What is product accounting?

Today talk about the "product accounting" that many of us have talked about recently.

A mention of accounting, many people will unconsciously think, it is summed up the concept of color, not suitable for rapid response of the start-up team. In fact, if you are fully prepared, you can start before product development. Or, from the time we are ready to make a product, we consciously set some standards for the product. Although most of the products in the later operation, will experience significant adjustments, but also a number of products, from the first version, the core architecture and functionality, has not occurred too many changes, but the constant stability and optimization. So I suggest that you embrace change in a state of mind, but make a full plan in preparation, especially for those of us who are basterds guerrillas and have no successful experience.

Cut to the chase, I understand the product accounting, including four parts: UE accounting, UI Accounting, functional accounting, experience accounting. (later there will be operational accounting)

First, the UE accounting can make standard features the fastest finalization, for subsequent development to reduce uncertainty

The so-called UE accounting, is specifically aimed at product prototype design accounting. Generally understood, the product prototype design is often to play a large space, can even be very rough, take our project for a long time, in the prototype design, for different types of functions, interaction, Interface, icon and against the copy, there is no system of standards and accounting. Surface appears, it maximizes the production speed of the UE, but the drawbacks and many hidden dangers, especially will affect the follow-up development.

The stage looks back, any kind of product, whether is the reading class, the game class, the electric business class, the social class ... In the prototype design, there are many similarities, I think, a good product prototype, is not completely new, but in the existing category, find their own positioning, targeted function differentiation and experience optimization.

Take our products, the Personal data page upload avatar, perfect information, privacy settings and other functions, almost social products are essential functions, like a Korean restaurant meal before dinner, it is standard concept. Can innovate, but for an initial version of the product, certainly not the focus, innovation space is limited. Therefore, for a similar standard of functionality, standard interaction, you can complete the standard design, as soon as possible to finalize, not easily modified.

What is the benefit of it? Avoid unnecessary changes and wastage of human costs in subsequent links, such as UI design and function optimization. Chairman Mao already said, focus on the major issues, grasp the main contradiction. For products, the prototype design process, especially to grasp the main contradiction, the energy used in the most important things.

How much does UE accounting want to do? To our project, to ensure that the product structure, the core interface of the determination of the prototype design, the interface can be reused, must learn to reuse. This is an effective way to achieve minimalism. Secondly, this will greatly reduce the user's learning costs; typos, it will make your product, has the system and the integrity, will not let the user in the interactive switching, as if completes the product the transformation between; Finally, it is also very important to save the workload of the UI designer and the development engineer , to speed up the progress of the project and to improve the controllability of the project.

Don't underestimate the prototype design, prototype design is not only a product into the production process of the starting point, the determination of the prototype design and clarity, but also directly determine the follow-up work of stability and fluency.

Therefore, the UE accounting, for a product team, is a concept, a deep responsibility for the follow-up work concept. Do not see it as a baggage, good UE accounting is a primary and secondary, there is a standard, there is a gradient, it can make the team, especially product managers, product structure, product development in the future, such as the palm. (Don't laugh, the reality is the product development process, most product managers, have been technical or UI colleagues asked to live, and eventually have to turn over the UE to answer, in my body has happened a lot, ashamed). Even if the UE is fully accounted for, but also for product follow-up expansion and upgrade, reduce development costs.

Second, the product manager to help UI designers to complete the UI accounting ahead of time

The so-called UI accounting, is for product interface design accounting. For experienced designers, this is a pediatric affair. But the reality is that the product team is very much, and experienced and understand the product of the UI designer, very scarce. What do we do? In the first edition of product development, we failed to develop UI accounting beforehand, including our UI designers and no real client-side product design experience, so we took some very unnecessary detours and even had some quarrels.

So if you're a team leader, you'd better be able to help your UI designer make a list of UI accounts from the start. Rather than relying solely on designer preferences and intuition to design products. Otherwise, even if each interface looks good, it can not cover the entire product interface is not system and nonstandard. Moreover, for mobile Internet products, the workload of front-end development is largely related to the UI. If you are a product manager with high UI standards, you should learn how to use UI accounting to help designers achieve the perfect interface, find the best pace of work, and control the development of engineers.

