Are norms, methods, and consistency really that important?

There is no denying that the design norms, methods and consistency we often talk about are important to our daily work. It improves operational consistency, productivity, brand continuity…

However, I don’t know if you’ve noticed that these methods and norms have led many designers to fall into a comfort zone and give up thinking independently. Doing repetitive work every day, reusing the template established by predecessors, applying others’ methodology, complaining that there is no challenge in the work.

Recently, I have been thinking about whether a solution derived step by step in accordance with the design specification and the so-called system design method is really a good design.

Specification, method, consistency, the important side.

A. specification

When we are just engaged in UI design and have not accumulated enough user experience design, it is the most conservative but also the most reasonable way to follow the design specification, because this solution is more mature and universal, and has certain user recognition. At the same time, the internal design specification of the company is conducive to the development of version iteration and design efficiency, including the new staff to get started work faster, to avoid mistakes.

So understanding the ios design specification, Android design specification, or the internal design specification of the company, etc., becomes a necessary skill for designers…

Method b.

The method here refers to the methodology of design work. The use of methodology can help designers clarify how to carry out the whole project step by step, deduce the design more efficiently and achieve the goal. In order to convince the cooperation of the students, and it seems very reasonable. Here are some examples of common maps:

C. consistency

In order to reduce user learning costs, consistency is required both visually and interactively.

Including different terminals of the same product, visual unity should be maintained to deepen users’ cognition of the product brand, which is also not wrong.

The bottom is salted fish. The top navigation color is yellow for consistency.

Micro cloud each end of the guide page, the use of linear illustration processing techniques, to ensure brand consistency.

These are all important aspects of specification, method, and consistency.

However, we are seeing more innovative designs that are stepping out of these boxes to make eye-catching designs. Therefore, I am thinking about the following points I need to do in the next design to help myself grow:

1. Go outside the box

In the first year or two of our work, we studied and followed the platform design specifications, which helped us to make error-free designs in our work, and at the same time improved our work efficiency and persuasiveness. However, with the accumulation and growth of our own experience, we need to be wary of this. If we are always confined to the norms formulated by others and do not think, it is easy to fall into the working state of the same day for ten years, and it is difficult to make innovative designs.

At the same time, we can also see a lot of excellent design works, one after another out of the specification, not limited to the specification made like “the maximum size of px”, “how much px navigation bar”, “how much PX spacing up and down” and so on… It’s about designing an interface that fits your product ethos. Here are a few examples:

The following is the design of snail decoration APP. It can be seen that a. There is no clear module in the top area to distinguish the navigation area, and only when sliding, the navigation separation will appear. B. The size of the type and spacing also makes browsing more relaxed.

For example, VUE does not strictly follow the height of the so-called list in the platform design specification, but uses red lines to distinguish modules and spacing to distinguish the content of the list, which is more in line with the temperament of the product itself.

The following is the well-known Airbnb, whose bold experience design is highly imitated by designers. What I want to say here is that its treatment of bottom navigation and button size is also out of the norm and more in line with the important level of function itself.

2. Weakening method

The above mentioned design methodology helps us to design, in the process of use, we know how to decompose and apply each step. For example: market research, brainstorming, sorting out online processes, researching information architecture, and analyzing behavior paths through experience maps…

However, the final design scheme often has nothing to do with the preliminary investigation, and it is applicable to reuse in the early stage of any product design. Therefore, I think it belongs to self-touching design. They feel like they’re doing too much, but when they really dig in and ask why why why, a lot of designers get stuck.

Therefore, to some extent, we should weaken the known design methods, less routines and formalism, and more in-depth analytical ways to do design.

For example, here’s how Facebook’s director explained the design of LIKE:

He explained the design scheme of LIKE in this way: The purpose of this design is to optimize the button of LIKE, enhance the willingness of users to interact, and improve the expression of LIKE. And the first thing he did was to understand what enhanced interaction was, what expressiveness was, what was the product goal behind it? Is the user can express more. Then start figuring out how to make that goal concrete. Next, look for what’s generally recognized and accepted — passivity.

It uses various ways to find out what emojis are most commonly used, what emojis are most searched for and what are the most short comments. Designers hope to find out what reaction people like to use in the process of expression from the side, and then find him, and complete the design scheme through selection based on the principle of defining the number.

Therefore, it can be seen that this solution is not the accumulation and emphasis of methodology, and there is no need to step by step check the linear design process, but to the product goal as the starting point, and then closely around the goal of the question and answer, this way to let us think deeply, the solution is more reasonable, can withstand the challenge.

3. Not limited to unity

In our design work, we think about interface to interface, end to end unity, and of course that’s right. But I found that many students, will be too much into the so-called unity, afraid to do anything against the unity.

For example, if there is a linear icon inside the product, it is not allowed to have a face. If the linear icon is 2px, then all ends of the globe must be 2x; If the web function leads to the page with real photos, then the other side must use real photos and so on…

I have also encountered these problems, but I found that I was too limited inside, in fact, we should consider the use of different terminal scenarios, user groups, on the basis of local unity, can do differentiation, there is no problem. The processing of icon can also be differentiated according to the strength and timing of the function. Rather than stubbornly believing that anything that isn’t uniform is wrong, design decisions aren’t black and white.

For example, in the guide page of Google Drive, vector illustration is used in the mobile terminal, while the official image of the product is more emphasized in the Web terminal, and real photos are used, close to life. Just through the logo color to continue the DNA of the brand.

There is also the processing of evernote guide pages, which also adopts different elements for special processing according to different usage scenarios and user habits.

For Web and Mac terminals, the residence time is usually longer, so some real pictures combined with the scene are used to explain the functional features, so that users can have a more comprehensive understanding of what the product can do for them. On the mobile end, the fragmented scene is the main, so the simple illustration processing is adopted, clean and neat, which is conducive to get to the key point. The unifying part is just their green color.

So even if you want to be unified and consistent, you can’t be special. It’s very important to keep a good degree. Pure for the sake of unity and unity, is also a kind of thinking laziness.

Conclusion:

So, at different stages of our design careers, there are different points that need attention and help us grow. Norms, methods and consistency are important, but know how to balance and apply them. Don’t let them be your reason to stay in your comfort zone, learn to think and overthrow yourself in order to progress and breakthrough ☀️.