The hardest part of designing isn’t figuring out what the best answer to a problem is. Instead, standing in the overall situation to balance the relationship between problems and problems, do the current resource conditions relatively correct design decisions.
Balance of experience, business and technology
Before we talk about equilibrium, let’s look at these four models:
- Mental model: a mental model of what the user thinks a product should look like and how it should be used. This model may be derived from the user’s previous experience with a similar product, or from an expectation of the product based on the user’s use goals.
- Implementation model: is the internal structure and working principle of the product. The model is realized by the developer who writes the code.
- Business model: can be understood as the business model of the product, through what means to achieve the purpose of product profit.
- Design model: refers to the appearance and interface of the product.
When users see the design model, they can use the product well based on their own goals and experience. This is because designers have good empathy and understand the psychological behavior characteristics and expectations of users.
However, the real product experience is often affected by technical conditions, product strategy and business model. Therefore, what we call product experience is a combination of many factors.
Junior designers tend to think only from the perspective of the user’s psychological model, instead of looking at the overall situation, and make the most reasonable design decisions based on the current boundary conditions and various factors.
The value of mature products is not only experienced in good user reputation, but also bring business value to the enterprise, perhaps in the form of advertising realization or user turnover. In the final analysis, the value of products can be divided into two parts: value to the enterprise + value to the user. However, the realization process of commercial products often conflicts with the interests of user experience. How designers dance with shackles in this process and find the best balance point is the value of designers in the team.
Balance of time, people and money
For example, the development resources and technical capabilities of products in the blue ocean market are often not mature enough. Under such boundary conditions, designers are tested on how to balance experience and technology, and they pursue the most reasonable solution rather than the best solution.
The interaction designer and the product manager racked their brains, did research and tests, and finally gave the prototype of the awesome and cool interaction to the engineer. The engineer said it would take two months to realize the prototype, but the Deadline of the project was only one month.
It is very important to product is under the limited resources (including time, manpower and money), to complete a measurable goals, so in the product design, you should consider a good balance between user experience and development resources, at the right time to prepare multiple design scheme, the development of the shortage of in order to use more quickly.
A balance of simplicity and complexity
As designers, our subconscious tells us, “Simple is beautiful, simple is good.” The “simplicity principle” is a classic way of designing. As everyone knows, when thinking about this problem, designers are easy to fall into their own set mistakes.
Look at the picture below. How to switch between shower and faucet?
In fact, in the context of user experience, this does not mean that fewer steps are necessarily more reasonable than steps, fewer words are not necessarily more reasonable than words, and graphic expression is not necessarily more reasonable than words.
For user experience designers, I think the simple concept should be interpreted as “removing unnecessary distractions and allowing users to achieve their goals more naturally and intuitively”.
In fact, sometimes complex is not necessarily a bad thing, simple is sometimes more complex, why users will choose to “close to far”? That’s it.
A balance between rational and emotional thinking
We all know that designers are not artists.
Artists express their self-consciousness, while designers think from the perspective of users, even products and industries.
Many interaction designers are design majors, that is to say, they have a strong sense of self-expression and emotional thinking is obviously better than rational thinking. It’s not easy to build good empathy in the early days of design.
However, for interaction designers, a focus on rational thinking has many advantages. For example, systematic design thinking, structured logical thinking, rational use of various tools and methods to sort out and deduce persuasive design schemes, etc. This advantage is more obvious in the design of platform and tool-based products with complex logic and emphasis on efficiency, which is also a big difference between us and creative art designers.
However, too much emphasis on rational thinking will also restrict the creativity of interaction designers to a certain extent. When they need to make more interesting and innovative solutions, they are more likely to feel the existence of bottlenecks, and they are unable to cope with various types of business requirements.
Even for tool-based product design that prioritizes efficiency, some enterprise-level internal products even have no worries about user stickiness. Therefore, it is necessary to consider how to properly soothe and motivate users’ emotions during design.
For interaction designers, we are a mixture of rational and emotional thinking. It is interesting to say that “great souls are hermaphrodite”, and so are interaction designers.
To design is to balance.
Author: Xiao Xiao, co-founder of Jichuangtang
Everyone is a product manager. Reprint without permission is prohibited.