Although we have been chanting for a long time, even the media have begun to advocate “user experience competitiveness”, and the recruitment process of various design jobs has embarked on TV shows grandiosely. In fact, our understanding of “user experience” in various industries is still not accurate enough. The following dialogues are real experiences, but not promoted as phenomena:
Customer: “I heard that we must pay attention to user experience when making products now~~”
Someone: “En~~”
Customer: “Our product seems to lack user experience now.”
Someone: “Oh?”
Customer: “Please help us design an experience!”
Someone: “This~~~~”
This topic caught my attention. Logically speaking, user experience is a kind of user-side feedback, which results in value mining and redesign. So at the beginning without any user participation, can we also design an experience to satisfy “Coming soon” or “following” its users? This may be a bit difficult. For example: You opened a barber shop (now generally called XXX styling agency), and the user came to wash his hair. The user who came was an old bird. During the process of washing his hair, he found that there was no hot towel in the shop. The store’s rating will be lowered. In many cases, this “inner rating” constitutes most of the user experience — the actual situation is that if your store only charges 10 yuan, then the user’s rating for the item may be Ignore it, because his pricing scale and evaluation criteria at this time have been reduced due to price restrictions.
Obviously, even if the user experience is based on the same dimensions, the results and feedback obtained are still dynamic, so the experience is not a single decision-making process, but a dynamic design process, then can we design a Experience? I think it is technically feasible, but the effect depends on the dynamic adjustment of the implementation stage.
1. Propose an experience goal
This goal is actually equivalent to the positioning and strategy of your product. Many companies confuse “company positioning” with “product positioning”, resulting in the emptiness and weakness of the product, because most companies in China are positioned as Empty and weak. For example, the positioning of a company that manufactures slippers and sells slippers is “internationalized”, because the location and cost advantages of the company have led to the convenience of foreign trade operations. By the way, it naturally believes that its products should be “internationalized.” , But in the final analysis, how to sell slippers internationally? So the company sent designers to visit some XXX slippers design exhibitions and took pictures as a souvenir-copy production-low-price dumping.
The positioning of the product is definitely linked to the user, and the goal should be the problem that the user who uses this product urgently needs to solve or the physiological and psychological feelings to be satisfied. For example, if you are a massage chair, you need to propose a unique There are now two options for accurate and precise goals: decompression and comfort . In the early stage of the product, you may only have the cost input to satisfy a certain characteristic, so what point? I think the first is comfort, because comfort is easy to feel, and can be digitized through scientific methods such as ergonomics, and can guide the design. From a psychological point of view, if a massage chair is not comfortable enough to sit on, I believe that no users will believe it. It can decompress, and what’s more, the massage chair is designed like a torture instrument.
Therefore, proposing accurate and simple experience goals is the first step for all products to be accepted and the first step for users to establish psychological expectations.
2. Tools for selecting inspection targets
We have found that a large number of products are different or completely different from the content advertised on TV advertisements in the use process. Except for those malicious false advertisements, I believe that every product manufacturer hopes that its products meet the promised. This kind of business integrity can bring profit. But in fact, few people are able to do it. This is because when a product goal is proposed, there is no reasonable inspection tool to control it.
Therefore, we found that in modern enterprises, quality supervision and quality monitoring have become important core departments. Then the product specifications are easy to check, the product can be calculated on the return on investment data, and the product risk can be estimated-user experience ? How to effectively test user experience?
First of all, you need a department for user experience work. The number of people is arranged according to the size of the company. Generally, the user experience department is subordinate to the research and development system (according to the current development, I think it should be 1-2 for each product functional department. Researchers of user experience, and then he/them jointly form the “User Experience Center”), these talents with enthusiasm and professional knowledge can help the product avoid most of the ineffective experiences in the early stage;
Secondly, a closed-loop inspection process for user experience is needed. When Japanese people make mobile phones in Japan, their quality requirements are like this: “We strive not to produce a waste product”, but after arriving in China, it becomes: “We strive for Don’t let a piece of waste flow out of the factory.” You take a closer look, have you found our gap? In fact, an attitude of lean production is also an excellent embodiment of emphasizing user experience;
Finally, the so-called tool is not to write reports, write inspections, and stare at employees commuting with a scan stick, but a mechanism for finding problems. Usually we check whether the experience is well designed. There are several channels: quality management, designer’s active inspection, strict control of nodes, product phase summary meeting, and iterative design in the testing phase.
3. Collect feedback on user experience
Many of our practitioners doing user experience research are actually doing this most of the time, collecting feedback, forming data, discovering problems, and asking questions. Collecting feedback is very important. Whether it is designing questionnaires, conducting interviews anytime and anywhere, or analyzing customer complaints, phone calls, or even on-site testing, the data obtained can reflect most product problems, but is user feedback everything?
