A beautiful, unified and standardized UI interface design is a means to retain users, and the real value of UI interface design is to realize the “maximization” of business value. When looking at the development of Internet App products, no one is obliged to discover the excellent connotation of your App products through your poor UI design.
How to understand the UI?
Baidu Encyclopedia explains “user interface”, that is, user interface, an interface that can interact with humans and computers.
Some people understand it from the computer’s point of view:
U, You, is the user, a scum with only 5 computing power.
I, is my computer, a master of mental arithmetic, with billions of calculations per second.
UI is the interaction between you and me.
So the better the UI design, the easier it is for you to use me.
UI design workflow steps
The work of UI design at the visual level is only a part of all the work content, not all. Others understand the requirements, clarify the design goals, make plans, and later development support and collect feedback. The upper layer reflects the value of a UI designer’s work .
1. Understand requirements
After getting the requirement, the first thing to do is to understand the requirement.
At this time, the requirements we get may be very detailed. They are specific requirements documents processed by interaction designers, including complete interaction design prototypes.
At this time, we focus on understanding the output of the interaction design, looking at the specific details of each process and each interface used by the product, including functions, operations, feedback, and information presentation logic.
In most teams, there may not be such a role as an interaction designer, but the requirements directly issued by the product manager or the boss. There will also be a big difference in the level of refinement of the requirements, which will actually be more complicated at this time.
At this time, the designer needs to stand from the user’s point of view, incarnate as a user-centered origin, to understand the needs and split them.
For every detail of the requirement, the designer needs to think deeply. For the missing part or the unreasonable part, it is necessary to go back and communicate with the person who raised the requirement in detail, discuss and solve the problem together.
Here I recommend a thinking tool for sorting out requirements – “User Journey”. Through the method of “user journey”, we can sort out the situation, operation and specific psychological state of the user using the product, so that the designer can understand and analyze the needs from the perspective of the user.
2. Clear design goals
Design goals are directly related to product goals, operational goals, and user goals.
After understanding the specific demand details, it is necessary to clarify the positioning of this design in the entire project, the benefits that need to be brought through the design, and the extent of the user’s appeal for the design.
In addition, in the design process, it is also necessary to clarify where the core point of the design goal is, so that you can understand the key direction of the output of the design content.
It is also helpful for us to make some trade-offs: sometimes good-looking design needs to sacrifice some information density, information communication, etc.; what is the type of design page, is it partial to display or functional, and the design space for display will be larger. For functionality, consider the componentization of development and implementation;
In addition, what are the specific pages for design, what is the priority, and the dismantling of tasks will affect the design goals.
3. Make a plan
Including time plan and execution plan.
One of the most important abilities of a designer is to evaluate tasks, disassemble a complete chain of tasks into small segments, and then compare the priority of each segment of characters, the high priority is completed first, and the low priority is completed later, so It also directly leads to the arrangement of the time plan.
In addition, at each time node and milestone, it is necessary to confirm the role of docking communication and the materials to be output. This work requires experienced designers to make decisions, or experienced designers in the team lead everyone to complete it together.
Time nodes and milestones are the external manifestations of work progress. There are actually many tools that can be used, but the most basic thing is that the entire team must reach a consensus on the design progress, and determine what expectations everyone can have at that point in time— — What you see and what you hear.
4. Enter the analysis stage
At this time, the requirements have been understood, the meaning of their work has been clarified, and corresponding plans have been formulated, then it is necessary to enter the detailed analysis stage.
The analysis phase will include three main parts: market analysis, competing product analysis, and user demand analysis.
Market analysis will determine where your design will compete with your opponents, and what content needs to be designed to match the important positioning of the product in the market.
Competitive product analysis is a way of learning from each other’s strengths and avoiding its shortcomings, so as to make your own design more perfect.
User needs analysis, this has to be said, is a user-centered design, that is, to deeply explore the things behind user needs. For example, the classic joke “Users want a faster horse”, in fact, the appeal behind it is that users want “speed”.
5. Define visual style
At this point, after the analysis is done, you can define the visual style, including the general direction of the design elements.
Color range, texture, details, prominent information, icon design schemes, illustration design ideas, and motion effects, etc., can all be considered and concluded during the stage of defining the visual style.
Integrity is very necessary, and differentiation from other products is also covered by visual style. In general, when we define a specific visual style, we decide through some key interfaces or key operations.
Some teams or certain stages of a project do not need to define a style, because there are specifications that can be inherited or continued, depending on the specific project situation.
Defining the visual style is finalized through meetings and reports. It is basically a matter of brainstorming by the entire team and should not be done by the designer himself.
6. Batch output interface
After determining the design direction, the specific interface can be output in batches.
And supplementary design specifications or UI KIT, for some design companies, supplementary design instructions, etc.
7. Development Support
The next step is to enter the stage of development support, output cutouts and layouts, and maintain very frequent communication with development colleagues at this time. After they complete the design plan, they must give corresponding walkthroughs to find out the development results for the design. Restoration is less than 100%.
Communication is really important at this time. Many of the developments that our team has worked on before are the kind of characters that output cutouts and layouts and don’t even look at them, and then the realized appearance is very different from our design, which basically makes our designers petrified in situ.
The communication between designers and developers also needs a long-term running-in to get better and better. In short, designers who are diligent in communication will benefit themselves a lot.
8. Gather feedback
When the product enters the testing stage and later goes online, designers have to spare some energy to pay attention to the feedback of their designs in the market or users.
If the problem with the design is big, then be ready to modify the design at any time.
If the feedback is good, then think about where your next improvement is, and what design should be done in the next iteration of the product to make up for this deficiency. The above is what the designer should think about after getting the requirements and what to do next things.
UI design is a scientific and rigorous work. It needs to be familiar with the product, target users, user habits and interface design rules. Through interface guidance, users can easily complete tasks and realize the value of the product to users. At the same time, the company also receives positive feedback from users.
