Design a step forward

The design is becoming more and more important to the product from several phenomena: first, in the Silicon Valley, there are more and more products, such as photography application Instagram, reading application Flipboard, recently hot dating and dating application Tinder in Silicon Valley. Designers are becoming founders of the company more and more, such as calendar application Sunrise Two founder is from Foursquare, the founder of photo transmission application cluster is a serial entrepreneur, is also a designer, the most well-known example is Airbnb, The founder applies the concept of design from the product function to every detail of the service; third, there are many activities in the Silicon Valley, which do not talk about technology, not talk about mode, only talk about design and user experience. In the Gigaom Roadmap, which was held in November, John Parochial, president of the Rhode Island Maeda of Design, said in the morning keynote, "The importance of computing performance is falling, whether it's a cell phone or a computer, The importance of design and the user experience behind it is rising. When it comes to design, he says, "technology plus art, design is everywhere." "This phrase has now become a consensus, so how does a start-up company adjust its working methods to accommodate this change?" In other words, in the past entrepreneurs generally thought that product function development is more important, in the process of product development, designers and engineers how to work? In Gigaom Roadmap and the end of the weekend by the startups hosted by the same theme of product design, "Warmgun", guests and audience like to use the example of Airbnb to talk about the importance of design. Airbnb is the example of Silicon Valley's typical designer founder. The most prominent place is in addition to the online product emphasis on the design, all the photos are professional photographer to take, more importantly, Airbnb stressed that every aspect of the user experience, design everywhere is reflected from the beginning of this team. This is also the co-founder, CEO Brain Chesky in the Quora answer "when the start-up company to ask designers more appropriate," said, "should be in the beginning of the company to ask the designer, ideally, preferably a co-founder is a designer, if you have a chief technology officer, There should be a chief product owner or chief design officer, otherwise the designer's position is lower than the engineer's. "Hitchhiking application Lyft openly indicates that they are learning Airbnb's approach to design and user experience. From Lyft's mobile end product director Frank Yo said that the same personal service, Lyft in learning Airbnb proposed "the guests make well". So first of all, emphasize community operation in user experienceConcept, Lyft will regularly do car owners and passengers interactive offline activities to increase mutual trust; second, in the design of mobile products (in fact, we can see the difference between Lyft and the application of Uber)--as the user of the product is the owner or the passenger, Lyft designed a toggle button to allow users to apply for a Lyft driver. Such a seemingly simple design on the one hand so that users clearly know their identity, on the other hand is to let passengers see the steps to become a car owner can still increase trust. For the founder of Airbnb, who is a designer start-up, it seems logical to push the design and user experience, so is the engineer-led "technology driven" company paying attention to design? "Theoretically, Uber is certainly a technology-driven company, but I can see that changes are taking place within the Uber." "Call car application Uber design director Shalin Amin to Pingwest said," in the past Uber work mode is first by the engineer development function, finally to the visual stage of the presentation to the designer, now the process of product development completely changed, as long as the development of new features, Engineers and designers should be seated together, that is to say, the function development and design of the product is equally important within the company. "If you can see the Uber mobile app, the user can see the real time movement of the car on the map and the experience is really good," he said. When I suggested that when the team disagreed, the way to deal with the problem was either engineer-led or designer-led, Shalin Amin's answer was to split the team (designers and engineers) into 3 votes and 2:1 to win. "99% of the situation can solve the problem, if not enough to find the first level of the person in charge." Shalin Amin said, "I am a designer, for the status quo I see, if the founders are designers, such as Airbnb, then the design part of the problem is really better solved; like Uber, Dropbox, a technology-driven company that now recognizes the importance of design, So changes in this internal communication mechanism are underway. "Dropbox gives people the general impression is also a technology-driven company, but product designer Joshua Jenkins said," in Dropbox interior, also emphasizes the designer to participate in the process of product development, and even every engineer to do product development to understand point design. "Dropbox's product development process from him can also be seen in the collaborative work process between engineers and designers: 1. A brief description of the product being developed, and the ideal state it will reach; 2. Engineer participation in development 3. The designer began to work on the design; 4. Design Process Review Summary 5. Full development; 6. Design ended; 7. Development ended; 8. Release test version and conduct internal test; 9. Online。 In the process, JoshuA Jenkins emphasizes that designers and engineers work together in the 1, 2, 5, and 6 stages. This is the change that is happening in Silicon Valley. "As Steve Jobs says, ' design is more than just the vision and feeling of the product. Design is how it works. "In my opinion, Silicon Valley has underestimated the value of design, but now it is changing," Airbnb co-founder, Ceobrain Chesky, wrote on Quora. ”