User Experience Design FAQ dialog

Original address: http://heidixie.blog.sohu.com/160442979.html

[Foreword]: The shuttle bus to the company, met a colleague from another department, because he asked a lot of questions, triggered an article. These questions, in fact, I am also often asked by others, among them, both our close cooperation partners, such as product managers, development engineers (programmers), but also for product decision-making has the absolute voice of the boss, there are peacetime and we work with little overlap, but it is a successful product ecological chain important role, For example, colleagues from the Customer service department and the sales department. So do some processing, finishing the written, hope to help you understand the user Experience Design department (UED) in the Web site development process role and role, thereby contributing to different departments of collaboration and cooperation.

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Dialog role Description:
Tom: Customer Training Department-Trainer
Heidi: Website Operation Department-user Experience Design department-interactive Designer

Tom: What is your department, please?

Heidi: I am the International station user Experience Design department, is ued, have heard?

Tom: Oh, understand, is not the site layout of international stations are you to change it?

Heidi: Yes.

Tom: I am in charge of customer training, I would like to ask a question, why do you often change our website ah, I give customers training, often open the site, found that the layout changed, my handout also need to update regularly.

Heidi: This ... There is always a reason for change (laughter). Perhaps to improve the conversion rate, perhaps for the new product line to do expansion, perhaps the user's needs more clearly ... In fact, the first page to say, the average 2 years also need to renovate a bit, always the same face, how boring ah. However, every time we change the big changes will be notified to the department may be affected, such as sales, customer service and so on, there are related to the mail copy to the interface person. I'll go back and make sure your department is on the CC list.

Tom: Yes, thank you. Yes, what's the professional background for doing your job? Do you learn computer?

Heidi: No. In fact, our department is divided into four kinds of roles, each role's professional background is different.

He: what is it?

Heidi: For example, the user researcher, the professional background may be psychology, anthropology, social science and other disciplines-but also have other professional background. The professional background of an interactive designer may be industrial design or other design major, such as graphic design-but there is also a complete and design-like discipline, such as psychology. The professional background of a front-end engineer may be a computer or other specialty, such as our team once had an outstanding front end from showbiz. Another role is 10243.html "> visual designer, the professional background may be graphic design, also may be animation design." What major is possible, can not be general to talk about ...

Tom: You said just now, it is possible to learn industrial design, I think it is very strange, industrial design I do not think of a number of realistic products, such as automobiles, washing machines and so on ...

Heidi: After all, the domestic specialized interactive design professional is few, the professional is not many, still will draw many from the mature industrial design field some theories. Industrial design may itself develop more mature, and the direction of research is also human-computer interaction class, but also need to study the characteristics of users, behavior and habits, and then design or improve product design, so that it easy to use. So, and interactive design is a lot of the same part. I personally feel that interactive design is derived from the field of industrial design and is not limited to web sites and software interfaces ... may have different names in different fields.

Tom: Well, website, software and washing machine design are the same thing, just virtual and physical ...

Heidi: Maybe you can understand that.

Tom: Is it difficult to make a website? Why do you need so many people? Is it possible to give programmers a diagram and write some code?

Heidi: ... Well, simply making a website is quite simple. It's not easy to do well. Do a real estate promotion website, quite easy, do a small business image site, also quite easy. Do pay treasure website, not easy, do Alibaba website and Taobao station, not easy. The concept of the site can not be general to talk about the more users to use the site, the higher the difficulty of design. Also, it's not a ued team that's working on the site, and the work of hundreds of of us is focused on this site. Have to do product planning, have to do operations, have to do customer support, but also to do overseas promotion, have to do data analysis-but most of the people's work, need to finally transfer to our hands to analyze, implement. (Heidi Note: Doing a Web site looks simple because for others, you can only see 20% of the work, but this 20% depends on those who do not see the 80% decision, see Figure 1.) ）

Figure 1: The user experience level of the website users see is a simple 20%

Tom: How do you ued usually work?

