Introduction: Why is the concept of UXD (User Experience Designer) getting more and more hot at present? What does this new Title mean to designers? What new requirements does UXD put forward for designers, and how do designers transform UXD? In the context of designers’ transition to UXD, do they still need to be professional and profound? Pure Visual designer VD (Visual Designer) and what kind of development path? Three Alibaba UED executives analyzed the transformation of designers into UXD from their own perspectives.
Topic: UXD Make Designer Valuable Again
Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election surprised many people. His campaign slogan was “Make America Great Again.” He won in part because of the power of America’s rising hidden forces, which are extremely powerful. During the rise of the United States, this new power remained dormant. This is similar to OUR UED. In the rise of the Internet, although it is very important and indispensable for enterprises, it is difficult to enter the strategic layer of enterprises. In a sense, UED is also a “hidden force”. When the potential is developed, the new energy burst out by this “hidden force” will surely add value to the enterprise again. Therefore, this time, I will focus on UXD to make Designer Valuable again.
The picture below is basically the current situation of our UED students. On the left side is our dream. We hope to use design to drive innovation and make design with feelings, B grid, and drive products to change the world.
But the reality is very sad, our current situation is likely to be helpless designers who have to work overtime. If the demand side does not make any changes, they will complain to you, but the first draft may still be better if they make any changes. This is our state. I have been designing for more than ten years, and I am very clear about the status quo of designers.
Our biggest problem at present is that there is a gap between ideal and reality. Designers in different positions such as application research, interaction and vision have a sense of achievement that is not as strong as we expected. In a company of Alibaba’s size, UED might fare better as a technical post just needed for the business. But at smaller companies and startups, as well as other third-tier companies, the sense of accomplishment may be weaker.
The second is the division of roles of designers. Our current division of work is different from before. It has only been more than ten years since the emergence of the Internet. At that time, the Title of the earliest designers was “artists”, and they did all the planning, interaction and visual work. According to Maslow’s needs analysis, the designer was at the stage of satisfying the “physiological” needs of the product. When designers lack professional segment, as the user experience abroad longitudinal deepening the development of the industry, professional segmentation began to form, domestic began to do the most is the CDC, including baidu user experience, and the user experience of netease, I spent eight years in netease user experience, netease user experience is I accompany. This time, the Internet user experience formed the professional segment, professional segmentation is a significant exploration, the exploration to promote the “era of art” to “professional segmentation era” transition, this exploration also reflects this layer of us are thinking, thinking what problem, namely to come from, and where to go. And we’re going through that right now.
At present, we have three major divisions of specialization: research, interaction and vision, but this division also brings some problems to us. Interactive jobs, for example, if the docking is a strong ability of PD, they may decide the interactive version of the seven, eighty percent after interaction designers complete delivery to visual designers, visual designers and docking and some interactive Sense, he may be altered and the interactive version, so this process, the content of the interaction designer, still can keep? The situation I am talking about may also be the pain we interaction designers are facing at present. What is the status quo of visual designers? After the visual designer gets the interactive draft, he will beautify and polish it on the basis of the interactive draft. There is not much room for independent play. From the overall situation of our group, the growth of visual designers (P level) is relatively slow, because we focus on discussing what the value of their own design is, but the vision is separated from the whole, a page designed by visual designers, how much specific commercial value can be brought? It’s hard for visual designers to talk about this.
It’s a microcosm of where we are now, so where do we go from here? What will the future be like?
What the future will look like depends on how we perceive and position ourselves. What kind of characteristics of UED students, each designer can first study their own. Everyone has a different perspective. From my perspective, I think this research can be carried out from two aspects:
The first aspect is how to realize the value of designers. John Heskett, a professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, suggests that designers have three levels of value: 1. Designers as decorators. For example, beautifying the page, which is the lowest basic value; 2. Designers as differentiators. For example, according to different products, to create different tonality, to distinguish it from similar products; 3. Designers as drivers. This is very core. When designers act as planners and drivers, similar to what we call “design-driven products” in our work scenes, they can raise demands at the strategic level, which should be the ultimate dream of us practitioners and a stage with a strong sense of value.
Below is the value model of our UED work, which we can share with you. This precipitated value model is exactly corresponding to the designer value model proposed by John Huscott. I map the whole theory to the current situation of OUR UED to transfer and compare the theoretical level.
The first layer is the value of UED business synergy.
