16 years experience in product design, once worked for Internet companies such as Gome Online, JD.COM, Baidu and 360 Security Guard, and now he is the senior design manager of Meitu Commercial Product Experience Design Department.
Under the background of more and more homogeneous product content, the value of user experience design is self-evident. Undoubtedly, it takes time, investment and effort to grow into an excellent user experience designer. But in fact, whether the "user experience" can be "designed" or not, since you try to change or influence the user experience, such work will inevitably involve many aspects of the product, not only focusing on the macro, but also participating in the early planning, design, development, testing and iteration of the product, but the most important thing is the user.
In this interview, we invited Mr. Crystal, senior design manager of Meitu Company, to share his views on user experience design, team culture, quality improvement and career choice. I believe that both design practitioners who have worked for several years and design Xiaobai will gain a lot.
User experience design
1 design experience and user connection
First of all, user experience design originated from ergonomics. 1995, cognitive psychologist and designer "Don Norman" coined the term "user experience". At present, home experience has been widely concerned. I started as a man-machine interface designer and kept thinking about what a good user experience design is at every stage.
Literally, "user" is the purpose and "experience design" is the means. My understanding of user experience design is to take the user as the center and link the relationship with the user with the expression of design experience.
So how does the design experience connect users?
For example, friends from far to near, the first is distance: gender, dress, height, skin color and so on. , belonging to the visual layer, and then from the near: voice, personality, body language, etc. , belongs to the interaction layer, and finally draws a conclusion that it belongs to the satisfaction layer. The above basically describes the general design process, "people" refers to the product, "from far to near" refers to the design process and thinking angle, and "perception" refers to user satisfaction.
A. Visual experience layer of visual layer products-visual design
B. the experience layer in the use of interactive products-interactive design
C. Satisfaction level, product essential experience level-user research
2 Meitu user experience design
Taking Meitu commercialization as an example, we support the experience support of three major businesses (advertising, value-added and finance), and there is nothing special about the workflow. But in the advertising business, because we are responsible for the design of multiple platforms at the same time, in order to unify the design language, we implement a system.
Multi-experience design method focuses on the construction of design platform, strengthens the basic construction of component library, design documents and shared resources, standardizes the tone, and ensures the unity and individuality of design language while diversifying design.
3 Foundation and Excellence of User Experience
User experience baseline My understanding is that the system framework to ensure the stability of user experience is the basis for further experience upgrade. At present, our design platform is top-level design, and "multi-terminal design/interaction specification, shared resources and multi-terminal component library" is established as the baseline support to ensure the consistency and efficiency of basic experience, and the design quality is controlled through UE/UI audit.
In my opinion, there is no standard to measure the quality of design, and different people have different opinions. I believe everyone is working hard.
As an excellent user experience practitioner, I pay more attention to mutual appreciation in design. An excellent user experience designer, whose works are interesting, fun and frank, is worthy of respect in thinking (design concept), skills (basic skills), finishing touch (highlights), tone (personality) and rhythm (norms).
4 opportunities and challenges faced by user experience
At present, the general direction of national strategy is to comprehensively promote internet plus and create a new trend of digital economy.
China User Experience Industry Development Report shows that 93.9% of user experience practitioners are concentrated in 22 industries, among which the top six are Internet, advertising creativity, e-commerce, life service, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence.
The fastest-growing designers are advertising creativity +3.7%, digital entertainment +3%, life service +2.7%, Internet of Things +2.6%, new energy vehicles +2.6, artificial intelligence+1.3%;
The fastest growing ranking is the Internet of Things, which is 4 this year and 9 last year; Artificial intelligence this year 6 last year10;
Designers are most satisfied with advertising creativity and digital entertainment; In the fields of finance, education and hardware, the satisfaction is the lowest;
My feeling of the above three-dimensional trends is that the influence of user-centered design in the whole industry is gradually expanding, the technology drive affects the upgrade of design experience, the platform design empowers product ecology, and human-computer interaction is diversified. These are challenges and opportunities.
Career choice in design industry
Design, English name is Design. In addition to "design", you can also express "planning". Career planning has been very important in the workplace. If you want to make continuous progress, you must find the right direction and work hard in that direction.
Combined with the development trend of user experience, the following points may be helpful to everyone:
1. Job composition At present, user experience jobs include interaction design, vision, user research, brand design, industrial design, front-end development, team management, project management and products.
It is suggested to match the corresponding positions on the basis of their own majors, so as to integrate theory with practice and apply what they have learned.
2. Employment intention gives priority to large-scale technology companies, which have certain advantages in stability (sense of accomplishment), learning environment (echelon), salary system (fixed salary adjustment) and platform influence (popularity).
3. Recruitment Demand Due to the epidemic situation and the influence of new technologies in digital economy, the recruitment of enterprises has become more rigorous, the number of small and medium-sized enterprises has decreased, and the number of large enterprises has increased.
4. Ability requirements The requirements for talents are diversified and comprehensive, focusing on professional ability and communication and cooperation.
