perfectionist
In the first stage, designers need to have basic design thinking and master the basic ideas and methods to solve problems. The main work includes: analyzing requirements, determining goals, sorting out logic, output schemes, following up online, tracking feedback, and converting product requirements into functional processes to achieve user and business goals.
Then, we will find that it is also a process of constantly identifying problems and adjusting ourselves. Although most of us may have done a lot of projects in school, when entering the real work environment, we will still encounter a lot of practical problems about scene details, business rules, development implementation, time management, communication and cooperation, etc. Typical examples are the following.
1. Ignoring requirements analysis
After receiving the requirements, I felt that I had some ideas and immediately began to refine the solution, but omitted the in-depth understanding and analysis process of the requirements, scenarios and existing systems. As a result, various problems were exposed in the solution, and even the whole was overturned and started all over again due to directional errors.
2. Lack of independent thinking
Product managers often come up with their own solutions to problems when putting forward requirements. Some students may directly follow the existing ideas to continue, rather than timely return to the analysis of the nature of the problem, to explore more solutions.
Lack of time management
When there are too many tasks on hand, it is impossible to take into account the follow-up work of completed interaction, neglecting the acceptance of development results, the data after the design has been launched, and the tracking of user feedback.
In fact, many similar problems, in the final analysis, or designers in the formation of their own work ideas and methods, ignore the basic design process to follow.
Within the NetEase Mailbox master design team, in order to avoid recurring similar problems, the design team requires visual output of some process results. Such as: we will design and analysis of commonly used method to form the template, and ask the designer after got the demand, need to finish such a brief design analysis report (report needs to include key results only, do not need to describe each process in detail, because it will cost designer a lot of time on the document editing).
With such a preliminary design report, on the one hand, many problems in the thinking can be exposed and adjusted in time before the plan is refined, thus saving a lot of time needed to modify the interactive draft. On the other hand, a complete analysis report can help designers clear their design ideas and make them more convincing in subsequent design reviews.
Design analysis template (part)
After a series of training tasks, designers constantly adjust and improve their own design ideas and methods, improve design quality and efficiency, and have the ability to independently undertake design requirements:
Form design thinking, master the basic ideas and methods to solve problems.
Familiar with product business, clear target users, master workflow.
Rich project experience, with the ability to judge, solve, make decisions and promote problems.
To strengthen the ability of scheme design and understand the design specifications of relevant platforms can give consideration to the experience, completeness, feasibility and implementation cost of the scheme.
This is where we begin to become a qualified interaction designer.
Product enabler
After getting familiar with the basic design work, designers should not always be in the comfort zone of functional experience optimization, but should pay more attention to the product and team systematically, take the initiative to use their professional ability, promote the faster and better development of product projects, and gradually acquire insight and sensitivity to find problems and opportunities.
1. Precipitate design tools to promote team efficiency
Mature designers as the backbone of the team, in addition to ensuring their own design output, but also part of their efforts to mentor new designers. The process, summarizes the method, forms the specification, and generate the visualization tools, is a very effective way for both description of process methods are clear, help communication, promote the implementation of method, can also make yourself and your team from trivial to repeat things, help to promote the efficiency of work.
In addition to the design analysis template mentioned earlier to help junior designers improve their design process, several other tools have been compiled to help increase productivity:
– Axure control library to help designers draw interactive manuscripts quickly. For one thing, it prevents designers from drawing controls repeatedly, and for another, it can unify the control sizes of different designers to ensure smooth work connection.
– Help designers to unify the input format of interactive drawing specifications, to avoid one person one style, to subsequent readers caused confusion.
– Help the design team to manage the document management specification of design documents, ensure that every functional detail can be found in the corresponding module file, so that designers can quickly locate and consult, and reduce the search and inquiry time.
– Interactive self-check tables to help designers find and fill gaps.
2. Actively explore product opportunities
In the past, many of the designer’s requirements would come from the product, usually specific functional requirements that have been dealt with, such as: we want to do a letter classification function; We are going to make a meeting invitation function. The designer’s job is more to analyze whether the requirements are reasonable and how to provide the appropriate functional flow.
But entering the new stage, designers should learn to deal with the original information, which mainly comes from: product development planning, research results, data performance, user feedback, competitive products… Most of the time they are vague, such as: How can I help users manage their email better? Users feedback that email search is not convenient, how to optimize? We need more in-depth analysis and research to grasp and understand the real needs of users.
Also, what is the goal of the product at this stage? What is the future direction? How to pull open the gap with competing goods? Designers also need to take into consideration the scope of their work, gradually have a more global understanding of the product and its market environment, and put forward their own opinions on the further development of the product.
Value guide
As designers mature in experience and ability, they will gradually become the leader of a design team, or even the person in charge of a new product project. At this point, the designer’s job is no longer to focus on the output of functional requirements, but to think strategically about how their products create value and guide the team to achieve it.
1. User value
Designers need to be able to define the values of the product, that is, what are the core values that the product brings to users? What is the goal and positioning of the product? What business do we need to provide to our users? At the same time, reach a consensus with your team to make sure everyone is thinking and judging on the same criteria as possible.
Business value
As a designer, I tend to make decisions from the perspective of users, while as a project leader, I also need to think about how products can bring commercial value to the company. This requires designers to have a keen insight into the market and a forward-looking strategic vision, and to consider the development of products and coordinate resources from more dimensions such as product, market, technology and promotion.
3. The personal value of team members
As a design manager, the designer should not only plan the product direction and control the design quality, but also consider the balance between the ability cultivation of each designer in the team and the ability of the team, and comprehensively consider the development intention of team members to give full play to their personal value. This is more conducive to the healthy development of the whole team.
summary
Interaction designers have different kinds of confusion and confusion at different stages of life. The growth of a designer is all about thinking and expanding your horizons, not just focusing on the job at hand.