Business synergy is our rigid demand, and we must meet the demand of the business side in terms of quality and quantity. Without this, UED loses its place in the business architecture. In the first stage, our most important value performance is to make the product good-looking and easy to use and emphasize the uniformity of the specification. When UED value realization stays at this level, it is generally not very large or scattered across business teams and product teams, becoming a resource to coordinate the business. Because at this stage, its most important function is business collaboration.
The second requirement is business value-added. The first layer is done. What happens when you’re done? Based on our judgment of users, form some innovation points and value points. For example, we found some b-type features in the early stage of B2B, and I believe other partners have done similar things. In the process of business collaboration, we use our own expertise to make innovation, which is the second stage. In the second stage, UED needs to stand on the user’s point of view to find some problems, and then have a chance to find some innovative points. At this time, the user experience team will be larger and more professional, which will lead to some instrumentalization and methodology, such as the “Five Guides” design methodology led by Li Long in our team. The most typical is data intervention to assist measurement. For example, if we make a design innovation or improve a function, how can we determine the conversion rate? Therefore, there are many data tools, such as A Plus, echo and so on.
The third requirement is value amplification. It’s an amazing stage, and it’s what John Hirscott calls the designer as the driver, and it’s the stage where you dream of design-driven products. Among Internet companies, it is difficult for UED to drive products, which doesn’t mean we don’t have opportunities. Why is it hard? Because we are not like Apple, Xiaomi, including the company like sentient Lao Luo, whose CEO is a designer, the whole link of the company is driven by design, and thus determine the direction of the company’s product development. In such a company, designers are naturally in the “third stage”, where design is the core competitiveness of their products. The value of design is very high, and what products sell is design. But right now, we’re in a different environment. UED designers in commercial companies are more likely to help the business succeed. We can’t build our own business, so we have to take advantage of experiential insight opportunities in the whole process of collaborative business. This is the essential difference, and it makes us “very difficult”. But the realization of this essential difference is actually a relief — because we choose to be here, we have to find our value in this environment. The specific case of value amplification will not be shared today. I personally think that the transition to UXD, and the UXD capability that we’re going to have is going to make that value possible, so today’s talk is going to be about UXD.
The above is the first research Angle to study where we are going in the future, that is, what are the stages of designer value realization. The second Angle is to come back to ourselves — who are we? Treat yourself as a product to operate, it is very important to understand yourself, only by understanding yourself, can you know your strengths and weaknesses, better manage your life.
I took the perceptual and rational dimensions to recognize our UXD students’ thinking, which can be mainly divided into three styles: 1. Both sensibility and rationality; 2. Reason is more important than sensibility; 3. Emotion trumps reason.
We are also surrounded by these kinds of people, but UED students may be more emotional. The first kind of students who are both sensible and rational may be more suitable for PL. This kind of students have comprehensive emotional intelligence, communication skills and professional abilities, which are suitable for interactive and comprehensive design talents. The second is that there is a lot of rationality and relatively little sensibility. With structured thinking, they are more suitable for interaction, more rational and good at deduction and logical thinking. The third category is more emotional and less rational. This kind of counterpart is the artist-style, “master style”.
The three types of talent development paths can be divided into three categories. The first category is comprehensive, which may be both rational and perceptual progressive and comprehensive and in-depth. The second type of rational talents tend to follow the thinking model with more rationality. The first type of talents have certain commonalities and can develop towards UXD.
The third type of emotional talent tends to push their sensibility to the extreme. We need to separate them from the UXD category. Such talents often have no interest in controlling the work content of the whole link, and prefer to spend their time on design. For example, illustration designers, Amoy dolls designers, marketing designers, brand creative designers. The ability and thinking model of such people are defined as “Visual Designer” — creative Designer (VD).
At present, many designers in our group are shifting from category 3 to Category 1. This situation makes me reflect that it is actually a choice for us to work in an Internet company. Naturally, UED is not a product, but a requirement for products and a functional position to provide added value for products. We use design to solve business problems, and business realization is the value of UED. It is based on this soil that we find the maximum value of the full link. We think about business problems from the perspective of users and seek some solutions. In this case, the requirements of business for us are exactly the qualities we say UXD has. However, the existing professional segmentation method is not a good way out. It is something we need to complete in stages after more than ten years of exploration. But in the future, when we have strong professional skills, we should combine our professional skills together to solve business problems and enable business. This state is the real UXD in my understanding.
UXD is the abbreviation of “User Experience Design”, full name is “User Experience Design” or “Experience design”, is a design position in UED team, is the designer of the whole link. Its main characteristics are diversified professional ability, wide coverage of work process, high comprehensive quality, great post value and small development bottleneck. Its core value lies in providing a clear development path for versatile designers, which can improve project efficiency and experience design integrity.