The above four points run through the career life cycle of "newcomers, growth, maturity and decline", and the emphasis varies from person to person, similar to the product life cycle. For newcomers in the workplace, it is best to choose a company with stronger advantages in the new or growing period. Deeply cultivating design and tapping longboard ability have become the core competitiveness and highlights, and then find the future development direction based on interest and ability.
Realize more value in the industry
1 The importance of team culture
At present, Meitu's commercial product experience design team advocates: singing while walking and doing what you like with people you like.
Youku Tudou, the predecessor of Ali Entertainment, is also one of my favorite companies in my career. In 20 12 years, I experienced the merger of two listed companies, in which I deeply realized the importance of corporate culture.
Singing while walking is one of the core values of potatoes, which expresses: the perfect combination of interest and career, happy work;
Doing what you like with the people you like is one of the core values of Youku, which expresses: achieving life and career; With a positive culture, the team has cohesion and direction, and it is more meaningful to build a team.
Specifically reflected in:
A. The new design of inclusive and diverse personnel combination Internet has become the mainstream, and a single skill is far from enough to meet the current needs. The business model based on artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing promotes the development of design. Combining with the company's business, it is the general trend to enhance the dimension of user experience, which enriches the team configuration. Everyone's commonness can resonate and bring stability, while differences can bring creativity and breakthrough, and then we can make progress with each other, just like finding a new home. For members, partners who have something in common are more sticky and supportive; If there are different partners, there will be more complementarity and expansibility.
B. Open communication feedback advocates practical and realistic communication. Don't carry something alone, and don't hold it back. In addition to understanding the progress of the project, mutual communication can also deeply understand the mentality of members and provide ideas for solving problems, thus enhancing trust.
C. The fluency of transparent collaboration mode affects the results, and transparent collaboration mode can greatly improve efficiency. I remember when I first managed Meitu's commercial product design team, the communication mechanism, I didn't know what I was doing, and the department spit seriously.
After adjustment:
Internal cooperation
Adopt the project collaboration platform, take the profit center as the first level, and synchronize the information such as project, version, design /UE/ repair to the platform for all members to see; Through the Gantt chart of the project collaboration platform, we can see everyone's progress on the time axis. Managers can arrange their work reasonably, and members can see their goals and efficiency at a glance.
External cooperation
Using the project management platform, all requirements are created by product, detailed description and supplementary requirements are distributed to me, and I distribute them to members uniformly.
D. echelon organizational structure
Establish a team, and the main/auxiliary roles will complete the project together;
Establish a tutorial system to help and assist newcomers;
Set up a design committee to promote and standardize the evaluation;
2 the value of product designers to enhance
In foreign countries, many excellent companies are driven by design, while domestic designers generally have a low right to speak. This phenomenon is widespread, and the core reason is that it has no direct commercial value. The current situation is that the user experience only solves the appearance problem or single problem, the design organization structure is not independent, the project schedule is tight, the design schedule is given priority, and the product technical requirements are not discussed, so it is impossible to settle in. At the same time, the professional ceiling is not high, and the right to speak is not high over time.
Although "technology-driven value creation" is advocated in China at present, especially the rise of artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing has a greater impact on business value, but it also promotes the development of design.
From the perspective of development, designers can upgrade to product designers from the following aspects:
Designers need Qi Xin to work together to change their thinking and broaden the scope of product design (with multi-role ability);
Strengthen the combination of brand design and business (the integration of product positioning and brand design);
Upgrade the positioning and standards of designers (full-link deep participation products);
Encourage multicultural and creative differences (break through seemingly good designs);
Hold a professional design industry summit (preaching cutting-edge design concepts and enhancing the influence of the whole industry) to do better together. ?
Three ways to realize self-growth
Design is the only thing that keeps me going and makes me full of strength. I will work harder to do it well. I didn't have much experience at the beginning of my career. At that time, information was underdeveloped, and it was basically by groping.
First stage
Mainly because of the ability to precipitate, in order to improve the longboard and ensure the quality of their own design, they focus on icon design, image IP design and design methodology. Our works are often recommended on the homepage of the design platform, and the image IP has applied for national copyright. Methodology began to be combined with project practice, with remarkable effect, full sense of accomplishment and rapid growth.
stage Ⅱ
Starting with Youku Tudou, I began to integrate into the management role. I was very busy with management and design energy, focusing on the balance between work efficiency, time management and personnel management.
at present
Focus on the refined operation of management, with a team of about 70 people at most, covering design, interaction, applied research, customer experience, brand and operational design; Thinking about how to balance user experience design and commercial products, I graduated from "Artificial Intelligence Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences", which broadened the dimension of thinking about design.
Self-growth and promotion are not stronger than who is at this moment, but longer than who swallows it.
This is the end of the interview for the Blue Lagoon Cafe. Thanks for sharing. I believe that through this interview, you have a deeper understanding and feeling of user experience design. If you have any questions or thoughts, please leave a message in the comments section.