User learning cost refers to the time and effort it takes for the user to recognize the proficient operation of a product. As more and more similar products are available for users to choose from, users will pay more attention to the learning costs they need in the process of using these products, and products that are difficult to learn and learn are easy to be abandoned. In the highly competitive mobile Internet field, this phenomenon is even more obvious.
Reducing user learning costs means that products are more convenient to promote and popularize, save users time, and improve user acceptance of products. We always talk about user-centered product design, but we rarely do it, or don’t know how to do it. Today, by observing some apps on the market, let’s see how they can reduce user learning costs.
Find commonalities in products and respect users’ cognitive habits
In the hot years of the mobile Internet, users will subtly form their perception of the use of applications when using various apps. No matter which type of app, there are similarities. Understanding and mastering these commonalities can reduce users The cost of learning new products.
Take the design of the tabber navigation bar as an example. The navigation bar is an important entry point for users to obtain functions or content. A good navigation bar design can clearly display the functional content of the product and reasonably guide users to use the product. There are many applications that use the tabber navigation bar, whether it is social applications, shopping applications or video applications. This design is also widely accepted and recognized by users, and users can understand and use the product without spending a lot of time.
There are no more than 5 items in the navigation bar. From left to right, they are arranged in the order of main content, main function, and user center. This is the commonality of tabber. Users will have a perception of this during use. They habitually think that the first column can get the most commonly used things, and the last column can manage and set personal account information, etc., and may change this Awareness is brought to the process of using other new products. By understanding and mastering this cognitive habit of users, we can consider this cognitive habit more in the process of designing products, and perhaps we can reduce the learning cost of users on the product.
In fact, when we observe this commonality between products and respect the usage habits of most users, we will find that many designs can be easily accepted and used by users without too much consideration. Such as the mode of mutual dialogue in social applications, posting or dynamic editing methods in community applications, shopping carts in shopping applications, and so on.
Product design from life
When we rack our brains to reduce the cost of user learning, we often overlook that the best design actually comes from life. When we move some of the users’ life experience into our products, we will find that many times the cost of users’ learning is basically zero, because this is common in their lives.
We don’t need to observe carefully to find that many product design prototypes can be found in life. These designs graft some familiar things or objects in daily life into products through imitation, visualization, etc. Here is a brief introduction of several design cases derived from life experience, hoping to inspire you.
In the above applications, you can see that whether it is movie posters, event posters, book covers, and album covers, they are all consistent with real-life entities. This design combines users’ online and offline cognitions, and each other Influence, maintain the consistency of cognition of things, and avoid the cost of repeated learning and cognition. For example, Xiao Ming is very interested in an event poster on the advertising column of a subway station. When he sees this poster again on the Douban event, he can save a lot of text guidance or search to quickly find relevant information about the event.
Not only in terms of users’ access to relevant information in life, but also in some operational designs, most apps also adopt operational behaviors similar to those in real life. For example, when WeChat opened the red envelope, the design of the red envelope was exactly the same as usual; the mobile phone flashlight application seen in the picture is also the same as the usual flashlight operation; another example is that the music playback adopts the style of the old-fashioned record player. Book reading keeps people’s habit of flipping through books…
Through these examples, we can see that the Internet is derived from life and cannot be separated from life. It is being affected by people’s living habits and cognitions while rapidly changing people’s living habits and cognition. When we truly combine life with the Internet, users will not feel that learning to use the Internet is a very difficult thing.
to sum up
In order to reduce user learning costs, we will give user instructions and update instructions when new products are launched or each iteration, guide users with gorgeous copywriting on the startup page, and guide users through various small bubbles or other forms in the app How users use it… But not every user spends time reading the update instructions or manuals. They may also quickly skip these startup pages or simply close these prompt bubbles. In this way, these guiding designs are not made in vain, and in fact they are not. These are all methods to reduce the learning cost of users, but sometimes users are not willing to pay.
Of course, we cannot ignore the user learning cost just because users are unwilling to read the manual. At this time, we should consider how to make our products easier and easier for users to accept and use our products in the product design process. Respect for the cognition and habits formed by users in the process of using the Internet, and better integrate the product with life, may reduce the user’s learning cost of the product to a certain extent.