Our ideal capability model for UXD is to master user research, interaction, and vision. However, it is not necessary to master everything, because UXD is rational and has the ability of sensibility and visual expression. The UXD designer of P9 may have the visual ability of P6+ or P7, the research ability of P7 is OK, and the core is the core interaction ability. Traditional interaction lacks practical research and visual ability, and we believe that the future UXD still needs to supplement these two abilities to do a good job.
Once UXD has the capability model we want (right), most visual designers probably won’t have much to do because UXD also has the capability to see. In addition to the current construction of the middle stage, the future may be intelligent design, visual designers play less space. The most painful time for visual designers is the time to drive their transformation and the birth of real visual designers, which we call “creative” visual designers (VD). This kind of visual designer, the higher up, their creative ideas and consciousness are particularly strong, later I will think about VD capability model with you.
In contrast with UXD, UXD has a wider range of capabilities, which will stimulate excellent visual designers’ irreplaceable special abilities and become the core competitiveness of visual designers’ upward development. These are the core values that UXD really brings to the company.
What problems can be solved by implementing these two categories of designer development paths?
The first is the significance for interaction designers: when coordinating upstream and downstream, they do not have a strong sense of achievement. For example, their thinking depth is not deep enough and they are often limited by PD’s thinking. Some PD even draw interactive manuscripts by themselves. After that, visual designers will optimize and even modify the interactive draft when they produce the visual draft. At this time, some of them directly cooperate with PD single line. High-level interaction designers are usually unable to produce visual sketches, and often need some visual designers to match them, resulting in low project execution efficiency. If you grow up to be a versatile designer, your personal value will be magnified and you will be more calm and confident.
The second is the significance for visual designers: they have basically completed the visual representation of the interaction design draft, but have not mastered the depth, later iteration and digitalization of the project thoroughly, and cannot clearly explain their own value. Asked by the product, a lot of questions can not react, this state may be more passive; At the time of annual promotion defense, the judges generally hope that visual designers can have systematic thinking and structured expression, but usually there is less practice in this aspect, so the high P of vision generally grows slowly. Most visual designers take the interactive visual design of the reduction of work after, if single from the visual design, visual designers from the early age of the Internet “artist” evolution is not significant, most of the energy at ordinary times “beautification” of the work has been done, the visual design could have extended “originality, brand” category in the ears. VD as a designer development direction put forward, let “creative” visual designers, with art and taste to shape personal style, business brand achievement!
At present, most of our students are interactive, visual and application research. The status quo of job classification has existed for more than ten years. We cannot change the Title overnight, and each student’s ability model is also different.
Our ideal state is to follow the current state, set up UXD posts first, and arouse some people to try the transition first. For example, interactive students who are interested in UXD will go there first. Some students with good visual foundation, but do not want to develop in visual depth, can also transfer; With research can also be turned over. After two or three years of precipitation, team UXD may be more and more, slowly mature, will naturally give birth to a new position, is the VD mentioned before. This is our ideal state of transition, and it doesn’t disrupt your current rhythm. At present, more than 20 designers above 1688UED and P7 have signed up. When their ability model grows up, we will give them transformation certification.
The purpose of our exchange today is to share this idea with UED students in Binjiang Yuan district, so that we can go in this direction together.
Next, I will talk about Job model in detail. This is also the point we thought and sorted out last year. Should UXD be trained from P5 level or P7 level? After three or four collisions, the group committee decided that it would be more appropriate to start training from P7. At present, UED Group has UXD Title on its Intranet, focusing on designers of P7-P9.
Why is that? We believe that the capabilities of UXD are full link capabilities. They are an aggregation of interaction, vision and application research capabilities, which requires that they have both basic capabilities. However, when the designer is in the P5 stage, his basic design ability is not very strong. In this case, guiding him to the direction of full link may not achieve our expected effect, so we suggest that P7 should first shift to the direction of UXD. According to the rules set by the group Title, only P7 designers can shift to the position of UXD. However, it does not mean that designers of P5 and P6 have no opportunities. Designers at this stage can plan their career according to the direction of UXD, and promotion can also follow this path.
The Job Model consists of the above two cores, one of which is the professional ability of our designers, and the other is our professional ability. As we all know, professional ability, lack of professional ability, professional ability will be difficult to play out. No matter how strong the personal ability, but low emotional intelligence and weak communication skills and project promotion ability, will make the designer no matter how good the design is reduced to a graphic draft in their own computer. We believe that in UXD positions, professional ability may be more important, but one’s own professional ability is indispensable.
