How do interaction designers interact?

Although many of the books on interactivity have been answered:

discovers the user needs, establishes the clear demand to propose the design plan production design prototype user test and the appraisal

There are a lot of friends interested in interactive design will ask me this question, and I hope I can answer in detail, specific to my work in every detail.

In fact, what the interaction design needs to do, will vary with the work content of each interaction designer, specific to each project will be different.

Below share how I do interactive, the way is not necessarily the most appropriate, I hope we have more guidance, and common learning progress.

There are many ways to find out what users need, and we can collect the ideas that many users have in their feedback, and they want us to offer products that help solve problems, and we can take the initiative to look at some of the information in our lives and make a reserve for inspiration.

For example, a schedule management project, a lot of users with our mailbox response that they are busy will forget some important things, such as some meetings or appointments, so I hope that NetEase mailbox can provide a professional schedule management functions, can help them effectively manage and schedule daily.

Confirmed that the user's needs, our product colleagues will organize the project, the use of research and design team colleagues called over to conduct research, to determine our target users.

Use the research team to collect as much information as possible through questionnaires, interaction designers will also participate in analysis and research, organize meetings to help improve information with the research team, we will take some interesting ways, such as a bunch of people together brainstorming, we recall a variety of related life scenes, and then a number of keywords recorded.

The purpose of this step is to know: What do users want?

With these steps we refine some of the most important functional requirements, and then the product group will sort out the requirements document and the designer is in position.

Through research, we get a lot of data information, and set up a clear demand, the next step is to start to design the project.

At this stage I'm going to do some conceptual design, similar to the design of a glass in the physical products, I will describe it said: I would like to design a travel glass, it can be folded into a small disc, drink water when only to the center of the small disc to press down, you can become a cup.

The same is true of Internet products, which need to be given a concept, such as schedule management: This is a professional schedule management function, by using it, we can effectively manage our daily schedule and time to improve efficiency, and will not miss every important date!

These words don't necessarily have to be summed up by the interaction designer, but the interaction designer has to know what to do with the product.

At the same time need to carry out the first draft design, where I called the first draft, and is not necessarily the requirements of the interactive prototype, can be used to axure the main page flow to make, but also hand-painted sketches, as long as you can clearly express the design concept, what kind of way can be.

Make the design prototype, that is, often said interactive draft, different from the design of the first draft, this interactive manuscript I will be as meticulous as possible to the process and the specific operation of the form of expression.

Considering the interaction is an iterative process, I will be in the design of the first page for the design of the product to do an interactive update log, record the interactive update time, version name, update type, update content, reference requirements documents and interaction principals.

The significance of this update log is:

Update time-easy to track record items, master each point-in-time version name-Easy for project participants to find the previous version of the interactive update type-understand the nature of each update requirements update-clearly present each update, and provide a link to the update page directly, In this way, our partners do not need a page to find the update point reference requirements document-to facilitate the project participants to find the corresponding requirements document interaction owner-record the interaction of each iteration, and facilitate the handover of work

The process of making interactive drafts, is generally used axure to do prototypes, such as the mailbox such a relatively mature visual and stable products, I would prefer to do a high-fidelity model, we will organize a control library, so as to improve the production efficiency; When you do a new project, black and white drafts are available, If the interaction designer can be sure about the visual effect, it can be refined. I think we all know this very well, so we don't say much.

The reason why this part of the content to write a separate paragraph, because before and a lot of interactive friends discussed how to do the interaction, everyone has a view, it is difficult to find this part of the work of the measurement criteria.

Interactive instruction in the entire design process, may only occupy a small amount of work, but the role is not small, it can help us reduce the cost of communication, Auxiliary interactive manuscript to describe the design concept, the expression of interactive process, more detailed display of our design.

Unlike the design manuscript, the individual believes that the interaction of this part of the work requires us to learn more about the object of its description, that is, product managers, 10243.html "> Visual designers, developers of the needs, so as to achieve a real" auxiliary "effect, rather than blindly on their own subjective to the lengthy, Otherwise we have to spend time on it, and this part of the work can only be deposited as a bunch of our own to enjoy meaningless words.

To this end I have worked with the various groups of colleagues to communicate, to extract some of their interactive description of the needs, not comprehensive, but to explain some problems.

1. Interactive description preferably illustrated (all)
Easy to read and understand.

2. Description of page jump (product & Procedure)
Page jump is related to the operation of a number of pages, product staff in the interactive manuscript, will pay more attention to the task of a number of purposeful operation process, and the page jump memory is limited, so need page jump description.

3. Interactive description can be considered with the product requirements of the document combination (product)
The development documentation involves product concepts, technical solutions, business execution roles, and interactive design drafts, so that interactive manuals and development documents can complement each other and organize them into a single document, which also avoids duplication of work content.

4. To explain the interactive action or hidden settings items (Product & visual & Page architecture)
Details and actions need to be described clearly, such as mouse focus, click Action, or click after the loading or jump, these are usually discussed at meetings, but the personnel involved in the project may not be able to remember, so will need to do in the interactive instructions, It is also necessary to consider that the page architecture group needs to reserve a structure that adapts to change.

5. Product style positioning (visual)
Business Wind? Casual wind? Visual needs an accurate product style positioning. This part of the work is not necessarily determined by the interaction staff, but in the product gestation stage, the design draft discussion and the indefinite Update data survey, will make the product style localization gradually clear, the visual colleague more is participates in the design stage work, this needs the interaction personnel to record this information in the interactive explanation, in order to assist the visual completion.

6. Limit status (front end)
such as a list of the longest and shortest display.

7. Exception/Error condition description (procedure)
This is easily overlooked in the process of interactive manuscript making and communication with the product.

Some designers will wonder: Why do I do the design manual will not be read? I wrote in detail, but they still ask me a bunch of design questions! Even ask me why I want to do this document?

In the face of these situations, designers should do some thinking, we have made this statement really solve the problem?

Some basic logical judgments and textual content, the product personnel have been listed in the requirements document and have been clearly presented in the interactive manuscript, such as the set content of the complete rendering in the prototype, or a single select check relationship, which we take time to describe, and not much meaning.

So my understanding is that the interactive description is not necessarily a text, it should not be the designer's calligraphers, more should not be a formality to do interactive design prototype replicas.

We can annotate on the interactive prototype, write a description on the diagram, or write it as a message when we send a message to the project group, and of course it can be a Word document, PPT ...

All in all, what we need to do is really solve the problem, and make the interactive instruction a tool to help the team members communicate effectively, to understand the design content and to improve the project efficiency, and to be made when needed.

Product basic skills can be realized, we will do user testing, the design is very subjective, and will be affected by various factors, so our products will inevitably have some unexpected problems, by recruiting users to use our products, we can collect some of the use of the scene to find the problem of feedback, and to organize these into optimization points, Improve our products.

At the same time, interactive designers need to use their own products, to ensure that the online content and design consistent.

This is a relatively complete description of my interactions, the title of the interactive designer I've been with for less than a year, but I've learned a lot this year. My feeling is that it is not difficult to work, because I am also a user, I will find such a problem in the process of using the product, so I naturally want to solve these problems, and in the search for a certain way to accumulate; however, this is really a very need to work, design the way free, But the design content needs to be rigorous, neglects a problem, may bring the extremely negative influence to the product, even loses the user's favor.

To keep our products healthy development, we require designers to constantly explore excellent design methods.

Finally, we also hope that we can share their own design experience, learn from each other, so that our product experience more and more good!

Source: http://www.ued163.com/?p=1804