When designers are working on different design requirements, product design methodology can provide designers with clear steps and frameworks; how designers should think when designing products, and from which direction to think in order to design products with good user experience ; The author of this article shared about the design values ​​in the product design methodology, let’s take a look.

We have been saying that the world is flat, and at the same time we have personally felt the impact of the global economy; but has the world always been flat? If not, how did it flatten out?

Have you ever thought that a very important thing is silently playing a role in the flattening of the world-that is, the development of containers; friends who have studied extensively may have seen a book “Containers Change the World”, Before globalization and new technologies smooth the world, containers have used tangible power to connect the world together.

The Internet affects the transmission of information, while the container is physical transportation:

• For consumers, it affects price, speed, purchase channels…
• For merchants, it affects the level of collaboration, product selection, price strategy…
• For production companies, it affects inventory, supply chain, location…
• For transportation companies, it affects cost, labor, transportation volume…
• For the country, it affects foreign trade, tariff policy, diplomacy…

Why can such a simple product play such a big role?

The biggest success of the container lies in the standardization of its products and the complete set of transportation system established therefrom; because the standard has brought about a significant increase in system efficiency and a significant drop in transportation costs, products produced anywhere on the earth can be produced quickly and cheaply Delivered to the place where there is demand.

Closer to home, enterprise-level product design is a huge and complex system, with a large number and complex functions, and frequent changes and concurrency. It often requires designers and developers to respond quickly; at the same time, there is an existence in the design process of such products. Many similar design ideas, processes, methods, pages, components…

If we can abstractly obtain some stable and highly reusable content, and then standardize these content like containers, the design quality and efficiency of the entire product team will also be significantly improved; accordingly, we have recently established a product design specification team, By sharing and discussing the design advantages of each designer, good product design methods are standardized, process-oriented, tool-oriented, and modular; through modular solutions, redundant production costs are reduced, so that designers can focus on better Product design work.

 

1. Values, the compass of product design

Closer to home, we enter the first module design values; many friends will definitely be curious after seeing this title. As a specification manual, why does the first chapter talk about such a “metaphysical” theme? Don’t worry, the answer you want is below.

Let’s skip product design first and look at the company management of large companies. You must find a very interesting phenomenon: medium and large companies often have their own corporate values, especially super-large companies such as Ali, Huawei, and Vanke. It also regards values ​​as an important part of company management, and has done enough work during the employee training phase.

Why does this phenomenon occur? Because values ​​can greatly reduce management costs, many companies formulate various rules and regulations to constrain the behavior of employees. This management method is usually called “hard management”; we know that every hard management means management Cost, and “hard management” often has its limitations, it cannot cover all scenarios.

We use a simple case to illustrate:

The company hopes that employees can turn off lights and save energy after get off work. There are two ways to do this:

• Set up an assessment system to require employees to enforce it;
• Created the value of “The company is my home”.

Through the second approach, we may not only benefit from an employee who turns off the lights, but also turns off the air conditioner and picks up paper scraps.

The second method is the benefits brought by the “soft management” of values. It does not require companies to pay additional management costs. Employees can use the “compass” of values ​​to distinguish right and wrong behaviors, thereby generating higher management benefits. ; Haidilao has created a service miracle one by one through the values ​​of “customer-centered and hard-working”.

I believe you have fully realized the meaning and function of values, let us return to our theme-product design values.

So what exactly are product design values? To put it bluntly, it is a set of standards to help every product manager understand whether a product design is good or bad.

We hope that through the construction of values, each product manager can obtain the following benefits:

• Have a compass for product design and master the criteria for evaluating the quality of the design;
• Enjoy the “soft management” bonus brought by values ​​and reduce the cost of self-management, parallel management, downward management and upward management;
• Inspire design principles and design patterns, and then provide guidance and solutions for specific design problems.

Does it still feel a little illusory?

Don’t worry, after reading the follow-up content of this chapter with this doubt, we will combine practical application cases to illustrate the four values ​​of product design: nature, certainty, meaning and growth, and let you truly experience the above. Three benefits.

 

2. Natural: reduce users’ cognitive energy consumption

As Internet people, we have become accustomed to all kinds of electronic devices and software applications around us, such as mobile phones, tablets, WeChat, kings and so on.

Think about it carefully, you will find this phenomenon is very interesting: unnatural products can be so naturally integrated into our lives; we must know that the concept of human-computer interaction has only been in existence for a few decades, and the designers of these products How is this done? The answer is the application of the design value of “nature”.

In this section, we will clearly elaborate on the value of “nature”, hoping to give Shi Qiang’s designers some direction and inspiration when they are confused.

