The author of this article believes that a good designer should have product thinking. And a few points are listed in the article, hoping to help young designers better support product design, and even drive product development.
Within this year, I interviewed about 15 designers before and after, with an average work experience of more than 3 years, and many of them are product design leaders or independent designers from major manufacturers. Without exception, everyone’s works are very beautiful, with bright colors and flat styles, and the interaction is also great, which is really cool at first glance. And the resumes are also very beautiful and clear. I can see the style and expertise of a designer, as well as the interaction logic and design ideas of his products.
However, when I came for an interview, after careful questioning, many designers seemed embarrassed because they did not have good product thinking. Many designers did not know what their products were doing, or even explained why they designed this way. . I was very impressed by the fact that a girl came here very confidently, and finally she cried in my face…
I think it is necessary to talk about the designer’s product thinking, some parts may be too extreme, but this way of thinking about problems is conducive to a designer to better support the entire team.
1. Design is a gradual and iterative process, don’t hold on to the details too early
As a PM who loves calligraphy, fine arts, architecture and folk art, I myself am a detail controller. But after working with designers of all sizes over the years, I found that holding on to the details is really terrible, terrible.
A designer I worked with once designed a user profile page for seven days! You know, because of these seven days, the entire R&D progress has been slowed down by nearly half a month. For some large companies, it may not feel much, but for the entrepreneurial team, seven days is simply terrible.
In fact, a good design is iterated step by step, and tugging on the details too early will not only seriously slow down the progress. At the same time, the design at this time is not based on user feedback or market response, but is inspired by the designer. This is actually very scary, because what you imagine may not be true.
Step by step will satisfy the designer’s controllable pursuit of perfection. Pay attention to the word “controllable”. The so-called “controllable” refers to what you can bring to meet expectations based on predictable user feedback or product reactions. the result of. Controllable is an objective situation, not what you imagine.
In the book “Design Psychology”, a concept is mentioned, called “design thinking vs user thinking”. In fact, it shows that designers should not dream of designing a perfect product that meets the expectations of users in one step, because when you create too much, it means that your product has moved on the road of art, rather than the road of use.
My suggestion is that in the early stage, designers can use a standardized flat structure to meet the functional attributes and aesthetics of the product, deliver R&D this morning, and then optimize the details in the iteration. For example, the icon can be more optimized, and the button interaction can be better. , The page jump can be so more convenient and more user-friendly and so on. The optimization of these details does not apply to the early stage, but to the middle and late stages. If you look back and see how simple WeChat was in the early days, you will know.
2. You should understand the reusability of design, design specifications are necessary
I believe you must keep being mentioned design specifications, so what exactly are design specifications?
In my opinion, design specifications are nothing more than two aspects.
First, you have standardized all styles, including fonts, alignment, buttons, interactive jumps, standard colors, and so on.
The definition of this part is the basic ability of a designer, so I won’t repeat it. What I am talking about is the second.
Second, you have to consider the reusable rules of styles. This is an advanced level. If you don’t understand reusability, the so-called specification you make is actually just your imaginary specification. If you throw it to front-end engineers, they will definitely be very painful. I hope you can understand this pain.
The so-called reuse, simply put, for example, a selection list page, you may find in the design, in the App for a while here needs a selection list jump, a while here needs a drop-down list on the current page, and a while here you need a check box list . I have already said that you should not dwell on these details, but to see if these selection lists are OK with a set of templates.
For example, WeChat has a set of design specifications for multiple selection lists. When you long press a chat conversation, you can select more, so you can select multiple chat conversations, but I don’t know if you find it in the favorite list of WeChat. In, the style of the check is the same as that of the chat dialogue.
With such a check design, you will find that you are actually standardizing each control. Button may appear multiple times in an App, then you should regulate how many kinds of Buttons need to appear in the App, what is the operational meaning of each style, and what is the usage scenario. In this way, when your Button reappears on other pages, you know that you only need to place a Button you designed, instead of having to mess around with another one.
3. Priority thinking orientation is an essential skill for a designer
In my opinion, priority thinking orientation is a rare quality for a designer.
To give an example, shopping websites are our most commonly used websites. Have you considered the priority of the content displayed by each product information item in a product list? Generally speaking, a product will include pictures, names, descriptions, prices, discounts, time, region, and guarantees. So, this information needs to be displayed in a small item entry position, how do you arrange these priorities?
