Research shows that 64% of software functions are actually "never used or rarely used". Look at the remote control at home and count how many buttons have not been pressed. This theory is actually applicable to almost any software that can be called by name, so it can be said that it can be tried and tested to simplify the design by deleting functions.
Simple products are easier to manufacture, lower in cost and easier to use and market. Deleting messy features can help designers solve limited important problems, and can also help users achieve their goals without being distracted. Perfection is not adding nothing, but reducing nothing. As a strategy, it is difficult to understand how to do this.
At present, the first thing that is cut off is often the function that is difficult to realize. The reason is that this can ensure that an MVP (minimum feasible product) is released first, and other functions can be added later.
No one can avoid deleting functions and content. The resources of each team are limited, and any design project I have encountered is faced with the need to cut functions and content. Sometimes it is because after years of development, the function of the product is too complicated; Sometimes it's a brand-new design, but it really needs cleaning. Don't wait for others to indiscriminately and ruthlessly delete the most interesting functions. Consider the overall situation and ensure that only those features and content that are truly valuable to the user experience are delivered.
The core of the experience is what can impress users the most. Found it, what to delete and what to leave is clear at a glance. In addition, functions that can eliminate users' frustration will also be welcomed. When describing user stories, don't forget to look for common setbacks and problems. Functions that solve these problems have a second priority.
Some people may say that deleting incomplete functions or content will lead to a waste of time and energy. No one wants to throw away a thing, no matter how bad it is, as long as it is bought with money. With jack? In Jack Moffitt's words, "bad things can be repaired, and defective products will always exist." This phenomenon is called "misunderstanding of sunk cost" in economics. In fact, it is impossible to recover the cost of creating this part of the function, so the only way to judge this function is to see what role it can play and how much extra cost it will lead to if it is retained.
Function and content will cause mental burden to users ("Do you need to see this"), and will lead to certain maintenance costs (someone must always ensure that the content keeps pace with the times and the function continues to be effective). In other words, any function requires you and users to pay the price, so the function must be valuable. If a function is incomplete, only half of it is said, and there is a similar function in another place, it will lead to a discount in value.
The question is not why you want to delete it, but why you want to keep it.
But our users want it, and our customers have put forward many functional requirements to us, but they never know that if they think of an idea and put it directly into the product, it will probably lead to the failure of the product. With too many functions, some important functions may be taken away. Therefore, we always have reservations about adding new features. Our approach is to reverse engineer the needs of users-find out what problems users have encountered and carefully consider whether this problem should be solved by our software.
After more functions, it usually leads to some sacrifices in other aspects, and customers will not consider this issue. For example, an application running in the background of the mobile phone sounds good, but it may consume the battery quickly, and it is also very troublesome to find one of the applications to stop manually. Adding functions does not necessarily make the user experience simpler, but often leads to more confusion. In many cases, you may come up with an alternative that can meet the real needs of users (such as letting them switch between applications quickly). But for the requirements of increasing product functions, we should boldly say "no". When you want to design an attractive product, deleting the function will take some risks on the surface, but it can get long-term benefits.
When determining which features should be retained and which should be deleted, please follow the following principles. Determine the goals and priorities that users want to achieve. For the TV remote controller, the main function is to select the channel to watch and adjust the volume (I think there should be "subtitles"); Secondly, switch different video sources, such as streaming media players; Mapping is not that important. Focus on finding solutions that can fully meet the highest priority needs of users, and then consider meeting other goals of users after finding them. Don't affect the delivery of core functions by providing more functions. Determine the most common interference sources when users use products, and prioritize the functions to solve these problems according to the difficulty. For example, making a sudden phone call while watching TV is interference. The pause button on the DVD remote controller is a solution to reduce this interference. Get rid of the way of repeating the same task. In the TV remote control example in this book, there are two places for scrolling text, and only one should be left.
Finally, don't judge the value of a product by the number of functions, but by whether the product can meet the user's highest priority goal.
In reality, the interference and deadline pressure people face cannot be simulated in the test, which further limits people's ability. Small details in the interface will increase users' burden and reduce users' efficiency like speed bumps or potholes on the road. Removing unnecessary options, content and interference can reduce the burden on users and let them focus on what they want to do. Removing distracting visual elements can make users feel faster and more reliable. Delete all disturbing details.
Users are more likely to buy when they are given a small number of choices than when they are given a large number of choices. Moreover, they also found that in the case of fewer choices, users' satisfaction after purchase is higher than that of more choices. Providing users with choices will make people feel that they are in control of the situation. In some cases, people prefer to have fewer choices. If the choice exceeds a certain limit, especially when many choices are similar, the choice becomes a burden. People have a similar tendency towards technology. When faced with countless options and buttons, people usually feel overwhelmed. After getting a complicated gadget, they will be upset because they can't understand it, but they are more likely to make mistakes in the chaos. Too many choices are unpleasant.
