White Crow: My "product center"

Since saying "there should be no" user experience design "(link), I've also seen a lot of people discuss the collaboration between product managers, interaction design, and user experience. Just a few days ago to help a small and medium-sized companies mentioned a "product center" with the program. Drying out, and as my view of the product, design, experience between. Welcome discussion, welcome not to pick.

HI, all

There are a few basic preconditions for my idea of ​​this "Product Center":

0, the following point of view is only for what I see "most" of the enterprise, the applicability is not yet known.
1, there should be no special "UED" department, design and product to be put together. 2, PM in my mind is "product marketing manager", in addition to products should also consider product operations and product experience. The project manager should be defined as a PM assistant at some stage.
3, PM's positioning and ability, according to different business and product models, should be biased. For example, Baidu is partial experience, Taobao is partial operator, Ali B2B is partial sales, Google is partial coordination.
4, PM should make decisions on all aspects of the product, because he has to bear all the responsibility of the product. But do not do everything by yourself. Of course, we should fully respect the professional opinions of other role areas.
5, interactive design and product design simply withdrawn, so do not expect to withdraw, we often say that "more communication" will be able to solve, in fact, avoid evasion of light cheating.
6, similar to the copy design work should not be listed in a special department, but who is responsible for who made the product, who wrote the text who is responsible. However, there needs to be a role to advocate, coordinate and manage the unified temperament and quality of all copyrights.
7, there must be an "architect" to coordinate the relationship between all products, and uniform style.
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Post and responsibility

1, product architect / chief product designer: responsible for the overall product architecture design and management, common rules management.
1.1, Architecture design and management is a very see the bottom of life, need to be patiently trained, but also need to give enough rights and obligations.
1.2 For generic "experience" products, generic presentation layer rules must be documented and managed. The so-called "general rules", mainly refers to: information architecture, page structure, interactive rules, copywriting rules, visual rules. In principle, he does not want him to organize or design these common things, but to be archived to him to manage, and the principle change must be approved. (Of course, you can actually give visual, interactive, and copywriting to the "leader" or "chief" in these roles.)
1.3, the other, the best product architect is only one, also set up an assistant. One thing more, and secondly, the need for follow-up architect reserves. When an architect is lost, it can be disastrous to the business.

2. User Research Group: Assist PM and product designers to do research on requirements, competition analysis, usability testing, user behavior data analysis, organize relevant user experience feedback and issue a report.
2.1. This should be a neutral "third-party" research group that relies on them for judging the quality of the product experience as well as the source of product decisions and design. This group can not participate in the specific business too deep, but can not be separated from the business.
2.2. The various studies in this group provide only specific business roles as a reference. Specific decisions and even more in-depth research must be done by business actors themselves.
2.3, the best output of this role is only good, not good, at the same time there must be "why." You can recommend specific products, but it must be from the user's advice, rather than through their own "speculation" or "design" of the "design."

3, product marketing manager: Responsible for product users and needs analysis, product development planning, marketing and operations planning, architecture design, resource allocation, general rule management.
3.1, responsible for all the responsibility of the product and decision-making authority should be him, but not all things he did, colleagues, he also should fully respect the professional opinion of other roles.
3.2, under what circumstances did the decision-making, why such a decision, follow-up plan is what, there must be a document.
3.3, in addition to the need from the user needs, but also must have the cost concept, any one plan needs to have cost and profit considerations.

4, product designers: the product responsible for the functional design, business process design, process design, system (research and development) needs analysis
4.1, functional design must be based on the analysis of the needs of product managers, can not have nothing.
4.2, business process design and use of process design are two different things, all need to have. Need to be clear to the user what is presented, but also need to understand what the business logic behind.
4.3, System Requirements Analysis is a physical activity, but also to ensure that product design is the final implementation of the necessary steps.

5, interface designer: visual interface design and interactive design
5.1, the interface designer is not the first thing to consider "good-looking", if "what kind of visual logic is used to present the user interface more clearly," then the user's emotions are affected by the visual. As discussed earlier on Weibo: Visual Design visually interprets the logical relationship of interface elements and achieves emotional effects.
5.2, single-page interaction should be given to the visual design to do. Product design should be interactive, but not too much about "interaction".
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Staffing

1, the ideal state, I will be in accordance with the product of the relationship, divided into several product groups. Such as: xxx, xxx, xxx
2, product architect only "one", a design assistant as a backup. Report directly to the person in charge of the product center.
3, user research group is an independent department, directly report as the person in charge of the product center. The number of people on demand. But can not exceed half of the product designer.
4, according to the needs of each product group, a PM, 2 to 5 product designers, 1 to 3 interface designer.
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Supplement:

1, according to the project and product development stage set staffing. PM can be done when necessary product designer, the interface designer can also be done when necessary product designer, but not everyone can do PM. Anyone can participate in the product market discussion, but the decision can not be handed over.
2, in small and medium-sized team, I often prefer "set staff posts," I think this is more practical and more useful for Internet products.
3, when necessary, increase the "product operations" position. BD should set up an independent department, operations do not need.
4, once again stressed: product and design do not separate, product center personnel do not engage in too many roles, responsibilities should not be too clear.

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White crow

Source: http://uicom.net/blog/?p=878