Introduction: There are demands for work every day, but there are always some things that will be paid more attention by more people, such as hot issues, anniversary celebrations, big version release, hot cooperation, etc., then whether these projects that are paid more attention are legendary large-scale projects? Visual designers in such a project, and how to give full play to their role, find their own best positioning, to ensure high quality and efficient completion of the project?
Project requirements, often depending on the degree of priority, important product features, scope of work order of magnitude, effect, resource inputs such as dimension to carry on the project level evaluation, such as the project needs to team, product and brand (or even enterprise and social) cause important influence, can be regarded as a large project (important) project. Because it means more to the team and the product than it does to the daily requirements, it is bound to receive more attention and expectations than usual. As the intermediate link of the output line, visual designer needs the overall cooperation of the upstream and downstream, and as the designer and exporter of the media that users browse, their role in this can not be ignored.
As I had the honor to participate in the design of several large project requirements of the team, I have accumulated some insights and harvest on the positioning and cooperation mode of designers in similar projects. Here I would like to share with you!
Category of Major Projects
In general, large projects can be divided into two types according to time: planned and emergency, emergent.
There is predictability, such as traditional festivals, anniversary celebrations, mid-year/year-end promotion, or planned large-scale revision, new product release, etc., the preparation time is relatively abundant, and the time can be flexibly adjusted. The overall design goal is to attract people’s attention, stimulate high conversion rate or brand quality publicity.
Under the premise of time is abundant, the precision and effect of the output natural needs higher requirements, then we must in daily demand based on the process of adding more process details, such as the review of brain storm, more early, and expand the range of experience feedback, etc., to filter out the output of the highest quality, to everyone’s expectations of a large project should have.
When the project is determined to be implemented, some preparatory work can be done in advance before the project is approved:
· Accumulated over time:
Traditional festivals and year-end activities will appear regularly. Design materials and inspirations can be collected and accumulated in a planned way on weekdays. Do not wait until the arrival of festivals to search and think. At that time, if the designer with the same demand does the same design at the same time, it is easy to coincide, bump into draft, do not give new ideas. (You may say that you can only blame your own design for lack of creativity, but I would say that under the premise of the same festival, the same region, the same appeal, and the same cultural background, the creativity you think is unique cannot be excluded from the possibility of being rejected. On the other hand, your daily accumulation of inspirations can be more differentiated, focused, interesting, and broader than the current situation. This accumulation may give you more direction when you look back.
(Ps: Develop a good classification habit, it can also be your acceleration if needed.)
· Project Information
Determine the latest project information, such as project background, objectives, team, available resources, publicity estimates, and project timeline. For large planned projects, there are usually cooperation groups with the nature of FT or the continuation of previous years, so the basic information can be collected from previous cases or learned from students of product and operation. It is also important to understand that the plan of the important decision-makers of the project focuses on the direction, etc. If the direction is wrong, it will bring the risk of being overthrown.
, a Brain Storming
Once you have the information for the first two items, you can organize your brainstorming. Here don’t ignore the design, development of products brother opinion oh, if you can, please more classmates called design, product design, development, although is not born, but the idea is without boundaries, which maybe can stimulate your inspiration point, spurt good program, also can let you understand the product and user preferences from different angles, There will be unexpected rewards.
When deciding on a project, there are more things to determine and of course more details, so don’t panic, let’s do a clear process planning:
Step 1: Confirm workload and reserve human resources
Map the content structure framework and break down the pages to be delivered by function, as accurately as possible. Such as some functional pages existing reusable, can be removed from the interaction, visual output of the page, need to be clearly marked, and synchronous UI development students can start to build work in advance. Allow more time for heavy work later.
Step 2: Prioritize and estimate the time
Consider the order of design in terms of split page tasks. Big project page number is more, cannot one-time output all the design scheme, even if there is time set aside and let dry downstream link, not enough human resources under the premise of design scheme can be parallel, under the condition of human nervous suggest partial output, the downstream students can work as soon as possible, can make the project time more abundant.
Step 3: Confirm the online time and each delivery time node
After confirming the launch time, make a clear delivery time sheet (or gantt chart we often use for scheduling) based on the completion time of each function evaluation and synchronize the entire project team. Each link needs to establish a clear interface person, who is responsible for marking deliverables and information that need to be generated upstream at each delivery node and confirming the delivery situation. The design side must establish the main vision and control the brand unity and design quality audit of the whole visual output.
The following figure is the delivery time table of the previous big promotion :(you can see the 12 task sub-items to be delivered in the table, the delivery time of each task, the responsible person of each task, interface person and other important information mentioned above. The time of each task staff is connected separately to ensure its execution.)