Intelligent default value refers to the choice that suits most people's tastes. By analyzing customer information (such as log files), you can find a lot of basis for choosing default values. Default value is an effective way to save users' time and energy, and it is also the first choice to clear the "speed bump" in the design blueprint.
When providing users with choices, we must carefully consider whether users will be at a loss because of these options, or whether these options will shake their determination. You can go to Amazon or Best Buy and other large websites to see their design of checkout function. When checking out, the user must make a decision: buy or go. These online sellers know that any doubt will lead users to give up the idea of buying. Therefore, in the checkout link, the online seller deleted the navigation links at the top and bottom of every other page.
Remember, mainstream users want to be "good enough and quick", while experts want to be "as perfect as possible and willing to wait as long as possible". If you want to design a simple experience that mainstream users like, ask yourself whether providing users with these options will sacrifice speed and simplicity because of the pursuit of perfection. If so, please delete these options.
Deleting text has three advantages. The important content "came out". Eliminates the trouble of analyzing full-screen content. Readers will have more confidence in what they see. I don't know which words to delete. The following are some common hiding places of redundant words. Delete the introductory text. Usually when you open a page, the first thing you see is the nonsense at the beginning of the article ("Welcome to our website, we hope you are in a good mood …"). These words don't sound like you are eloquent, nor do they sound like you are attracting people. They only make readers wonder what the author really wants to say. Just delete these words and get to the point. Delete unnecessary descriptions. This kind of content is the "main force" of redundant words, and usually you can "leave none". Delete "Fill in"
After completing these fields, please press the submit button to submit your application to us. "The title of the page ("application form ") and the content of the page (form) are enough for users to understand what they should do. Delete cumbersome explanations. There are usually descriptions and explanatory texts under the links. These words are sometimes necessary, otherwise different people will have different understandings of where the link points. However, descriptive text is usually another source of page redundancy. Replacing "product search: answering a few simple questions will help you find the right product" with "product search" will save 20 words from 24 words. Use descriptive links. The "click here" or "more content" link under the title is usually to explain where to take the reader, just use the title itself as a link.
The principle of deleting words is "delete half of each page and half of the rest." Simple sentences Almost any sentence can be simplified, and almost any text can be deleted. In the book Revised Roses, Richard? RichardLanham introduced us to a simple way to simplify a long story into a short sentence. Don't use prepositions ("for/ according to /for/based/through/about"). These words will weaken the predicate of the sentence, so try to omit them. Don't use the verb form of is ("wasting time"), use other expressions as much as possible ("wasting time"). Convert the passive sentence ("This project needs time") into the active sentence ("This project needs time"). Delete the boring beginning ("it's easy for everyone to see this, …") and get to the point. Cut the crap. On the premise of expressing the same meaning, replace "daily" with "daily". These rules can make words concise, clear and convincing.
Time pressure, the risk and consequences of making mistakes, and the knowledge enjoyed by * * *-these three factors are the core factors used by human beings to simplify dialogue. When designing interactive experience, we can decide how to provide a simple experience according to these factors and the user's situation. During the conversation, people will make a long story short because of the short time, the knowledge they enjoy and the risk of making mistakes.
There is also a cost to using software, equipment or services. The price is not necessarily money, but time. Cutting off functions and content can save time, because there are fewer decisions, fewer buttons, less thinking and less reading. Moreover, the service itself is simpler, the development efficiency is higher and the running speed is faster, which will save time. One of the important reasons why people are willing to spend a lot of money on high-end computers is to save time. The effect of improving performance is immediate, but most product owners cannot see it. They spend a lot of money on superficial functions, while the underlying infrastructure is overwhelmed and hardly supported. Once things become critical, it will be more complicated and costly to solve.
People want to control the situation. They prefer to be navigators rather than passers-by. When they feel unlucky or dominated by invisible forces, they will be very anxious, and even turn to some superstitious behaviors to find a sense of control. For example, when walking, deliberately avoid the gap on the sidewalk, or put on an underwear that can bring good luck. The key here is to let people control the results. In other words, enough control can help them get rid of the anxiety caused by the unsatisfied basic needs, but it is necessary to avoid too much control leading them to waste time because of choice. (For example, how fast does the elevator go and how long does it stop? )
Focus The core of the "delete" strategy is to kill those distracting factors and focus on the project. Focus on features that are valuable to users. This means focusing on the function that carries the user's core experience, and it also means that the delivered function must be able to eliminate the user's frustration and anxiety. By deleting incomplete functions, irrelevant elements and fancy things, focus on available resources and provide value to users. Focus on achieving users' goals. If you stick to the process, you will get stuck in the quagmire of details. Delete those disturbing "speed bumps" that increase the burden on users: error messages, incomprehensible words, unnecessary options and elements that cause visual confusion.
Many psychologists believe that the storage space of human instant memory is actually very small, only about 4 items. But the law of "7 plus or minus 2" is still valid, at least it seems that human beings can cope with this number. When I ask users to divide projects into groups that seem appropriate, they usually divide them into six groups. Of course, no one said that you can't cut a few pieces. I always think that it should be divided as little as possible to make it easier for mainstream users. The fewer blocks, the fewer choices, and the lighter the burden on users.
