When we summarize successful products, we always use descriptions such as: good user experience, exquisite design, and finding our pain points, but failed products have tens of thousands of failures. Sometimes it is not to learn from the success of others, but to avoid the pits that others have fallen through. Today I will share with you the four mistakes that foreign designers have made. Maybe you have made one or two.
(1) Once, Indonesians have hated me
Tinder created a card-based interaction, underneath the card is an obvious “yes or no” operation button. Those buttons serve as a backup option in case people don’t figure out how to swipe the tabs to make a selection.
A few years later, Tinder’s card-based interactions have become so common that you can even swipe your card to find a job or enter an apartment.
So, when I redesigned the homepage of Paktor (the largest dating app in Southeast Asia) in 2014, I decided to remove those yes or no buttons because everyone knows how to swipe a card, right?
I made a lot of versions without buttons, and I even wondered what was wrong.
As soon as our product went online, Indonesians suddenly forgot how to swipe their cards. What are they doing? Our AB test results show that the minimalism that I have created is no problem in Singapore and other high-tech product markets, but the number in Indonesia has dropped significantly. The whole country in Indonesia forgot how to swipe the card overnight.
Why is only Indonesia affected? Facts have proved that different markets are at different stages of design evolution. This means that after joining the Internet or smartphone revolution, the market is going through a familiar early stage, and you cannot simply jump into advanced concepts, such as pull refresh or slide to cancel. It needs more guidance and clear instructions for effective communication.
When launching a product in many completely different markets, the least developed market should be the design target.
(2) That time I created art instead of design
I used to like the hamburger menu because it is so elegant. It managed to reduce the presence of the entire menu and eventually replaced it with three lines. But the hamburger menu is like Mario hitting a “?” because it uses a tentative mentality “Let me see if the thing I’m looking for is hidden here.” In addition, clicking it requires your finger to reach the screen. At the very edge, it sounds torture.
On the contrary, the use of the bottom navigation bar is this mentality:
Great, i can see what i’m looking for
The bottom navigation bar is usually located in the most comfortable click area, so there is no need to stretch your fingers. Although I really want to continue to support the hamburger menu, the truth is sad. After extensive AB testing, I realized that the advantage of the bottom navigation bar will always be greater than the hamburger menu, although it has some flaws in aesthetics.
Sometimes an unsightly design can better express its purpose. This ultimately proves that design is not only about aesthetics, but also ease of use, clarity, and availability.
(3) I tried to design a font, but it ended with 26 circles
I am a messy person. My room has never been tidy. I don’t know what my desktop wallpaper looks like because it is always filled with files. If you want to prank by changing my wallpaper, it won’t work, because I will never see it.
However, when it comes to design, my mind is unusually neat. I have always had rules that I cannot bear to break. It’s like a strange obsessive-compulsive disorder, I have to keep everything consistent. In many cases, the specifications are good but the results are not satisfactory.
- Rule 1: Use a very limited palette
- Rule 2: Create an object that uses only a circular wave pattern
- Rule 3: Cut everything straight at 30 degrees
Imagine if I also include triangles and some more colors, and the direction of the object is random. It will not always be effective and simple, but will always be messy. So blindly pursuing consistency, although it provides good rules, it brings confusion.
So, this time I decided to create a geometric font based on circular shapes. But in the middle, the rule “based on circular shape” becomes the rule of “circular shape”. I quickly realized that in typography, consistency is almost impossible. You must occasionally make exceptions here or there. Each letter has its own story, has its own geometry and proportions, and some letters don’t even make sense! I mean, the lowercase “l” and the uppercase “I” are basically the same line. The lowercase “r” looks completely unfinished. The line at the bottom of the capital “Q” may also be a mistake made by an intern, but these details are actually not a big deal.
According to my plan, having a circle in every letter does not work. What is working on one letter and not working on another letter? I am crazy about these, so I have to stop designing fonts for my sanity. There is another reason that I suspect that people will find a font as useful as this one:
Forced consistency is not always the best approach. Sometimes inconsistency is a necessary design principle in a certain context, even if it destroys the value of consistency. Font design is a good example.
(4) I became a hellish customer
We all know that hellish customers change their needs ten times a second, often sending a bunch of e-mails at 3 in the morning. I think these people are born with chaotic schedules and they don’t care. However this is not true.
Back to my story. I started my own project. After finishing the design, I hired a developer, a great guy. After working for a while, he started asking me the following questions, some perfectly valid questions, such as “Hey Nina, how do we deal with the edge in this case?” or “What should we show if the app purchase fails?” I never really thought about it. So, I finally gave a quick unformed decision:
“How do we show it like this? You know, it’s a pop-up box, or it disappears automatically after it pops up. No, wait a moment… If we don’t show anything…”
After 3 minutes, “In fact, you know what, this is the last time it will not be changed again, let’s use the bullet frame!”
When I realized that I had become a hell client, I became a guy that every freelancer hates. I can almost hear the developers on the other side of the world spit me about what a horrible customer I am, and I think “oh wow, how did this happen”.
Hell customers are just ordinary people who don’t have a good workflow but like to improvise. I remember that I skipped half of the process that designers usually do. I ended the unfinished process early, leading to unhandled edge cases. What a stupid approach.
Don’t skip the process. User traffic? User scenario? User story? Are users a joke? Please give me everything, I don’t care if it exists, I will learn it, I will find a way to solve it, because the existence of these processes is meaningful.