Heidi: The process of making new products and optimizing old products is actually different. If it was a new product plan, it would have been done long ago, interaction designer, user researcher with Product Manager (this stage, most of the product manager-led) to do some targeted research, analysis, to see our products targeted to the people who are, what they have needs, what are the characteristics. This will help us find the real positioning of the product, determine the core function and function priority.

Tom: Sort of like a target market division?

Heidi: There is indeed a marketing branch in it. In fact, to sell products to be more effective, we must first have the need for products. Instead of producing the product, the man went to the market to find out who to sell.

Tom: So when are you going to start designing?

Heidi: Just said that we have to put some manpower to do analysis and research, then, in the product manager to refine what the function needs, we can start design work. But unlike what you just said, go straight to a picture. But first by our role, the interaction designer to do some wireframes.

Tom: Wireframe, that's the sketch, right?

Heidi: You can understand it as a sketch. It's like a blueprint is needed before the building is to be constructed. The blueprint must be confirmed before it can be started.

Tom: I understand that. Sketching is about talking to people, right? Visual designer design is not also a lot of draft sketches?

Heidi: The sketches we designed are not the same as the visual designers. We were an earlier link before he started. But you're right, we really don't have the sketch, and we just let the visual designer do it. But this visual designer can be very, very painful. Because he needs to spend a lot of energy on the sketch, and then he accepts a lot of advice and advice, and he went to optimize the direction of the uncertainty, a lot of results caused by the delay to confirm.

Tom: Why is that?

Heidi: Vision, everyone has their own feelings, visual evaluation criteria are mostly based on subjective evaluation. You think the purple is good-looking, the boss thinks red is generous, the visual designer needs to find a fit point to let all decision-making parties agree.

Tom: This should have been the case, even if you, their pain will not reduce the number of it?

Heidi: indeed. But our presence will help visual designers reduce most of the pain (of course, we are not limited to the value of this). Because we're going to shrink the scope of what they're confirming. Without the existence of interactive design, all possibilities are thrown at the visual designer. When visual confirmation, you will find layout A and layout B, layout c there are various preferences, and color A, color B, color C also have different preferences, plate a position, there are different preferences ... Results layout, color, structure of the arrangement will be very much ... (Heidi Note: as shown in Figure 2, most of the pain of visual designers stems from the lack of control over various opinions to effectively reach decisions)

Tom: Well, I understand, will someone say: "I think this version of the structure is very clear, but the color is very bad, you see if you can change the color of another version to see?"

Heidi: Often! But by arranging the combination back and forth, more permutations and combinations will be born ...

Tom: Well, ideas are sometimes lost in design, and some new ideas are born.

Heidi: Yes. Therefore, we usually in the interactive design phase first from the rational confirmation of some problems, such as layout, information structure, the logic of the content and so on. These content can be less sensitive to evaluate, more rely on some persuasive things to persuade people to accept.

Tom: So how do you convince people to accept it?

Heidi: If there is data, use the data, if the user's business is the user's voice. If you have learned the user's characteristics, behavior, can be applied to the design of the persuasion framework. In addition, everyone will respect the professional view. In addition, knowledge is power, professional people trust, to arm themselves more professional, there will be more help.

Tom: Just the same to convince people?

Heidi: In fact, sometimes can not call persuasion, we at least have to believe that is the best solution, if they are not sure, let more people to help you see if there is a better solution, if time and resources allow, to introduce real users to help us see. Then others will believe that this is the best solution at this stage. However, even if the interaction is not as subjective as visual perception, but still everyone has their own ideas, we need to convince them that this is the best solution.

Tom: So I still need to find some support.

Heidi: Data, user voice, is very helpful. There is no resources, we need to describe the use of the scene, so that other people feel that they are the reality of the user, into the use of our description of the scene, we call this persuasive way of telling the story (Heidi Note: Figure 3, storytelling has become a kind of industry terminology, storytelling).

Figure 3: Storytelling is an important skill in the interaction designer's persuasion framework by visualizing the user's use of the scene.

Tom: "Tell the story" is very interesting! Is that what you can do to provide a sketch of a page to a visual designer?

Heidi: Not only is the sketch structure and layout of a single page. Our main task is to design the workflow.

Tom: Task flow?