The first question users will ask when organizing around behavior is: "What can I do with it?" Therefore, before finishing, we must first understand the user's behavior: what they want to do, what to do first, and then what to do.
People usually want to follow certain steps. Disrupting this step will be confusing and frustrating. At this time, the biggest obstacle is the registration process and validity check. If this step can't be cancelled, at least we must find a way to postpone it. If it can't be postponed, try to simplify it. We should carefully understand the operation steps in the user's mind, and then try to make the process conform to the order of each step. This is the charm of the organization.
Peugeot's website, in which the information is organized according to automobile functions (refer to relevant industry standards), options (suitable for dealers) and accessories (suitable for the company itself). This classification is very clear to the company itself. Simple organizational model, clear boundaries, clear right and wrong. In this way, users can clearly know where to find what they want. So find more users and ask their classification standards. If people disagree, or it's hard to answer at all, you're in trouble. Sometimes, you will encounter things that must fall into two categories. Too much overlap can lead to confusion, but sometimes it is really inevitable. Tomatoes are a kind of fruit, not sweet, but you will find them in the vegetable section of the supermarket, so both fruits and vegetables must include tomatoes. The simplest classification usually refers to the classification method with the least overlap.
The key is to organize projects according to relevant indicators. Alphabetical order is suitable for people's names, popularity is suitable for movies before 100, and format classification is suitable for some meeting agendas. It is important to select the index related to the task.
Organizing information according to familiar patterns will enable users to identify and process information very quickly. Finding patterns is the key to simplicity. Some patterns, such as numerical sequences, are so used to it that users can't recognize them even if they want to. Other modes are not easy to see at a glance, especially when there are many possibilities. Even without patterns, users tend to see patterns.
We found that users only use search when the website does not provide effective navigation. Just think about it, in order to find a suitable search keyword, first enter this keyword, and then select useful search results, how troublesome it is. Just click on the link that looks like what you want, which is an easier choice. Browsing doesn't need painstaking efforts. As long as there are links to follow, who wants to mind their own business?
My experience is that designing a simple search interface is actually much more difficult. You must consider spelling mistakes and synonyms in search keywords, and you also need to effectively classify and organize search results. Take a closer look at Google's results page, and you will find that the arrangement of those search results is complicated, and each search result matches the search keyword to the greatest extent. If you want to design a simple user experience, you'd better organize the content effectively first, and then consider how to design the search.
Perceptual layering is easy to achieve with the help of color. In addition to color, you can also achieve a sense of layering by using grayscale, size scaling and even shape changes. Here are some tips. Use as few layers as possible. The more complex the content, the less layered it is. You can consider putting some basic elements in the regular background layer, because it is difficult to put an element in two layers. Try to maximize the difference between any two layers. 20% gray scale and 30% gray scale are difficult to distinguish. Similarly, users with weak colors should not forget when choosing colors. For relatively important categories, using bright and highly saturated colors can make them stand out on the page. For the same important categories, use perceptual layering technology, use the same brightness and size, but different colors (just like the subway lines in the London subway map). To know whether the design is successful, you can squint at the screen to see if you can distinguish different layers.
Colors in hierarchical information make use of the principle of human memory, so people's burden is very light. However, the price of using color to mark information is obvious: like any marking system, people need time to learn and understand these marks, so users need to spend more thought. Adding unnecessary colors can lead to confusion. Color coding system is very suitable to ensure that people will spend a long time studying and reusing your design. Of course, it is no problem to use color codes whose meaning people already know.
For some people, hiding may be the beginning of deleting unnecessary functions: hide it, let it die silently in the dark, and then delete it. I'm skeptical about this practice. If you want to remove any functions, I suggest you look at the deletion mentioned above and see if it is hidden. If you want to delete it, you'd better hurry.
No matter what function is hidden, it means that you have set up a barrier between users and functions. This obstacle may be a plastic warehouse door on the remote control or a series of clicks on the website. In order to avoid unnecessary troubles for users, we must carefully weigh which functions are hidden.
Some functions are not commonly used but can't be less, because they are not directly related to the user's goals, and will not vary from person to person and from place to place. It is about details (such as configuring the server or designing the signature of the email). Options and preferences (for example, changing the units of a drawing application from inches to centimeters). Region-specific information (for example, information that needs to be updated automatically frequently, such as time and date) can be hidden.
If your website or application lacks these functions or controls, it will become too universal to meet the individual needs of users. We usually find that the "Settings" function occupies a corner of the user interface, which is different from the important functions located above or in the middle of the interface. It's best to put them in an open page, or in all pages (it's impossible to know when users will modify settings, so it's best to hide them at the beginning of the website or at the edge of the application). Settings are usually the first choice when looking for features to hide. Settings are very different from infrequently used tasks, because the latter usually involves external targets.
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