When it comes to design, sometimes it should be based on designers, because users do not have professional knowledge, it is difficult for them to tell you what the “new products” really need, if your company is a follow-up company, others Whatever we do, we can do better than him, then the collected user data can be directly processed iteratively; but if your company’s competitive advantage in the industry is already saturated, this data may be useful for your next product strategy. It’s not useful anymore, but lies in the ” experience mining “, from the collected user feedback to find the undeveloped experience.
The results of any survey are almost intersecting and similar in terms of insufficient user experience, and the lack of intersecting is the part where we can find opportunities. It is as if the stories of the wolf and the sheep we have heard since childhood are based on the moral of social survival and entangled with negative human nature. I don’t know if the creative team of “Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf” has systematically studied their users before ( The behavior and psychological feelings of the audience of the animation, but if no user really mentioned “I like to see the entertainment story of wolves and sheep together”, then this is the part that can generate creativity.
We must know that in 1960, Eastern Europe’s Rembrandt Company was not popular when producing “Cat and Mouse”. Why did it affect the lives of two entire generations after returning to Hollywood to produce it?
4. Optimize the details of the experience at any time
Once the product is put on the counter, it is almost impossible for all designers to control its end. This link is mainly for the retail link and after-sales service link. The first stage when a user comes into contact with the product includes: media (going to the website, watching TV to find advertisements and adverts), dictation by friends (talking about gatherings, chatting, etc.), borrowing from friends (seeing that the other party is using it, it feels good to play with it), Random browsing (random encounters during shopping), counter consultation (results after the above process stimulated the desire to buy).
These different situations will cause anxiety in the experience, and it is precisely these that we are not easy to pay attention to, and we take it for granted that there is a problem in the link, which eventually leads to the detonation of the problem. The most famous marketing flaw is that the salesperson on the counter has some contemptuous glances in the eyes of the buyer because of the clothes of the buyer. This alone can destroy your 25% annual sales opportunity-this is not made up by me, I am strange, Why does our marketing industry report never do research in this area.
How to optimize? First of all, we must control the elite group. They have the pioneering nature of the product, and have a certain voice and influence in each small life circle. The first element of the product is to consider their status and give some rewards and benefits to active elite users. And absorb their suggestions and opinions, and solve the problems first discovered by them; in fact, a good after-sales channel for manufacturing products, policy promotion from top to bottom, only solves problems, does not seek excuses, domestic mobile phone brand manufacturers, At present, Meizu is doing a good job, and Lenovo is particularly bad-but it is ridiculous that due to the replacement policy, Meizu’s finances have some problems; again, take care of human nature, especially for products with more complicated sales channels, and price The higher the product, the more likely it is that experience problems will arouse user anger.
5. No need to consider the experience of the doubter
Everyone who has studied economics understands that 80% of profits are brought by 20% of customers, so why do we have to fight for 80% of users? Because China is a complex market economy, there are too many red oceans in our various industries, and blue oceans basically don’t have the creativity to attack, so we can only break the blood. So is there a blue ocean for homogenized products? I think the blue ocean of most products lies in the user experience .
Since it is to design and optimize the user experience, we must first determine who our real users are. There have been a lot of books and articles describing this issue, and the methods are varied and practical. What I want to say here is that since our time is limited, our ability is limited, and our investment is limited, we have to make some choices, and we don’t have to consider the experience of those who question it.
What is a doubter? Hired gunmen (compilers of reviews on major websites), malicious competitors, critic users (when he does not use any product, he will be skeptical), users whose additional after-sales service needs are not met (you After repairing according to the Three Guarantees agreement, the user thinks that you should send him another battery as compensation), a swinger who takes advantage (as long as any product is given away for free, he will support it).
Which are the killer users we should pay attention to?
a. Women, the elderly and children: No matter what products you make, you should ensure that these three types of people should be used easily and safely (of course, children cannot drive, but they must ride safely and comfortably), and that the color and Do not make them feel annoying in appearance;
b. Folk experts: Those who can compare the prices of different chocolates in 6 supermarkets, have used more than 30 mobile phones and know the latest and strange applications. Among the local restaurants with similar dishes, the people with the best decoration and most discounts are some of the top ones. Of users, their opinions can even become the driving force for product innovation;
c. Salespersons: Their sensitivity to profit has led to the fact that they are most familiar with the real ideas of “ordinary users”, and their ability to observe words and colors is also an important skill that our designers should learn.
Finally, the user experience is not about patching the pants, but turning the patch into a design, a value performance that exceeds user expectations.
