Advice from Airbnb user experience design Director

Absrtact: Editor's note: This article comes from the Round Review, who prepares articles that tell stories and also provides operational advice to entrepreneurs to help build good companies. This article was interviewed by Katie Dill as the Airbnb user experience design director. According to the latest news,

"The ratings may be personal, but it's also worth it: let's see why people like or dislike our products or services." ”

This is Airbnb user experience design director Katie Dill's exact words. Previously, she worked on product prototyping and user experience design at Greenstart. Later, in Frog design, she leapt from analyst to creative director. She also teaches industrial design courses at CCA (California Institute of Art).

As a product designer and product reviewers, Dill often need to receive product feedback from third parties, as well as suggestions for improvements to other products. But she thinks it's not good enough in most companies to evaluate the matter. "The evaluation of the nonsense, is an insult." You're not in the mood to polish or optimize your product anymore, "Dill said.

In fact, prior to the formal product market, a reasonable product evaluation can help the product team in the short term to launch the best version. In the latest Design+startup event of first round, dill shared insights she had received from many designers and industry leaders, including the basics of evaluation, how to listen effectively to evaluations, and how to deliver evaluations that improve the user experience.

(i) Summary

Many people assume that only designers are qualified to do "evaluations," but that's not the case.

"Not only the product design needs to use evaluation to improve." Business plans, marketing strategies, even you bake a French toast, evaluations from third parties are equally useful, "Dill said:" From an idea to the market, in the process you should make good use of evaluation, because it can inspire more ideas, let you have the capital to choose the best one. ”

There are two sides to the evaluation. Each product evaluation must have a provider and a recipient. But when you are really in one of those roles, you may be self-centered and unable to understand each other's position. Dill, who studied art Center Eton in his studies, remembers that the teacher wrote in her paper with a red pen, "I'm glad others don't have to see this paper again." Although the low to dusty days made her today-a great designer, it must be admitted that the feedback was too mean and difficult to accept.

How can we make evaluation more valuable? Dill her opinion from the two aspects of "acceptance evaluation" and "giving evaluation" respectively. Following these suggestions will make the evaluation more direct and critical, without hitting the designers ' enthusiasm.

(ii) Acceptance of evaluations

1. Using the "Role + context" method of substituting

The "role + context" approach allows product commentators to better understand the product's target audience, understand how the user lives before using the device, and how users will use the device to improve their quality of life.

As the person in charge, you know your job at your fingertips, but not the product reviewers. You have to find ways to get commentators to understand your target audience and bring them into specific fields of the experience product.

"For example, if you are working on a project for older users, you need to let commentators know the specific needs and constraints of the project and let them see what the standard of product success is." So they can be targeted to evaluate and judge your product, "dill.

Earlier, Dill designed a wearable product for a large technology company, with the target users of fashionable and frugal women. Dill needs to get feedback from shareholders who are mostly middle-aged men in khaki trousers and blue shirts.

"They don't know much about users, and it's hard to get them out of their minds in feedback meetings." ' Why don't you have a keyboard? How do you type it on the device? ' They will keep asking similar questions, ' Dill said.

In order for shareholders to enter the state, Dill and her team gave shareholders a full picture of the end user: A fashionable and frugal woman, what she was interested in, what she was worried about, and what kind of life she would normally show. In so doing, shareholders can imagine what the end-user of the product would look like, and how wearable equipment would fit into her life. This is the "Role + context" method of substituting.

[Pictured above is dill and her team's promotional map to introduce the target audience to shareholders: "Fashionable but frugal" women]

2. Clarification of the stage

"Let the commentators know the progress of your project and clarify the purpose of your being invited, so they can better use their expertise to provide the feedback you need." ”

You need to let the reviewers know at what stage the product is progressing so they can give the right feedback. "If it's still in the initial stage, a lot of things are not sure, you will want to talk about different directions; if it's a week from the product launch, the feedback you want to get is the ones that can be executed quickly and have an immediate effect, and the hard to implement feedback is not very useful in the sprint phase. ”

At the same time, tell the reviewers what you need. "You invite people to check jobs because you think they can provide some valuable advice or a unique perspective." Let them know what you want, and they can provide a unique insight, not some of them. For example, you can say, ' Hey, this is a dog product, because you know the dog too well. ’”

3. Show the user's "journey" to use the product

Using the storyboard (story board) to show commentators the whole "journey" of using the product, they will know what you've solved, what you need to fix, and can help you find the design flaw: Is this design meaningful? Does the user feel comfortable?

"If you think about your users at design time, then you imagine: when, where, and how they will experience your product-it's like a trip." So, when you show your work to your commentators, don't just provide a photo or a brief overview of the product, you have to share the journey to help reviewers get to know your product from the user's point of view. ”

Dill and her team of designers have been in charge of one case, the design of the look and feel of a bank's ATM teller machine. They must take into account the various situations that may occur in the user's use process and let the commentators know that they have given the user the most comprehensive consideration.

