Good design is "don't make me think" design!

“To design, to meet dreams, to love life

It’s a lonely planet. I’m glad I met you.”

From: Eugen E ş, anu

July 22, 2018, 146 sunny weather | to design

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Hi,

Did you have a good day today? I am your good friend, wrote to the design of the duty man blessed snow peak.

Some things, is the need to find its value in the years of washing, like antiques, is the older the more valuable. What about design? Or design experience and methods?

Maybe design trends change every year, but design (experience, method), like antiques, gets more valuable as it gets older.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the Midas Touch: The Secrets of Web Design by Steve Krug, a classic design book, Don’t Make Me Think.

Some design principles and experience 18 years ago still have its role and significance. Let’s think about it now: what are the characteristics of the user? What has been the pursuit of user experience, which is increasingly important?

“Don’t make me think.”

Most of the great products we see today, whether it’s mobile phones or computers or cars or smart devices, follow the same principle.

The old adage that “good design should be obvious” has influenced everything from food to music, architecture to philosophy over the centuries, and almost certainly shaped our lives today.

But again, human evolution is not as fast as we think, and our thinking and instincts are still profoundly influencing our decisions. In other words, human patterns of behavior have a long shelf life, and many things that were hard to do 20 years ago are still hard to do today.

I said that what I want to share today is a review of the book, rather than a reading note. We have the designer Eugen Eşanu to thank for that.

Well, here are 10 reading notes that are both common cognitive mistakes and good design opportunities. I hope they will help you.

1. Users scan content instead of reading it

Most of the time when we’re looking at content and information, we’re subconsciously looking for things that interest us. For example, we rarely read all the text and content on a website in its entirety. Why?

The vast majority of users open the website is trying to complete a certain task, to achieve a certain goal, and the content of different parts of the web page is often to serve different functions and goals, we try to achieve the goal, there is no need to read all.

However, as web designers, we tend to provide enough content and features, partly because we think people need to know, and partly because we respond to the needs of different users. As one designer put it, they “add to the experience.”

So, in general, we can make the following optimizations:

Use headings extensively: Use headings to tell the user what the content is about, and make sure the user can quickly understand and make choices in a glance.
Keep paragraphs short: In long paragraphs, users can get distracted and get lost, while short paragraphs are easier to read and absorb information.
Use lists: Almost any piece of information can be broken up into lists. Even a sentence divided by multiple commas can be made into lists. Of course, it’s worth noting that you should pay attention to the line spacing between lists to ensure readability.
Highlight key information: When users scan, they focus on locating keywords. Keywords in bold and other ways to mark out, easy to scan and positioning. Don’t emphasize too much or you’ll lose emphasis.

2. Create an effective visual hierarchy

Visual hierarchy is an important enabler to ensure that users can get information in a quick scan. Visual hierarchy shows the priorities and relationships between different elements on the page, and the following principles should also be followed when designing:

The higher the importance, the more prominent. The most important elements are either bigger or more eye-catching, using specific colors to highlight them.
Elements that are logically related should be visually related, such as using the same color or visual style.

3. Don’t reinvent the wheel

We understand that users will always expect something new, but there are so many tools and applications out there that it’s almost useless for users to go their own way and ignore the established rules and adopt their own rules instead, making each application more expensive to learn.

We all know that when a designer is asked to design something, the impulse is to reinvent the wheel.

Designing something that looks like someone else is politically incorrect, and there is always a desire to design something different. What’s more, it’s an industry with little encouragement and praise, and few design awards are given to products that “best fit the needs of the user.”

But the design still needs to strike the best balance between the parties.

Before reinventing the wheel, you must understand the real value (time, experience, effort and knowledge required) of disruption and innovation.

4. Product descriptions no longer need to exist

Our job is to make things clear and easy to do. Even if it’s not obvious, try to move toward a design that speaks for itself.

Manual is something that no one will take the initiative to read, their existence significance itself is not big, you need to through reasonable design, let the product itself play a guiding effect. Even if an instruction manual must exist, keep it short and concise.

If the feature is not obvious, we should try to make it obvious and make the goal more obvious.

Take IKEA as an example, when a cabinet needs to be assembled at home, the vast majority of users can easily and correctly assemble it under a brief guide. Why? Because in the vast majority of cases, the user has a clear picture of what a cabinet looks like, even if the description is only a few simple pictures, the user will not make mistakes.

