9 Things to Pay Attention to When Becoming a Professional User Experience Consultant
Now it seems that everyone is a user experience consultant, no one can be bewildered by the experience of this matter. This is not really the case, as a well-established user experience consultant knows nothing more than web designers, UI designers, and programmers, and even more to think about, to do more practical work to become a reliable UX consultant.
Steve Krug can write “Do not Make Me Think,” a book based largely on his deep understanding of humanity: “We are lazy, extremely lazy and very busy, and we’d rather be perfunctory neither Will take the initiative to make the best choice.We rarely spend the time to sort out the clue.We are subservient to the habits of the creature.Other people’s things are of no value to ourselves. “It is also these profound cognitions And summed up his book as a must-read for web design and UX design. Today, when we reflect on the role of a competent UX consultant, we need to look at the profession from a perspective that is more about human nature, experience and needs.
1.Only in-depth understanding can begin design
“No matter what your upcoming design project is, you need to have a clear picture of your target audience in advance.”
If you want to create a great user experience for people, you need to understand what they think in their brains, what drives them to make decisions, what they are afraid of and what motivates them to click. Only then will you be able to start designing, at this time you will be able to understand the ease of use in their concepts, what kind of design can motivate users and encourage them to come back again and again.
2.Your design should be self-evident
“If the system you designed needs to be interpreted to make it understandable, then the system itself will collapse, and if your target users need to go through the complicated instructions that you provide to play this product, the design is clearly unacceptable “
The form below was designed by me years ago. At that time, the user was provided with the completed form, which was followed by a detailed list of what to do next. When the entire system is not built to complete, and each user is in a very different situation, the design of the form will be made like this. At that time I was responsible for marketing, and then the product manager would like to add in-store promotions in this session and hope that the development team in the form of the page to join the online exchange function. In fact, this user process is fundamentally uncertain, the entire team did not sort out this thing in a room in detail, there is no plan, no plan, no system processes, talk about what function? This feature is difficult to fully understand themselves, let alone allow users to feel “self-evident.”
3.Using the language of the user to express and communicate
As we said at the beginning, people are habitual animals, like moderation, willing to repeat, and even obsessed with repetitive patterns. We like the tabbed interface in the browser and are used for this type of interaction. When the file manager began to appear Tab-style interface, we do not need to learn already know how to operate it. One can easily learn from experience and transfer this experience to something similar, and this is a common way for users to learn about new products. In other words, when you design a product that is well-known to people, users will be able to get started faster.
4.Clear and intuitive call to action (CTA) design
Clear and intuitive action call design allows users to more easily understand the interface function, the operation of the process, this design in the past few years has gradually become a convention known as the design approach. The complex design of no benefit to anyone, the human short-term memory in a memory of 2 to 3 things when the best, if you want users to quickly get an operation, so that they realize that a few simple steps you can get it all They will be put into practice soon.
5.The less choice, the better
“We like UX as a science, but in the real world it’s closer to art, and the experience of the past 15 years tells us that users interact with the whole system is still unpredictable. Users will still surprise us every day. Things that are super easy to use are, in the eyes of some, still anti-human designs. “
You can still take all the things into account and set your prototype, put everything you can think of and put in the pages, and start getting the test users in and experimenting. You think you know everything about the user’s various actions, but the final test results are not exactly what you expected. This is a reality.
A few years ago, I was busy with a mobile website, and I needed to figure out what users were doing when surfing the web. While testing, we used a visual tracking system to understand what users look for, what they look for, and how they interact with the site. When we give the test user a goal, such as buying a cellphone or going to the tech support page, let’s start a closer look.
The reality is … users start to get around and iterate through the websites (the page is really overwhelming with more than 70 links for the user to click through), and finally, the user completely abandons his search for what he wants, and then Frantically click on each link in the page …
6.Learn to write something less
When you visit a website, do not want to browse a lot of wordy nonsense cannot figure out what this product is doing. We have long since entered the age of reading pictures, the excessive text is stressful in many places. If you really want to describe your product, grab the focus, emphasize the features, catch the user’s attention and keep that pace. Do not use too professional language, with concise text.
Always keep in mind that users will only remember two or three points of information at a time, so your lengthy speeches often take up a lot of space on the web. Try to keep the text to a minimum and present the most critical information.
7.To the user can feel the feedback
“Before the Internet, people used the real buttons on the remote to manipulate the device, and it was necessary to learn from and simulate the previous interactive experience in the design because people were used to it so they would understand how to use you The product.”
More and more product designs begin to be completely flattened and minimalist design styles are also popular. These interfaces are also increasingly lacking humanized details and real-world touch. In the iOS system after iOS7, many interfaces are full of puzzling interface elements, unknown advice and instructions.
8.As soon as possible and frequent product usability testing
“It’s hard to get real users involved in usability testing as soon as possible, rather than waiting until the product has been developed and a lot of resources have been spent.”
Whenever your product is tweaked and moved to a new version, it’s best to have other colleagues in the office test it. There is no reasonable test plan and frequent user feedback, which is one of the important reasons why many product designs fail.
9.Be careful to assume the needs of users
“Users do not want to be bombed by choice.”
A few years ago I worked for a cellphone manufacturer, and without proper user research, we made a huge mistake. At that time, we spent 700,000 US dollars in the site embedded in a set of custom packages for users to buy packages, the product found online users simply do not want this stuff ……
The user wants to have all the information in hand while hoping this set of things is easy to understand and easy to use. Finally, we will be the entire system is simplified into three sets of programs, allowing users to choose the result of not only the budget pressure down, and users rave reviews.
For the package customization system, it took us eight months to meet endlessly with IBM and the result was quickly overrun after it went live. But successful programs sometimes do not have to cost a lot.
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