"When we were evaluating the user experience with our commentators, we clearly demonstrated every step of the user experience on the storyboard (story board), not just the display of the ATM, but the way people came to the ATM, with friends." Do you have a wallet? Wait a minute. We also have a very small part to communicate with commentators. ”

4. Let your presentation be more specific and sense

"Don't just go over there and slide the slides, print them out, put them on the wall so people can write the emergent thoughts on them and move the slides around at will." "Static document exhibitions make comments backwater; show all the slides so that commentators can go up and discuss the content like an exhibition, activating more valuable comments."

Dill advice, let presentation become dynamic. If you simply switch slides in a dogmatic way, the commentators will know what's on your single-page slides, but you won't be able to link the context coherently and have no overall impression of what you want to describe.

"You need to make the whole user experience process clear and present everything together so that commentators can consider it as a complete system and consider whether it makes sense." You can also look at yourself: Are we doing what we want? Have we accomplished the goals we expected? ”

By the way, don't forget, on the wall where you put your slides, it's important to post the framework and guidelines for your product design in the key position, which will let people who participate in the review understand your consistent ideas and better evaluate your product design.

5. Provide product prototype

Design product prototype, to the commentators to simulate product functions, to obtain a higher quality product evaluation, to help you determine a product design direction, timely detection of existing problems, avoid detours.

"It's good to show slides on the wall, but it would be great if you had a prototype," he said. "This is Dill's view. Reviewers can give more targeted feedback by experiencing prototypes and feeling the feelings of the user.

Many people think it can be time-consuming to come up with a product prototype, but that's not necessarily the case. "There are a lot of tools that can help you quickly get your product prototypes," Dill, with a few examples: "I love Popapp,keynotopia and Flinto, and they're all digital prototyping artifacts." ”

Popapp is a prototype application for iphone users. Developers just need to draw a sketch of the app architecture, use Popapp to take photos and archive, and they can transform the sketch into an interactive product prototype in a few minutes, which can be displayed directly on the phone.

Keynotopia provides interface elements, including buttons, sliders, and input fields, which you can call to quickly make a presentation model based on keynote or PowerPoint.

Flinto can summarize the prototype screenshots, you can connect the screenshots in different ways to simulate the features of the app you designed.

(iii) Provision of evaluation

1. Empathy

Empathy is not a single dimension. As a commentator, you need empathy for both the product design team and the end user.

The team takes you to feedback because you have a fancy for your professional accumulation in a particular area, and what you need to do is help the product design team to better determine who their target consumer group is and how they can capture the heart of the target audience.

"User pain points are a bridge between product design teams and commentators, it should also be a problem that the two want to solve," Dill said: "If you as a commentator, you really do not have empathy for product designers, it is time to mention the needs of users, it can also help the product team, so that they do not deviate from the track. ”

2. Macro first, then microscopic

"Judging from a macroscopic and microscopic perspective can help designers look at their work in a new perspective." ”

When a product team is too committed to the task at hand, it is often short-sighted and does not see the part of the job that needs to be made up or changed. "Commentators are invited to come in as a third party and can give relatively objective evaluations." ”

First, commentators need to look at the overall design from a macro perspective. Are all the components in a coherent operation? Is the user experience process designed by the designer compatible with the real user experience?

"Then commentators need to go back to the details and look at each of the small steps in the user experience process." Do the messages they send contradict their original intentions? Do all the details make sense? ”

3. Do not skimp on praise

"The wording of the evaluation must be prudent, but that does not mean you have to change your position." If the feedback you give is negative, you need to put it in a positive way, which is the sandwich evaluation method (the compliment sandwich). ”

(1) "very sincere praise." "Praise must be sincere, the other party did no matter how bad, there must be some good points, seize those shining points, the rationale for fully give sincere praise."

(2) "After the compliment, follow the criticism, or list the points that you think the other person can improve." ”

(3) "Finally sincerely thank them for all they have done." ”

The sandwich evaluation method works, and as a commentator, it's necessary to provide positive feedback, and your goal is not to let the designers down, but to motivate them. Imagine, "if told to do a mess, who is willing to return to the design stage to continue to work?" ”

In providing evaluations, there are two other things to note:

Be specific. Simply saying "Don't like the idea or design" doesn't make any sense. "If you can visualize your ideas visually, the feedback you give will be easier to accept and the next design will be more likely to meet your expectations," he said. ”

Ask questions. Don't always act like a leader and instruct each other what he should do. By asking, "Have you tried?" "What else do you want to achieve?" "or" How do you think users will respond to this? , it can inspire the designers to improve their design responsibility and motivation.

Finally, Dill said: "I care so much about this because it really works." It can help us anticipate our customers ' ideas. The establishment of a product team and commentators with empathy, and both sides to solve the user pain point of the brainstorming field, can let the ideas collide with each other, and constantly improve the product is therefore possible. ”