5. Users don’t care how the product works

The vast majority of users aren’t interested in learning how your product works, not because they aren’t smart, but because they don’t care. So, once they’re sure your product will work, they rarely pay attention to the rest.

Take Apple’s wireless earphones AirPods for example. They are not user-friendly in terms of price, but their interaction mode and user experience are really unique and excellent, which makes it understandable that many users will choose them. Users don’t have to think about how it works after they buy it, and many of the new technologies it contains are just quietly playing a role for them.

My mother, who uses AirPods, never asks me how they work, but she does know that they need to be in a charging case, paired with a phone, and ready to go. It’s not complicated.

6. People in a hurry never actively seek out “subtle clues.”

This one is probably my favorite. We designers always like to bring subtle visual effects to the user to bring fun to the user. Isn’t it? But what if I told you that users don’t care about them? They won’t even tell you how much they care or don’t care, or how much they feel about it when they see it again and again.

Why is that? The living environment gives each user a complex and changeable situation, and they rarely have the opportunity to feel the wonderful emotions brought by the subtle design.

The wind roar, the dog in the call, the child is still in house full run, inside the water is boiling kettle, wife complained about the details of the work in the ear, and you are to fill in the form to booking high-speed rail tickets for tomorrow, in that moment, a subtle move effect of APP and visual clues, hand shake, you may also buy a more unnecessary bundling hotel voucher.

But on the other hand, the pursuit of a great experience should not be abandoned, there are many users who benefit from it, and this is what makes a great product. It’s just that a lot of users don’t care.

7. Focus groups are not supposed to do usability testing

What do focus groups do? A small group of people sit around a table and discuss what they think about products, their past experiences, how they feel and what they understand about new concepts. Focus groups help you better define your target audience, how they feel, etc.

Usability testing is another matter. When you do usability testing, you usually watch a particular user use the product in order to test it. In testing, you need testers to perform specific actions to see if concepts are intuitive and features need to be improved. In focus groups, you need to listen to ideas, comb through ideas, and in usability testing, you need to observe and solve specific problems.

8. Don’t let your emotions take over the user experience

We design our products with our needs in mind: “I’m a user, so I know what’s good and what’s bad.”

We have strong feelings about what we like.

We say we love it when our product has _____, or we think _____ is a huge pain point.

When we actually sit down with team members to discuss the product, everyone has their own opinions and their own emotions, all of them have very strong personalities and unique opinions, and it’s very awkward. We tend to think that the vast majority of our users are just like us. This is not necessarily the case.

9. Ask the right questions to move the product in the right direction

Whether you’re designing a feature or testing a product, it’s important to ask the right questions. When testing, asking users “Do you like the drop-down menu?” not only doesn’t sell, it doesn’t add value. The question, instead, should be: “In this case, on this page, does the pull-down menu design give you a good user experience? What makes people uncomfortable?”

Broad questions like “Do users like the product?” don’t mean much, and it’s hard for users to provide targeted, specific responses.

Also, as designers, we should not focus on whether the user likes it or not, which can lose motivation and focus. Usability testing can help you eliminate all sorts of “like” issues and help you figure out what you really need to do. That’s the point.

10. Don’t make the user think

Where I am? What am I supposed to do?

Where should I start?

What is this control they put here for?

What is this page for?

Why do they call it that?

Is this an AD or a built-in feature?

When using the product, if various problems are triggered in the user’s brain, it will only increase the psychological load and workload of the user, and it is not good to distract the user’s attention. Moreover, the user does not like to solve various problems.

Every time a user clicks on a control and it doesn’t work, or it looks like a link but it isn’t, it erodes their trust in you and reduces the reliability of the product.

One more thing

Cool concepts and new trends appeal not only to users, but also to designers. But we are in the new era, under the new situation, always facing the past users, seemingly ever-changing needs behind the constant human nature.

At least the questions that Don’t Make Me Think has been asking are still relevant and illuminating in this so-called Internet 5.0 era, 18 years after the world has changed and several waves of the Internet have emerged.

Old problems lurk beneath new situations, and to understand the nature of these problems, designers need to understand psychology and behavior. There are thousands of ways and tools to design, and knowing the truth and asking the right questions will make the next step easier.

Well, that’s all for today’s sharing, Ann

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