UI accounting is relatively simple to UE, and I think the first task is to determine the design style of the product. (not intuitive design style, once the standard of accounting, there will be no "I think, I think," these ambiguous concepts)

Then take our project, I first and the requirements of the designer is flat style, to embrace iOS7, and then the main color, visual atmosphere and other requirements. These points are also the most common common sense of many product colleagues. However, UI accounting is really not only these, with the basis of UE accounting above, UI accounting to be in the interval line, head, font size color (highlighting), buttons, message types and other classification of general design to do enough Kung Fu, features and not excessive design. This maximizes the quality and Chettu of the high-fidelity and avoids the process of development because of the nonstandard and adjusted UI, which has an impact on progress. In the same way, the development of the designer itself also has a great help. In addition to this, including UI design and development colleagues, in the allocation process accounting, what time to provide, to what extent, this can be accounted for by the standard.

In fact, if you look at the existing app products, the UI design is not standardized, there are obvious "bugs" of the minority. While not impacting the functional experience, a good product experience includes both functionality and vision. The so-called extreme, both indispensable. Moreover, I always thought that good UI design, must be for the product points and does not affect the project progress. At this point, we really should learn from foreign peers. They are in the details of the grasp, than we are in place, than our intentions, than we have methods.

Third, function accounting can promote more attention to the experience of engineers

The next step is functional accounting, which includes front-end functionality and background functionality. For functional accounting, I do not have much say, because I am not a technical background, but I have always had a concept: it is not enough to just finish the function. The function and experience must be connected together. In recent months, I have spent a lot of time communicating with the technical team, hoping that the technical team will take the experience into account before making a functional development assessment.

For example, the same feed release function, the current market, there are a variety of ready-made experience to choose from, there are micro-blog release experience, a micro-credit circle of the publishing experience, there are many other products release experience. The easiest way for an engineer to get into is the fastest and most stable (no bugs) implementation, and the product manager wants to achieve the best experience at the same time. But in the standard of engineers, the difference in experience is often not so obvious, this contrast is entirely due to different division of labor, not engineers do not care about experience, after all, who want to do a good product, and engineers are often more competitive.

So I suggest that the less experienced team, in the functional evaluation, it is best to ask the engineer a way to achieve, in the way of the experience, to remind these technical geniuses. Otherwise, once the development is over, you say to the engineer, what I want is not the microblogging experience, but the experience of the circle of friends, the damage to the engineer is very large, the amount of work is often more than the initial acceptance of the start-up team, after all, the key to our survival is rapid iteration. If not, when you experience good, the opponent has been two iterations.

So, I have been in communication with engineers recently, in the future work, to ensure that each feature in the development before the implementation of the experience can be balanced. In the process of evaluation, we should make research on the functional points of good reputation of similar products in the market. Motivate engineers to focus on the best way to implement similar functions in the current market. Otherwise, you do it, just function, far from the market can survive products.

The other benefit of function accounting is that it can promote the reasonable division of labor in the function point of engineers, so that each engineer, in each stage, is responsible for the development of the same module, continue to go deep, in exchange for the result is the experience of the continuous improvement.

Iv. experience accounting should be melted into the hearts of everyone in the team

Finally, experience accounting. In fact, in my heart, experience accounting is through the work of the product always, I never feel that experience is a product manager of a person's work. It should be melted into the hearts of everyone in the team, and a good experience should be a way of working, a way of life, a way of thinking. Of course, this is very difficult, for the start-up team also little hope, but I want to tell you, once you put the pursuit of a better experience, to the team of everyone, one day, you will get beyond the imagination of the results. Experience of the upgrade, just like Tortoise and hare in the race, perseverance, imperceptible, false in time, turned upside down.

Here, I give an example of communication with a background engineer. In the previous article, I mentioned that an important aspect of experience is the performance of a product. And this, backstage engineer plays a decisive role. For example, loading speed on the difference of 0.1 seconds, should be backstage engineers should strive to pursue. As product manager, team leader, to do their best to mobilize resources, encourage back-office engineers, for similar details, to do their best.

In my case, I made a request to the backstage engineer: the impact of product performance experience of key nodes, key indicators of data, and then to make different stages of optimization goals, we do not need to be radical, do not need to step, but when to what extent, to the heart of the number, only to say that the mouth is unable to achieve.

Well, as a new transformation of the product people, the above is my work in the last six months of all the experience, product accounting is not a fresh concept, nor what life-saving odd medicine, it is more of a team work a method, a thinking, a habit. Hope to be ready or just transformation of the product people, help. The wrong writing is welcome to the senior practitioner.