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The right approach to ergonomic design tasks The job of a product designer requires finding a middle ground between business requirements and benefits for users. But this does not mean that these requirements always run counter to convenience. Often we come across interfaces in which the designer either did not fully understand the task, or did not pay enough attention from the user, or was simply in a hurry. When assessing a task, it is important to get answers to the following questions: Why is this task necessary? Is there a current solution why it doesn't work? How do users solve the problem now? What goal does the business pursue and what metrics does it want to influence? What value will the user receive from this solution? What can we expect from the final result? Answers to these questions form a holistic understanding of the problem, which is necessary to create a high-quality solution. And in this case, it doesn’t matter whether you work in a company on one product, in a studio on different projects, or create websites as a freelancer. After all, a product is any project for which you are developing a design solution. Even if you are busy with a very small project, this does not mean that it should be of lesser quality. As soon as you receive a task, you should find out its main points. Let's look at the questions in more detail. Why does the task need to be completed? A good designer is one who always understands what he is doing and why, and does not do some work simply because he was told so. Product managers are interested in generating a large number of hypotheses about how this or that solution will help develop the product, increase conversion, attract new audiences, etc. The task of designers is to help solve these hypotheses. For example, there is a hypothesis: If you add additional benefits with advantages to the product card, this will increase the conversion to the application by 100%. Of course, you can simply open the layout, add benefits, layout the page and run a test to see how true the hypothesis is. But you can save time, resources and wonder why we are doing this at all? It may turn out that we are doing this because... Users land on a page with a product, spend some time on it, but do not proceed to checkout. Perhaps they lack understanding of their benefits, so we want to add benefits to influence motivation. The main thing here is that the user studies information about the product, but does not complete it. We go to the product page and see that the product card does not have a button with a call to action, and to proceed to checkout the user must click on the title or image of the product. Thus, the initial task of “add benefits” can develop into “add a CTA button”, based on this, a completely different solution will be required from the designer. Yes, the example is as simple and exaggerated as possible, but I hope the main point is to ask the question “why?” understandable. Remember, the more input you have, the more successful a solution you can prepare. Is there a current solution why it doesn't work? Innovation is important for product development: in order for a product to remain competitive, it is necessary to constantly introduce new technologies, functionality and capabilities. And this means releasing a large number of new features. And what a temptation it is to prepare a unique solution every time in order to show off your design skills, please users with a beautiful interface, but at the same time waste the time of managers, analysts, development resources, and not get a significant test result. If you take a broader look at your product, it's entirely possible that you already have a tool with similar functionality, or that another product team has one. Thus, by reusing a ready-made solution, you will save resources and maintain consistency. If the user has already had experience with one of the features in some section of the product, then similar behavior will be expected from yours. Example: It is necessary to develop functionality that will allow you to rate products or services and leave comments on them. You can develop a unique rating system, think through scenarios for filling out forms, etc. But let’s say the support team already has a solution that allows them to evaluate the operator’s work and leave a comment about the communication experience. You can adapt this solution to suit your goals and reduce development time. Plus, if the user has ever rated a product or service, then when contacting support, he will not have any difficulties with the operator’s rating interface, because there was already experience of interaction. How do users solve the problem now? If it turns out that your product does not have a ready-made solution to solve a particular problem, this still does not mean that you can already uncover the figma. If you know for sure that there is a problem, then users are already somehow living with it and coping with it. Perhaps there are even established patterns of behavior that you are going to break with new functionality. For example, in user interviews, you learned that users have a need to create a list of products they like in order to purchase them later. Create a task: It is necessary to add the ability to add products to the wishlist in order to push users, taking into account their interests to increase sales. You develop functionality, but at the release it turns out that no one uses your list, because users are used to simply storing products in the cart, and selecting only the ones they need when checking out. Instead of analyzing user carts, you essentially duplicated functionality and spent a lot of resources creating it. What goal does the business pursue and what metrics does it want to influence? To develop a high-quality design solution , it is important to understand what goal the business wants to achieve. Each design element should be aimed at achieving a specific purpose, and not just be beautiful and modern. For example, if the business goal is to increase the number of sales of a product, then the design solution should focus on the convenience and clarity of the purchasing process, as well as on motivating users to make it. In this case, a possible solution would not be to repaint the product button in a more “selling” color or draw a richer creative, but to work out the steps for placing an order in the cart. And understanding the metrics helps evaluate the effectiveness of solutions. If you know what metric you want to improve, you can use analytics to determine how successful your solutions are in achieving that metric. For example, you can use A/B testing to compare two different options and determine which one has a better impact on a target metric. What value will the user receive from this solution? Customer trust is very important when developing a product, because one negative experience can lead to a potential loss of money, and this cannot be allowed in a product. Therefore, one of the most important tasks for a product designer is to satisfy the interests of everyone involved. When forming a task, it is important to immediately agree on the goals you want to achieve. For example, there is a common task from a business: Redesign the product catalog to increase sales. Let's figure out why business needs this. Firstly, a catalog redesign can help it become more memorable for customers, shift emphasis to higher-priority products or strengthen the brand, which helps increase conversion on the site. For users, the goals may be saving time on searching for products, personalizing offers, purchasing transparency, etc. The more goals are taken into account, the better and more functional your solution will be. And the more such solutions there are, the more valuable the final product will become for users. What can we expect from the final result? At an early stage, it is important to understand what will be the criterion for success, in other words, how will you even understand that you have solved the problem. This will set the vector for achieving the designated goals and will help with further improvements. You can also prepare a plan B in advance if the result does not live up to expectations. If you don't know what criteria you'll use to evaluate a product's performance and haven't defined the metrics, you may draw incorrect conclusions about the results of the work and will not bring benefit to either the business or users. For example, you decide to make changes or update a product page. The criterion for success could be an increase in conversion by X%. In this case, if the conversion increases, then you can draw conclusions about the success of your solution and continue further work on improvement. If the success criterion has not been defined, then you will refresh the page, but will not track conversion changes. With new improvements, you will lose the step due to which sales fell, as a result, you will not be able to roll back in time, and the business will lose possible profits. What conclusion can be drawn? Design is an important part of the product, and the designer is at the forefront of the interests of both the business and the users. The success of not only individual features, but also the product as a whole depends on how thoughtful you are. You can not only cater to the needs of the business, but influence it, help in its development, shape brand perception and increase the competitiveness of the product in the market. At the same time, the design helps users easily find the information they need, complete tasks quickly, and create a pleasant experience while using the product. And what could be more gratifying for a designer than happy users? |
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