(Gantt charts are also used to chart the sequence and duration of activities for a particular item through a list of activities and a time scale. Basically a series of line charts, with time on the horizontal axis, projects or divisions of labor on the vertical axis, and planned and actual activities completed over the entire period. It visually shows when the task is scheduled to take place and how the actual progress compares to the requirements of the plan. This allows managers to easily identify what remains to be done on a task (project) and assess progress. Office software in general can be inserted in the bar chart tool and automatically generated, we should use this more will not sell ugly)
Step 4: Install the scheme review before the delivery time node
In the interactive and visual stages, it is recommended to arrange at least two (or more) review sessions each, which can determine the feasibility of the scheme and, importantly, avoid unnecessary rework in the later stage. The main visual style determines the feeling that the whole project wants to convey to the user, so the style is the key part of the audit, remember to use the brain storm data prepared in the early stage of the project! Ps: As a visual designer, don’t forget the attitude of design, always remind yourself that there must be a better plan in addition to the present one. If time permits, you might as well be more ruthless to yourself. Although the process is painful, the results often bring surprises!
Step 5: Visual walking and follow-up
After the design scheme is completed, in the UI and front-end development stage, visual walk check is essential, even experienced designers can not consider all the circumstances, so in the development process to supplement some details is inevitable, of course, such a situation can be avoided is the most ideal. Due to the important nature of the project, arrange at least two (or more) visits to ensure visual restoration. Of course, we should continue to follow up after the completion of the inspection to ensure that the program is truly grounded and strictly implemented.
Step 6: Internal experience before going online
Although there are some test students, they can guarantee the smoothness of the experience in terms of functions. However, more eyes are needed to participate in the design display and experience. Only careful before going online can make the page more divided after going online!
Step 7: verify the mobile display
It includes the performance experience of mobile terminal and the display of pictures and texts, including the preparation of communication pictures and responsive matching required for sharing to social media
Planned time is more abundant, so the steps can be detailed.
(Take the anniversary of Tencent Cloud as an example, every year on September 9, we will plan a large promotional feedback activity for the anniversary. Before this, we will consciously save some inspirational materials for anniversary, celebration, promotion and other keywords, such as color matching and drawing. When the anniversary is two months away, I will take the initiative to consult the product and operation students about some planning plans for this year’s anniversary and the approximate start time. On the basis of ensuring the magnitude of this year’s planning, I will evaluate the time for myself to calmly complete the project design and give suggestions on time reserve to the product students. Split at the beginning of the actual project, the number of the meeting and determine the anniversary, according to usual practice will launch a activity before the anniversary of preheating page, there is a lucky draw and main module, the other is some fixed business at the venue of the page, so need to confirm the visual output page number is 6, draw 5 involves notification popup window. Then the delivery time of the page can be pushed back according to the deadline of September 9th. Preheating and formal venue must maintain a consistent design style, so the six pages, preheating and primary visual stadium home page is needed to design, the venue and industry can be designed by other students according to extend the main visual style is good, can confirm down visual human need 2-3 people, because of the preparation in advance so reserved time is relatively abundant, Then the main vision + auxiliary vision each can be very good to complete. After that, we can evaluate the time required by interaction, UI development and development students, finally make an executable time table, and deliver it strictly according to the time nodes, and then perfect engding can be launched.
The most time-consuming part of the activity page is the design of the first screen, which not only occupies an important space, but also controls the main element style. Therefore, after the activity theme is confirmed, the interactive students can start the design of the first screen while building the wireframes. This gives you more design time and gives you the opportunity to try more solutions. As for the functions of the first screen, it is mainly used for brand building and display in most cases, without background or operation functions. If time is not so abundant, the content framework design can be first completed and handed over to the downstream to start reconstruction. The design of the first screen can be temporarily replaced by placeholders, which can be replaced before launching.)
Emergent projects, without corresponding preparation time, have been completed at the moment of receipt of notice. What you need to do is to immediately jump into the project execution. The goal of the project is to ensure a quick launch, but even when time is tight, the collaborative process and delivery points of each link should not be omitted. In addition, designers should not be absent from the function discussion in the early stage. No matter whether it is difficult to understand, it can help to understand the product to a certain extent, reduce the communication cost in the design process, and understand the product positioning and task flow. Only in this way can the team work in an orderly way in a tight and chaotic situation, and not create chaos.
