Minimize usability Design (Minimum Usable)

Today this small essay is a bit interesting, the English text read it over and over again feel that there is nothing not obvious, translated it again, and then look back at the original and the comments in the view, before tasting some taste. As a primer, interested friends may wish to look at the original text and comments. Agile, iterative, minimize the possible products, although these concepts in reality is extremely easy to many people as excuses and excuses, but as designers, we should still have a number of hearts. The text goes up.

There is a very famous paradox that has been haunting me in Life (original author), it seems to be applicable in many fields, including web and mobile application design. I mean the paradox of Zeno.

People will use various versions of the examples to interpret the Zeno paradox, and we'll look at one of them:

To walk through a forest, you first have to walk halfway through the whole journey. When you reach the midpoint, you'll need to walk halfway through the rest of the journey, then half the distance, and so on, and you'll find that you'll never get through the forest.

In practical work, I often feel that no matter what the design phase of the business at hand, I always seem to have half of the things have not been done. Perhaps it is because of this situation that we are always saying "it will take two more weeks to complete all the details", and the result is that no matter what step it is, there always seems to be no real goal to accomplish, and there is always a distance between the two that needs more work to fill.

If you think about it, it will be messy, but from another perspective, it may also be a way to help us achieve the successful design of the motivation and ideas.

Take our old buddy, Google, for example. If you're about to design the first home page in Google History, and you have plenty of time to figure out what's going on in any part of it. Any project will have a deadline, you have to be clear about the ultimate goal of design-you need to know what the product looks like when you "cross Sen". First, you need to walk halfway through.

Assuming that the design completed at the midpoint of all durations is at least 50% of the final product in terms of availability, what will you start with, Logo? Footer？ The answer is obviously the search text box and the Search button. In fact, after this step is completed, for a site such as Google, it is basically available. Now we are half way from the target.

Next, we have to go first half of the rest of the journey. It looks like we need to add the necessary brand logos, or logos, to the page, otherwise people don't know what to do next time they want to search for something. After the logo is done, we have achieved three-fourths of the overall goal. Think about how many of the world's http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/4581.html "> Internet users will feel enough to use if Google's homepage has only logos, search text boxes and search buttons?" I believe that there are not a few, how can reach 75%, although we have only completed the design goal of Three-fourths. We should be able to do better.

If this continues to take half of the remaining tasks to implement, our design will eventually become "good enough." I know people will think these three words are not very true, but the fact is that if you have finished 99% of the overall goal, then "good enough" is good enough.

Right now, there's a saying in the circle, "minimize the viable product (Mvp,minimum viable product)".

"Minimizing viable products refers to those products that only have the most basic functionality to ensure that they are available." ”

Minimum viable Product, from Wikipedia

The word "Minimized usability design" (Mud,minimum Usable) was coined by me, and its core meaning was that the output at half time of the design phase should be able to meet the product's minimum feasibility. If you think you've finished 50% of your overall goal and your current design doesn't guarantee at least 50% availability, you're not actually halfway through.

But this does not mean that the design of the product is 50% enough, what we need is to evaluate the progress of the design through this concept. Sometimes you still have to wait until the program is 99% to actually get the shot. The pursuit of perfection is right, the key depends on the actual situation of the product itself and the corresponding user needs characteristics. One of the things Apple is good at doing is to create a reasonably limited number of viable products that can be perfectly packaged by maximizing usability design. Another new word.

Let's take blog design as an example to get a more intuitive understanding of how to minimize usability design.

I (the original author) want people to come to my blog Drawar read content (I also hope people would like to come to my blog beforweb read Content-translator C7210). If the design can do this, then I have finished the design goal, most of my audience will be very happy. Therefore, I first hope that the content of the blog posts can be very direct and clear to users, this is the first task, that is, the first 50% of the overall design goals.

50%, not much, but the first task has been accomplished.

Such a scheme can already ensure that people can read content in the blog, the first task is done, the overall goal has been finished 50% of the appearance. Next, we set a middle point for the remaining work, the brand construction as the current goal, design a logo, so that people can remember my blog, and then look. After this task is completed, the overall progress will reach 75%.

75%, eh?

Now people come in and know exactly where they are. Next, set a middle point for the rest of the progress, and the goal is to add a navigation link and a handful of introductory text about the blog.

87.5%.

The goal of the next middle point is to add a bit of advertising that makes it possible for me to get some microblogging revenue from blogging. After that, I'm going to post this blog site online. Yes, it's enough for me to get here.

93.75%, enough, finish.

From a minimized point of view, my blog design has been completed. Of course I can add a lot of other elements to make it more complete for some visitors, such as search, social media pendants, linked tables, and so on. But these are not within the design goals I originally set, so my blog is what you see.

Although I am satisfied with the design, it is clear that such a simplified blog can not be happy by everyone else. There is always someone hoping to get more from the design, which is the place where the Zeno paradox "goes on"--as a designer, we will never be able to walk out of this forest. However, the more target points we set in the process of minimizing usability design, the greater the coverage of the product. Beware, however, that the more things you add in the back 50%, the more likely it is that the core design goals that are used to ensure the minimum viability of the product are disrupted.

There are no immutable products. For designers, always to ensure that the product is the smallest possible basis, according to the actual needs of the next phase of the goal, and gradually approach the edge of the forest, but we will never go to the end, because change and improvement is the eternal topic.

Source Address: http://beforweb.com/node/85