Before explaining “nature”, I hope to introduce to you a concept of “heart energy”; the so-called heart energy is the energy consumed when we recognize, analyze, judge, and remember a thing; this seems to be a very profound Don’t worry, let me give you a few examples, and you’ll find it is on you.

• Are you in a daze?
• When you are focusing on one thing, do you automatically ignore many things around you?
• When multiple things come at the same time, are you in a hurry, especially irritable?

Why is there such a situation? Because in many situations, we subconsciously want to save our own “heart energy”; we must know that all living things instinctively desire to save their own energy consumption to maintain the normal operation of life, and the weight of the human brain only accounts for About 2% of the human body weight, but the energy consumed by the brain accounts for 20% of the energy consumed by the whole body.

Therefore, we instinctively hope to return to a state of carefree, no worries about food, no worries about drinking, no worries, just staying in that place quietly in a daze; and the so-called “natural” design values ​​are designing As much as possible to allow users to save energy consumption.

How to apply the design value of’natural’? Let’s first look at the nine steps that users take in human-computer interaction:

1. Goal: The user has a clear request;
2. Plan: An action plan is made according to the target;
3. Confirmation: Confirm the implementation details of the action plan;
4. Implementation: Act according to implementation details;
5. Phenomenon: the system gives corresponding feedback;
6. Perception: the user perceives the changes in the system;
7. Interpretation: users understand the changes;
8. Comparison: compare the target and the result;
9. Loop: Continue until the result is consistent with the target.

Recall carefully whether the path when you interact with the things around you are all these nine steps?

Some friends said: No, sometimes I didn’t take so many steps; for example, when there was a thunderbolt on a sunny day, I didn’t have any thoughts at all in my mind. I was just shocked, only three steps of phenomenon, perception and action; Thinking of these friends, I want to give you a compliment; because although there are nine steps in the interaction between people and things, not all interactions have to go through these nine steps.

We can roughly divide the interaction types into the following three categories:

1. Instinct type: phenomenon, perception, execution;
2. Behavior type: phenomenon, perception, interpretation, confirmation, execution;
3. Thinking type: goal, plan, confirmation, execution, phenomenon, perception, interpretation, comparison, cycle;

We combine a few examples to further illustrate:

Instinctive type: The lightning bolt above is a case, so I won’t repeat it here;

Behavioral:

• WeChat shows a red logo (phenomenon)
• The user sees the red logo (perception)
• The user understands that the red logo means that new news is coming (interpretation)
• The user decides whether to pick up the phone to view (confirm)
• The user picks up the phone to view (execute)

Thinking:

• I want to complete the task assigned to me by the boss: make a company publicity PPT (target)
• In order to accomplish this task, I have to make a plan: Do I come by myself? Or arrange for the assistant to come? (plan)
• After comprehensive consideration, I decided to come by myself. For this reason, I need to clarify the work content of this plan, organize the PPT structure, collect data, etc. (confirm)
• Execute according to the confirmed task list and deliver (execute)
• The boss evaluates the delivered PPT (phenomenon)
• Receive comments from the boss (perception)
• Give yourself experience to understand the boss’s evaluation (interpretation)
• Assess whether the PPT has met the boss’s expectations (comparison)
• Correct the PPT until it meets the boss’ expectations (cycle)

Take a closer look at the above three examples, you will find:

• The instinct type is a completely subconscious behavior, without any thinking at all, and the consumption of mental energy is zero;
• The behavioral type is cultivated through continuous training, we don’t need to spend a lot of effort to think, we only need to call our own habits to complete;
• Thinking is the most energy-consuming, and every task that users face requires a lot of mental effort to think and judge.

Therefore, as designers, we should focus more on the “instinct” and “behavior”, and more control the human-computer interaction behavior in an unconscious state, so that human-computer interaction can be natural.

This can also bring another benefit: creating an extremely important psychological phenomenon-heart flow; because there is no interference from outside consciousness, this will make the user’s mental power be completely invested in a certain activity; in this In the state, users concentrate all their energy on the things at hand, without having to control their attention, forgetting time, forgetting themselves, and then triggering a high sense of excitement and fulfillment.

After talking about so many retreats, we finally talk about three proper and pragmatic application suggestions about the value of “nature” to point out some directions for the friends:

• Repeated thinking, at least to ensure that the thinking-type behavior link must be able to go through;
• If it is not necessary, don’t let thinking behavior enter the cycle;
• If possible, try to replace thinking-based design with instinctive design and behavioral design.

In the end, I hope to share a design philosophy with all designers: Excellent designers are not sales. What we have to do is not to break the habits of users and instill our design ideas in them, but to cater to the user’s subconsciousness and let Users make their own choices.