When developing new products, how to produce a high-quality product in a short period of time is the highest level that designers can hardly penetrate. Shekman Tang from Intercom shared his views on product design in the article “Applying Systems Thinking in Product Design” . Instead of starting to solve a specific problem immediately, having a global perspective and good communication with the team is the most important thing at the beginning of the design. What should be done.
If you start to solve a specific problem in the process of designing a product. So what will happen? It’s like you are determined to go to the furniture store to choose furniture without knowing how big your room is.
For many designers, they can’t help the temptation to enter the specific design process directly. However, premature design interaction and other functions can make it difficult to adjust the overall tone of the product. Again, it’s like choosing furniture blindly without knowing how big your room is.
And this is the key point of systematic thinking. System thinking is a high-level approach. It advocates considering the overall situation first, and then the specific interaction design. This method can help the team to establish a clear system design principle as early as possible to determine the direction of the product, make the team work hard in one place, and focus on the most important product areas.
Now, let me talk about how we do system planning for our basic products and how to make it work.
How to accurately define “system”?
Before we get into the main text, let us clarify the definition of the system. I like to use Denera Meadows’ definition in her book “System Thinking”:
“A system is a set of interconnected elements that are connected in a way that can achieve something.”
For this definition, I want to point out some simple concepts:
- Elements : What is the core element in the system?
- Interconnection : How are the elements connected? What is the relationship between them? What are their ways of input and output?
- Purpose : What is the ultimate goal of the product?
These problems are the basis of system thinking. With them, you can begin to apply them to the specific projects you want to deal with.
Learn to apply system thinking in practice
We have designed a product that can answer user questions by ourselves. On the one hand, this can help users solve problems faster. More importantly, it allows the design team to focus on issues that require in-depth research and investigation.
Therefore, every designer should ask himself: What are the core elements of our system? For us, the “answer” is the core, that is, the answer written by the company can provide users with the answer to the problem easily and quickly.
So far, things seem simple.
Next, we need to plan how these elements are connected, and how they are input and output. As far as this project is concerned, it means how the content is created, and how does the user operate to obtain the content?
Most of these problems have a domino effect. When you have just solved one problem, you need to follow up to solve the next problem. So how is the feedback between these elements? How does this system interact with other systems? Through further design, we got the following system:
As you can see, there is an incomprehensible complex system behind the seemingly simple problem at first. Of course, we can directly enter the specific details of designing this system, but how no one agrees with the operating principles of these elements, then we will be caught in non-stop discussions, which will bring the project into stagnation.
Hard things are always worth it
If the above system is too complicated to operate, then I will introduce another method to make the process of product design easier:
- Discover new possibilities : By disrupting the inherent state of the system, we can have more time to consider creative ways to support users. Behind this system, we have an opportunity to create a suggestion system, which plays an important role in helping users finally solve their own problems effectively.
- Take action : After you have a clear understanding of the complete system in advance, it will be easier for you to gather the most important and influential parts of your work, and avoid deviations in direction as the project progresses. Therefore, once the core part of the system is established, subsequent additions and repairs are much easier.
- Use existing designs : Consistent UI (user interface) patterns and components will save you a lot of work time, thereby speeding up the progress of the project. Therefore, not everything needs to be created from scratch. An example is our content feedback mechanism. When users read the Q&A, we hope to provide them with a way to feedback the validity of the content. In our original system, there is already a product with similar logic. From concept design to landing experiment, from suspension effect, conversion details to one-click sharing, we reuse the previous design components.
A simple way to apply systems thinking
The examples I gave before are all used to prove that systems thinking plays an important role when developing new products. But at the same time you need to know that it can also be used to improve existing products. Using this thinking framework mentioned earlier, you can ask yourself the same question “What are the key elements of your product? How are they connected? And what is the purpose of doing this?”
Try to draw your product system on the whiteboard and spend 1-2 hours discussing it with your team. Once everything is displayed, you can start asking the team how to make the system simpler and better. Here are a few questions that may be useful:
- How to achieve your goals with fewer elements?
- Is there a design that can be used in the original system? How can we reuse it?
- Can the relationship between elements change? Can it be presented in a better way?
Before starting a new product design, you must have a big picture so that your team will not fall into the design details prematurely. You will get more meaningful feedback on product design, not just about button colors. Once you have mastered this method, you will apply it to different projects, and you will have a better understanding of each aspect, and thus create something more valuable than the whole.