The professional ability mentioned here does not mean the traditional skills designers have at hand, such as color sense, modeling ability, software proficiency, etc. We measure this professional ability, is the value designers bring to the business. From this point of view, there are two main directions of the designer’s personal ability, one is the design process, the second is the design result. Have good process will produce good results, good results do not necessarily need good process. But we want UXD to be a solid all-around designer, and we will evaluate his process and results.
The design process of UXD, what methods are required, there may be many methodologies. After this course, there will be several courses to share these contents, such as data-driven, Persona building, five guide design methods, etc. Through these courses, help you learn more about the thought process. The results are mainly reflected in the business, which is similar to our KPI. For example, when we design a certain design, what results can this design bring to the business? The results are clear.
And professional ability is very important, is also a lot of visual designers do not pay enough attention to a piece of content. Designers who do not pay much attention to this part of the design process will become more difficult, in the process of design, it is difficult to keep pace with the surrounding people, they will feel that their design is perfect, but the implementation of the promotion will be slow. What’s the reason? Because of the lack of this “professional ability.” The most peripheral thing of professional ability is “self-drive”. As a design post of the whole link, UXD self-drive is an important mental support. Compared with the details of making plans and PPT, it is more core to promote the landing of the overall project. This is the basic state of UXD designers.
Here is a complete diagram of our abstract capability model, and the basic requirements for our design are heart, brain, and physical strength. In Alibaba, these three forces are also more important. In our industry, UED students from P5 to P9 have different requirements for skills, planning, and even industry influence. But for now, many designers focus on skills, which is the process method and design output shown in the figure, which is the module of skill output. However, it is difficult to become a master in this field. As I mentioned before, we are not the manufacturer of products, so we need to plan, implement, influence and enhance our own driving force. Only in this way can we achieve results, enlarge our professional ability to the limit, and finally build personal brands. Connecting with the business side, and even getting involved in their decisions, is what we want to feel.
I’ve been talking about UXD, so the question is, with UXD, do we need visual designers?
There is no doubt that we need these people and want them to exist. So what is the competency model of what we think of as a true creative visual designer? I think it mainly has the following characteristics: The first point is that his hand work is particularly good, that is, its design output is amazing and praised, which is the basic requirement of VD — excellent hand work, output things do not need to explain, (the need to explain the vision is not good vision); The second point is that on the basis of having good visual expression ability, there is also clever creativity. Ingenious creativity combined with excellent visual expression ability, at this time the skill will increase. Like a swordsman, with a treasure knife, if you do not know where their target is, do not understand who the opponent is, disorderly chop, it is very embarrassing. Creativity is about finding the right pain point and target, cutting it down and making it happen.
When a visual designer has done both, there is nothing to criticize, and there is value in going into any environment. But if you only have these two points, you can’t become a true master. What is a master? Master to have their own brand, to create personal brand value. Take Ken Hara for example. When we think of him, we naturally think of “Design of Design”. His whole set of design ideas was the game-changer, and he walked around with it, and it brought a lot of value, and it could be directly realized.
How many “masters” of our 1000 + UED students showed up? The emergence of this kind of master will directly affect the overall feeling of our current e-commerce. What are we fighting for? What we (Alibaba) fight for is the ability of operation, the ability of goods, the ability of channels, the ability of follow-up services, including the personal influence of our Manager Ma, what did our designers do? It’s really hard to tell. We must recognize our own value in order to better shape ourselves. Therefore, only truly creative designers can change this pattern, and we have been waiting for such people to appear — when our UXD mature, VD will appear that day.
These are some of my bold opinions about VD’s Job Model, which need further modification.
When we move from ideal to reality, what we propose UXD should do has some essential differences with our current situation: The first aspect is to output experience strategy plan from p7-P8 level, activate upstream and downstream implementation, and promote business transformation, positioning ourselves from this perspective, rather than making an interactive draft. This positioning is about providing solutions, rather than passively thinking of yourself as a resource party, receiving the needs of the business side and fulfilling them. UXD, on the other hand, can reverse itself, turning passive into active. UXD presents its own plan and states what the plan adds value to the business, because UXD’s plan is to help the business succeed, and the business side will pay for it. If our plan today cannot pay for the business, to put it bluntly, our plan is not reliable. Because the business is very clear that they control the resources, the technology development, and we have to win them over in order to win the development. So our plan is going to be very difficult to implement. But that’s how we show our value. If our experience plan is excellent, with a small point to leverage a large point of data transformation, our business side has no reason not to pay for it.