I have asked many designers of shopping websites during interviews about this question, and I found that many people are thinking about the answer on the spot. This can be very troublesome, which shows that your arrangement is based on feelings, and feelings are often unreliable.
Generally speaking, you need to figure out what information this design will convey to the user. Is it to stimulate a click, to complete an operation, or to display a prompt. After understanding this, you can look at how your information should be prioritized?
Let’s return to the example of a shopping site.
If it is a shopping website that buys clothes, such as Taobao, the function of a product item is to stimulate users to click. Among all the product information, the most stimulating user is nothing but pictures, names and prices. Because people who buy clothes pay more attention to whether they look good or not, the picture is very important. You have to enlarge it for users to see, the name must be clear enough, and the price must be considered by people shopping online, so your price must be Conspicuous and bright.
What about the rest of the information? Let’s take a look at what you will judge based on when shopping. One more thing that we usually consider is the characteristics of this product, whether the store is reliable, what guarantees, is it my city and how the sales are, etc., then we can add a little description and guarantee what Just put it there as a fixed area, and users will see it when needed.
With this priority thinking, you will find that many of your typographic layouts can follow such priority rules, and your thinking will be much clearer. Even your overall layout of a page will be much clearer because of priority thinking.
4. You need to understand both UI and interaction
I want to briefly mention this point. Interaction is not a simple page switching or jump effect, but an important interaction logic.
As I said above, the interaction is standardized. You can’t simply look at whether the interaction of a page is cool or not, but it depends on what kind of experience the interaction delivered by your entire App is. You need to understand who your interaction is for, what you want to express, and it doesn’t match the tone of your entire App.
For example, a junk cleaning software must have cool interactions to give users a feeling of flying, and there are many hints hidden behind the entire interaction. When the rocket flies away, it takes away the garbage, and the fan spins and turns to turn away the garbage. Therefore, all the interactions in such an App are cool, which is the so-called strong interaction.
And like DingTalk, its interaction will be much more orthodox, there is no strong interaction, basically list + table, simple, serious and single. That’s because the users of the entire product are more business people, and business people want to be steady and reliable, and the cool interactions are useless to them.
Good designers should use various types of apps more, accumulate more interactive material libraries for themselves, and see if the interaction of these apps meets the tonality of the entire app.
5. Experience is prioritized, remember
The last point to talk about is the experience problem that has been hanging on the mouth of countless PMs and designers. Hong Kong Zhen, the experience is really a baby that makes people love and hate. Many times, if you are too focused on the experience, you will fall into a vicious circle. You are very happy, but you have such a low sense of accomplishment for Mao.
Because the experience itself is a fine work. Going back to the question I mentioned at the beginning, don’t dwell on details. Designers generally use software including PS, AI, Sketch, etc. To make a picture with these software, you must deduct the details, then what you are deducting is the experience.
I ask a question:
How big is the difference between an 80-point experience and a 20-point experience?
Great! It’s really big, so you need to optimize a 20-point experience to 80 points, and often this time cost is not big.
For example, a garbage cleaning software, click the clean button, there is no feedback, and I don’t know how it cleaned up. This is a 20-point experience. You can add a simple Gif to tell you that a lot of it has been cleaned up, and then give a copy of “99% trash has been cleaned up”. This is an 80-point experience.
Then I will ask again:
What is the difference between an 80-point experience and a 99-point experience?
It may be large, or it may not be large. But you may take a long, long time to implement, not only in your design time, but also in development time.
For example, back to this junk cleaning software. After clicking to clean up, the page skyrocketed, and the cool visual impact took away the garbage. This is a 99-point experience. However, the manpower and design costs required to realize it are very large.
You may be able to get closer to the 99-point design experience in subsequent iterations. This may be required by the product, and on the other hand, it is also the right path of your artistic pursuit.
Summary
The above is the product thinking that I think a designer should possess. In fact, a good designer should not only have the above thinking, but also be able to think about the details of product iteration and design like a PM. But this is often unavoidable for a designer’s requirements, because many designers do not necessarily have this opportunity to work like a PM. So I list the above points, hoping to help young designers better support product design, and even drive product development.