Heidi: For example, the user's goal is to upload the product, in order to achieve this goal, he needs to go through several steps to accomplish which tasks. We want to make it as easy as possible for users to achieve the goal in the shortest amount of time through the fewest steps. Well, in fact, our goal is not only this, but more advanced is that the user in this process feel simple, easy, relaxed. The most efficient and sometimes need to balance the "user's feelings" with the cost of our inputs and the cost of user input.

Tom: It looks more complicated.

Heidi: Actually it's very simple, for example, you're in a parked building, 15 floors tall, you need to go downstairs. The quickest way is to hang a rope and slide down, the most comfortable way is to call a helicopter to pick you up. But although the former is efficient but not safe, you will be afraid to try. Although the latter is comfortable but cost is too high ...

Tom: So, walking down the stairs is probably the best.

Heidi: Well, walking slowly down the stairs, comparing the other two, is the most appropriate solution. We usually choose the design scheme will also have multiple dimensions (Figure 4).

Figure 4: A good design should be able to meet multiple dimensions of the review criteria

Tom: I understand. But what channels do you use to collect users ' needs? In fact, we are responsible for customer training, is the daily face of the customer.

Heidi: Customers and users are not yet a concept. Your training contacts customers are one of the users, that is, domestic suppliers, for their needs collection, we will sometimes "countryside", directly send some designers to their workplaces to observe how they use our site. Of course, we are also through internal channels, such as from sales, customer service department feedback. In addition, we can easily invite them to come to our company, China Station has a special laboratory, can let them in the laboratory to do some usability testing. But the other part of the user is overseas buyers and suppliers. They are so far away from us that they are not easy to come and we cannot pass. These users are our website buyers, Service good buyers, can let the sellers benefit, so their demand is very important.

Tom: What are you going to do?

Heidi: Only as far as possible to excavate channels. Canton Fair every year, foreign buyers will come a lot, we will go to Canton Fair to participate in user research. Usually have a special team, the BI Department (website staff) will regularly do a number of Overseas buyers Questionnaire survey, and gradually precipitated some buyers stratified research, we can know many buyers through their needs and problems. In addition, we will occasionally do some remote online user research and testing.

Tom: But our website does not often introduce new products, do you usually idle?

Heidi: (Khan) .... We also want to ah ... But the fact is we are busy every day and we are constantly recruiting new people. Large strategic products are not always introduced, but small products often appear. But some old product optimization is constantly in progress-for example, just released, the registration form conversion rate is 50%, after the optimization goal is to increase the conversion rate to 70%, the goal is constantly improving, we need to have follow-up action.

Tom: You can't do it right from the start.

Heidi: Maybe fast iterations are the obvious features of Internet products. At first everyone wants to do the product line up, then perhaps the original solution to the core functions, and the main process no problem. We can't be perfect from the start, one reason is that resources are not allowed. It is also possible that we do not know exactly what the perfect solution is, how many users need to consume a lot of resources, so we sometimes release a simple version, and then iteratively optimize it with the data and interviews that the user uses. In addition, we have data monitoring for online pages and functions, we will analyze the wastage rate in the process, and we can judge what is the best point to optimize, then change it and then monitor it.

Tom: But there's still no time to be satisfied.

Heidi: Each optimization should ensure that the data is positive. Instead of going back to the old version, keep thinking. But it is impossible to say what is never to be optimized. The experience of the site is a little bit optimized to upgrade AH.

Tom: I see, thank you. I understand that the site is too simple to think so complex.

Heidi: Haha, we also often say, we do not tangle, the user is entangled. Simplicity is a complex result, and complexity is a simple and necessary process.

[summary]: From the user's point of view, we also hope that he will see the simplest and most enjoyable side. As a customer trainer, you don't need to know what server the product data is stored in our background. Users search for products, but also do not need to understand a search word is after how many words analytic judgment calculation, ran a few servers, and finally presented the results to him. But as a staff member, we have to understand what needs to be done to present the simplest and most enjoyable results. (Heidi Note: as shown in Figure 5, finally using a picture as a summary of this article)

Figure 5: Concise website Product Construction flow chart

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