How to improve the professional ability of interactive designers?

When I transferred from Shanghai to Beijing to work, I contacted more interactive designers, but also felt a strong industry atmosphere. In the 09 session of the students engaged in the industry only 5 people, and the rough estimate under 10 session about 15 people. The mentor also told me that after more than 40 master's in industrial design, almost all of them chose the direction of interactive design.

It may be said that the era of interactive design is coming, in fact, only the development of the industry has created more employment opportunities. However, the reality is not so glamorous, because after entering the new industry, designers themselves face many problems, and encountered the bottleneck of development so can not find a solution.

1. Do not have their own direction, do not have their own career planning. The visual designer wants to turn the interaction, and the interaction wants to turn the product.

2. Feel not to be valued, introduce oneself, do not forget to bring "bitter force" two words. Hard to do the design, not to be adopted, often complained that the product manager to instruct the drawing, interactive designer's common language must have this one.

3. There is no learning plan, every day in addition to work do not know what to learn, turn over the information on the Internet to see that there is truth, always feel that there is no harvest, but also to mention no problems.

4. Boasts a lot of ideas, but it looks more superficial, can not withstand scrutiny, also do not know how to achieve, time may be hit to self-confidence.

Having looked at all kinds of analysis, what kind of ability does the interaction designer need to have, but the individual always concentrates on the exploration how enhances the professional ability, one is the interest place, the second is the study knowledge can obtain the achievement feeling. Blog can be urged to learn, motivation is very simple, did not pay attention to what personal brand and increase fame, blog can not become the standard of evaluation designers, works is the only evaluation of the designer's standard. Learning and improving your ability to work is the goal of making good work.

Designers need to learn different difficulties in various stages of knowledge and do different things, as I will be the study data three gradient, I hope the designer can be from shallow to deep learning. At first there is no project experience, lack of basic knowledge, not hard to gnaw difficult data.

Basic articles

For designers who have just started and come into contact with the project:

1. Aesthetic knowledge of design.

2. The principles of interaction design, such as consistency, reduced input, and reduced operational steps, are easy to understand, and are quickly mastered by learning cases and reading Easy-to-read books. This stage is suitable for extensive reading "Interactive design Essence" and other books, not suitable for intensive reading, no project experience, read after reading unintelligible.

3. Platform characteristics and design specifications, through the reading platform design specifications for the formation of design thinking is very helpful, especially Microsoft and Apple's documentation.

4. Interactive design methods, such as drawing flowcharts, prototypes and writing interactive design specifications documents, is not very difficult, just need to practice many times. But this kind of document is rarely shared externally, and it is difficult for students to learn this part, which will affect their expression of their design ideas.

Advanced Chapter

Suitable for more than 3 months experience in the project of the designer to learn:

1. Specific control design, such as tag bar, tag bar, list interface and pop-up window, summarized the advantages and disadvantages of the design and design rules.

2. Specific interface design, the interface of how to render specific information, such as the application home page, personal data or data flow interface.

3. Independent common function design, such as register login, refresh and function guide, need to understand the technical knowledge behind the function and product strategy, need to draw flowchart, organize linear operation flow. You need to investigate existing products and try to differentiate between their strengths and weaknesses. Communication with technical staff is an effective way to learn technology, you can deliberately embarrassed product managers, let them explain a variety of product strategies, more information to make the right design decisions and broaden their horizons is very helpful.

Medium order

Suitable for designers with more than one complete project experience:

1. A number of functional design, a single interface integration function, need to apply to the design methods and architecture ideas. The design method is the scene story method, the card classification, the character role, the interview and the questionnaire to excavate the user demand and promote the design priority. These methods of learning are not necessary, you may work for two years have never used them, but also designed a good product. These methods can be used as an understanding of sexual knowledge, when the need for further study, the method can only help designers to identify problems and avoid problems, but can not play a decisive role in the results.

2. Methods and existing design style research, to summarize the main, the best can be applied to their own design, thousands of words than hands-on practice.

3. Competitive products and excellent product analysis. This thing looks very ordinary, if there is no relevant design knowledge and analytical ability, can only apply to the big concept, can not synthesize a variety of factors analysis, could not find a breakthrough point.

4. Latest system and product analysis. Before learning all the knowledge of the development, but this one need to have a more extensive knowledge of the designer, not limited to their own participation in the product. If you focus on One Direction every two weeks, you'll be more familiar with the 80% of people.

Through the occasional download of a variety of similar applications, access to data, has studied input method, LBS, personalized recommendations, voice input and reading products, although never participated in these projects, but from which can deepen the understanding of the design, do a good job of knowledge accumulation.

5. Control the technology. Designers need to have the ability to control technology, just as industrial designers grasp the characteristics of various materials to be able to navigate, this is to try to make up for their own shortcomings. Web-side interaction designers are required to write HTML and CSS, one is easy to design, the other is to exercise logical thinking ability, and mobile phone interaction designers generally lack of understanding of technology. Early-stage interaction designers are jobs separated from programmers to make up for deficiencies in programming. So I prefer to listen to technical lectures.

Purely technical routes are difficult, and if you have a deep understanding of social, search, and E-commerce, this can add to the irreplaceable nature of your personal career.

Higher order

Individuals are still exploring, or to make good products as the goal, the main direction is:

1. Product architecture, web-side already has the concept of architecture, mobile phone side will also face this problem.

2. Design trend research, such as operating methods, to make predictions is the hardest.

3. Product development trends, such as the future of LBS products in the mobile phone design, how to bring convenience to the user's life, which requires designers have foresight and judgment.

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Precautions

Learn the following points to note:

1. Learning should be easy to learn, knowledge needs to be simple, early can pick a number of basic product research, such as reading products, the first form suitable for their own learning methods. The topic should not be too difficult, there is a learning brother want to study mobile phone payment, the information is very little, can hit self-confidence.

2. Work is too busy to take time to learn, which affects long-term development. When choosing a job, try to join a learning team. Every company will promise you space, even options, that you can totally ignore.

3. Find yourself a good teacher if your luck is good enough.

4. Less nonsense, this trick of the layman is not good for you, pure waste of time.

5. Theory is not necessary, do not see others write blog has psychological pressure, it seems that they do not reflect their professional ability. If you can design a good product, the theory can be completely ignored, practice more than theory.

6. Do not believe in the theory and from this blog to see, to maintain independent thinking. The most valuable person in the design team is often put forward their own different opinions, reasonable questioning the design plan.

7. Do not be blind to the fabrications and stubbornness, when you try to design products or convince others in a certain way, make sure that you can cite more than three cases.