The prelude to Interactive design: Understanding Product backgrounds and Limitations

"Editor's note" the author of this article @ Liu Jin Legene, an excellent interaction designer, if you do not understand the relevant background of the project and special restrictions, it is difficult to make good design.

If the actor needs to read the script before the game, it is impossible to understand everything by experience. Good actors do other things besides reading scripts, such as reading relevant history books and experiencing character life. Interactive designers, too, good interaction designers, before the formal start of the design will also understand the product information, so that when the design will be able to do.

So what are the specific needs to start with?

Internet access to this article, understand the product's market environment and development trends; try to collect (not all product managers will actively share) http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/10237.html "> Market analysis and various research materials, improve their knowledge background.

In internet companies, there are not many products that are completely innovative, so it is easy to find competitive products or related products. can be analyzed in advance these products in the user experience of the difference, let oneself have the idea.

This is a very, very important point, and it is a place that many product managers and interaction designers can easily overlook. Product positioning and objectives directly determine the style of the product and can refer to the scope of the competition.

For example, to do an online sales of XX products website, competition goods A and competitive goods B is the more famous two sites, and competition product a user experience is significantly better than the competition goods B, that this means to have more reference to the competition goods a? The answer is not necessarily, because your position may be closer to the competition B.

Product positioning is determined by a variety of reasons, may include market reasons, legal provisions, the company's own conditions, decision-making, business cooperation restrictions, these are far from the interaction designers can grasp. So before designing, be sure to communicate with product Manager to find out product positioning and target (the description in the requirement document is probably not enough).

If a product manager's description is found to be flawed or unclear, ask questions about other roles in the project (such as business, legal) and help the product manager to understand the location.

This is needless to say, to know who is your user, the user's general situation and the use of the scene, the use of the situation. If the product manager is not clear, you can check the relevant information on the Internet, or ask a friend around to talk about how they will use this type of product. As long as there is a heart, there are always ways.

Special requirements are some dead rules, such as XX advertising must be placed here, XX place must ... These places are also not influenced by interaction designers, but are limited by various resources. Special requirements directly affect the design scheme.

Well, all of these are clear, you can organize the requirements, design user goals, task flow, information architecture, page prototype ...

Author Blog: Legene Interactive Design Blog