· Design the cooperation process
Split the task page — mark the parallel page of design and development — confirm the design priority — confirm the online time and push back the delivery time node of each functional link (the delivery time includes scheme modification and verification) — assign executive personnel and link interface personnel — strictly implement
· Delivery time node
(The figure below is the parallel time node allocation diagram)
Emergent projects, the only goal is to ensure the fastest online, time is the only luxury, so each link must be serial coordination, the page delivery subdivided into modules, so that each function can be linked to each other, the maximum overall planning of time allocation and utilization, real race against time. Time is tight, unavoidably need to work overtime to cooperate, but in the morning and evening to work overtime is also a strategy, fully understand the work habits and decision makers of upstream and downstream and the outside world and point in time, will find that some requirements may not need to immediately return to the company or to work overtime, can be in the next process before completion, such as a placeholder image, icon hd matching, etc.
Think about:
In front of emergent projects, designers tend to make a lot of mistakes that put the cart before the horse, such as struggling with which color match is better, which style is more suitable and so on. These considerations may be the focal point of design details in ordinary times, but under the current time requirements, these considerations are the performance of neglecting the essence.
I have benefited a lot from the recent wechat mini program project. I believe that many visual designers, like me, can’t help but pay attention to the relatively unimportant details, while obscuring the importance of the project goals. Here are some of the gains from this project, or what I need to pay attention to when facing other daily projects:
· A shift in focus must be enforced
Designers have an indefinable obsession with beauty, and they can’t help seeking one hundred percent of their designed pages. In projects other than emergent ones, this is a halo of extra points, but in emergencies, such perfect obsession is undoubtedly like poison to the team, causing delays in the project process. The nature of the project determines the online deadline. Blindly focusing on visual presentation will only slow down the downstream progress and affect the online target. Therefore, visual students must force themselves to shift their focus from the sense of design to the goal of the top line, and give priority to the clear display of functions. The design of details can be explored carefully in the iteration.
· Prejudgment
In time-constrained projects, it is necessary to race against time. Vision, as an intermediate link, can analyze the time distribution of the page in advance in the interaction stage, predict the modules or pages that can be parallel with the interaction, and start the design in advance, so as to gain more time for yourself.
· Prioritized the design of the structural framework and reserved the space for details
Upstream and downstream cooperation, visual to strive for more time with their own, but also as much as possible for the downstream UI development students to strive for some time. For example, in the page, there will be module array or list and other structures, and the visual side of the work naturally needs to design the corresponding pictures, controls and copywriting of each module, but for UI development students, it is necessary to build the structure of the array first, and then replace the module details one by one. Therefore, visual students can design only one module first and then assign it to the structure of the downstream array. UI development students can start their work in advance and reduce the pressure of time allocation in the later stage.
(The following figure shows the common web page structure. The first thing students need to get for the UI development of the whole page is actually the frame structure confirmed by the designer. As for the ICONS, banners and text content inside, they can be provided later. Specifically, in the figure below, the scene switch part is a three-point array layout, and the gray box is reserved for icon placeholder. UI developers only need the icon placeholder size, and the icon details and form can be completed by the designer after completing the overall page frame and before going online.)
· Fast reuse of design elements
Do not be too entangled in the distinctive innovation, if there are similar modules in the design specification, please give priority to reuse, on the premise of ensuring uniformity to ensure the online goal. Due to the hidden nature of trial and error in innovation, there is no way to ensure its high feasibility in the case of insufficient time. Even though some modules are marked down in innovation design, they have gone through the test of trial and error, which can better guarantee the safety factor of online.
After:
After completing a project, it is absolutely not enough to just increase the number and value of projects. We also need to recycle the data of the online scheme. According to different emphases of project objectives, we need to have specific acceptance data indicators to verify the rationality of our design in the project with actual data. Planned projects may have been buried in the design process by product and operation students, then mainly focus on the design of the part of the summary can be extracted. Burst type can pay more attention to the click data in terms of whether the trigger area of the function module meets the click expectation and whether the hidden function is successfully guided. (The company can extract data from tCSs.oa.com, hotrep script can be written in advance in UI and development stage, and data volume can be queried according to the ID name of Hotrep mark on the data platform)
Large projects, of course, is not as frequent as a demand, and that every scene and demand point, focus is different, so after every project experience, should get into the habit of doing project summary in the end, through the data using the rush-hour feedback, and assist point analysis their advantages and disadvantages in the design, integration experience and lesson, put into a stepstone self growth. In addition, more understanding of the entire software development workflow and the work content of each role, and further understanding of the relevant knowledge of project management can help designers grow faster and play a better role in the team.