal experience to the cabin space layout, souvenirs, dining car and three warehouse seats, more than 10 years, The DNA of these brands has never changed, but it has been deeply rooted.