P9 is to output experience strategy plans and ideas, lead industry trends and formulate strategies. For example, what is the value of our UED in the whole process of C2B production reconstruction and new manufacturing transformation in the future? We can base ourselves on the business. You can find out whether there are millions of Chinese and foreign designers, and whether these millions of designers can be combined with factories to generate a new industry. This is what P9 and P10 will do.
As for VD, we can imagine that it is a different direction from UXD. P5 and P6 are mainly engaged in marketing design and DPL construction. P7, P8 is more important to control the main visual style, tonality, they are not porters, other drafts do not need too much, but they should be a main visual draft, can change a lot of things. They are creative, and creative people need to be refined and don’t spend time reinventing the wheel. P9 and P10 are the creators of design language, product language and tonality. Only by studying these things can we say that we are leading the industry trend and pulling the user experience to a higher level. Once it becomes P9 or P10 level, the designer’s personal brand is the brand of the company, the concept created by the designer is the concept of the company, and the personal style is the style of the company’s products. These things are what we really want to reflect. The personal brand value perfectly coincides with the brand of the company’s product, which is a true visual bull.
Today’s sharing is coming to the end. The current medium platform we are promoting is the best opportunity to incubate the birth of UXD. In the future, machines will be smarter than people and many things will be intelligent. Design is no exception. At present, we designers need to realize that we are not so great, and a lot of the work that designers do now may be replaced by machines in the future. For example, web design, probably in the next two or three years, most of the realization of machine, we are aiming at this direction. Think about the coming of that era, what can we designers here do?
I hope that UXD, as an explorer, can bring a new way for us to sit and watch the clouds rise when the whole UED is pushed to the end of the water by the Central Government. UXD make Designer valuable again! Thank you!
Next, Alibaba International UED B2B Director Gao Feng and Alibaba International UED AliExpress Director Zhou Minqing, as important guests, shared their views on UXD respectively from their own perspective.
Gao mentioned that UX is the trend. Ali Group’s current environment has provided a good foundation for designers to transform UX, and the B2B UED team has also guided UX designers.
“Many years ago, designers had to do all kinds of jobs and had many functions. But designers back then were not the same as today’s UX. Ali is mainly engaged in platform business. When the team reaches a certain size, it is difficult to rely on designers to control the visual standards of the platform. In 2013, wireless All In, Android and ios each had a design specification, and we recognized the importance of the specification. Through the accumulation of these years, users’ cognition and usage logic of products gradually precipitates, and we also clarify users’ cognitive logic, so many things can be instrumented. For example, products like Meitu Xiu Xiu are actually instrumentalized, which lowers the professional threshold.
At present, the group implements zhongtai, which standardizes many things. Zhongtai is also a basic tool. Where should designers go in the context of instrumental trends? In fact, the company’s implementation of mid-stage provides a good opportunity for designers to move forward, allowing them to free up some time to get to know customers, attend data university, and transition to UX.
In B2B UED, I consciously asked the Leader to arrange different designers to execute according to the characteristics of the project, making the transformation process easier for everyone. UX does not mean just interaction + vision + application research, but I hope that in the next two years, we can make designers integrate interaction and vision.”
Zhou minqing agrees UX is an industry trend.
“Professional depth or UX? This is a topic the industry has been discussing for years. Today’s technology and tools are freeing designers from some of the labor, giving them more time and energy To focus on end-to-end user experiences that add value To the business. In recent years, the concept of UX has been raised more and more at home and abroad, and the industry has more demands for comprehensive design talents with a holistic view. Foreign design education also begins to pay attention to the cultivation of students’ related abilities. For companies and designers, UX is not only about enhancing the effectiveness of talent, but also about clarifying the mission of the industry. Facing this trend, AliEpxress UED pays more attention to the combination of theory and practice in addition to providing relevant training opportunities for designers who want to transform. Mentor mentors to help designers understand UX in specific projects.”
Zhou minqing specifically points out that the emphasis on UX comprehensive ability should be balanced with the development of professional depth. A complex system requires excellent information architecture, interaction patterns, visual and textual architecture. It is unrealistic to think that a single function can be all things to all people. Designers have their own idiosyncrasies and ideals. In UX trends, you need to identify what you are good at and where you can best leverage your potential. For example, visual depth can be reflected in a product’s visual framework, graphic logic, emotional expression, or brand communication in marketing. Team leader should find the most reasonable functional structure and employee development direction based on business needs and personal characteristics.
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