What are the roles of UI designers?

Let's look at the responsibilities of UI designers: 1. Making MRD(marketrequirementdocument).

Market demand document. After obtaining the approval of the project initiating department, the product needs to be realized first, and the market and competitors need to be analyzed in more detail, which functions are used to achieve business purposes, which functional/non-functional requirements are divided, and the priority of functions is required. In practical work, the possible outputs of PD at this stage include MindManager's mind map, Excel's FeatureList and so on. 2. Formulate PRD(ProctRequirementsDocument).

Product requirements document. As soon as the progress is refined, this part is written by PM the most, that is, demand analysis in the traditional sense. We mainly refer to UC (use case) documents here. The main contents include: the specific description of function usage (generally useful examples of each UC, actors, preconditions, postconditions, UI description, process/sub-process/branch process, etc. ), function point business process, interface description, demo, etc. produced by Visio. In terms of Demo, dreamweaver, ps and even the sketchpad may just be a simple drawing, and sometimes there will be UI/UE to support the production of a high-fidelity demo and develop the kind that can be used directly in the future. 3. User analysis report

Collect relevant data, analyze the use characteristics, emotions, habits, minds and needs of target users, and put forward user research reports and usability design suggestions. This part of the work can also be done in cooperation with the team. When time and project requirements permit, real-life user analysis can be carried out. 4. Product architecture design

This involves a lot of interface interaction and process design. According to the results of usability analysis, the interaction mode, operation and jump process, structure, layout, information and other elements are formulated. The above is what UI designers need to follow up. It's really your task to start from here. 5. Product prototype design.

It is to do a lot of typesetting and layout of page modules and elements, deepen them, and add some interactive elements to make them more concrete, vivid and vivid. The process design of the whole system is also the UI designer's. To this end, you should often browse a large number of websites, personally experience and accumulate classic, friendly and cordial system processes, and you should consider any final link of the whole system. This is the biggest and most difficult part of the UI designer. For example, the user registration process, where to go after success, where to go after failure, how many processes are successful, what objects each process contains, and so on. 6. UI design.

If you are inclined to graphic interface design, here is your favorite part. But be sure to design with the analysis results of circular discussion, otherwise your work will be difficult to convince. Tone, style, interface, window, icon and skin expression are the keys to this link. 7. Interface output

In this respect, the page engineer cooperates with the front-end programmer to code the interface. As a UI designer, the basic works that can best meet your design are of course from your own hands. To do this, you should know how to crop pictures and make static pages. Then all kinds of special effects SHTML, style sheets and JS codes are used to realize your great design. You don't have to do it yourself, but you must have a standardized design. Your construction team must operate in full accordance with the specifications under your training and leadership, just like an architect. 8. Analyze user reports and make perfect adjustments.

Multi-department participation, including usability cycle research, user experience feedback and test feedback. At the same time, UI personnel should also improve some feasible suggestions. Many designers don't like to change things, which is a big taboo. 9. SEO optimization design of the whole project.

But as far as many companies are concerned, what they get from UI designers is a VISO diagram without any explanation, which gives many UI designers an illusion that I only need to make renderings, and all other links are ignored, resulting in the design of product interface due to lack of information. However, when facing users, it is not competitive at all. I think UI designers should join in at the beginning of the project, including understanding market positioning, profit model, competitors and so on. By analyzing competitors' user interfaces, we can give UI designers a preliminary graphic concept. By participating in user surveys, user analysis can obtain user characteristics, age, needs, preferences and other information. These are all in the style positioning. Grasping plays a vital role. By understanding the product structure, I know what functions should be done and what functions should be highlighted. After participating in the above work, I believe many UI designers are confident in the products they want to design. Later, I adjusted the interface by analyzing user reports, user feedback and other information, so that a perfect product can be put on the market, which is no longer entirely based on the personal preferences of UI designers. ..

So what kind of ability do you need as a UI designer? UI design can be divided into three directions from the work content. It is mainly determined by three factors of UI research, namely, research tools, the relationship between researchers and interfaces, and researchers. Research Interface-Graphic Designer GraphicUIdesigner At present, most UI workers in China are engaged in this industry. Some people call him an artist, but in fact he is not an artist in a simple sense, but a product form designer of software products.

Most of these designers graduated from art colleges, and most of them have the educational background of art design, such as industrial appearance design, decoration design, information multimedia design and so on. Study the relationship between human and interface. Before the graphical interface appeared, UI designers were always called interaction designers. The job of the interaction designer is to design the operation flow, tree structure, software structure and operation specification (spec) of the software. What a software product needs to do before coding is interaction design, interaction model and interaction specification. Interaction designers are generally software engineers with backgrounds. Researcher-User Testing/Research Engineer Any product needs to be tested in order to ensure the quality, the coding of software needs to be tested, and the natural UI design also needs to be tested. This test has nothing to do with coding, but mainly tests the rationality of interactive design and the aesthetics of graphic design. The testing method generally adopts focus group, and measures the rationality of UI design in the form of target user questionnaire. This position is very important. Without this position, the quality of UI design can only be judged by the experience of designers or the aesthetics of leaders, which will bring serious risks to enterprises. User research engineers are generally psychologists, and their literary background is more appropriate.

To sum up, UI designers are: software graphic designers, interaction designers and user research engineers. The real meaning of this position: ui designer is by no means an artist (or just doing "beautification" work), but a technical position rather than an artistic position. If we examine the competency model of a ui designer, he should have four dimensions of competency at the same time:

1, communication and document writing ability: If ui is the bridge and link between man and machine, then ui designers are the bridge and link between software design developers and end users. If the ui designer can't have good communication and understanding skills and write excellent guiding principles and norms, then he can't show his dual values to developers and customers, and he can't finish his work.

2. Excellent technical ability: You don't have to write java, but you absolutely have to know what java is and what it can achieve. Even if you can't write code, you must at least "realize". For example, if you want to make a grid control, you should first know what data formats are available and how they are stored: you can get data through html mark, json object or array, or xml or even strings. Secondly, you need to know which is more suitable for the current environment, the server-side implementation or the client-side implementation. These all depend on skilled and experienced ui designers, while ui designers who don't know technology can neither make reasonable designs nor communicate effectively with developers. In a word, ui designers should at least be proficient in the mainstream development technology of presentation layer (if they are doing web presentation layer, they generally need to be proficient in html, css, javascript, xml technology, and even jsp and java have to reach the working layer), and have sufficient understanding of the mainstream design patterns, technical routes and open source frameworks in the market. It can be said that ui designers should strive to be "presentation layer architects" in terms of technical quality and ability. 3. Graphic design ability and prototype development: The most important work for a ui designer in his life should be graphic and prototype design. So, let's talk about what prototype design is first. Prototype method is a common means in iterative development and design stage, and prototype design should run through three stages: requirement, general design and detailed design. The purpose of developing a prototype is to turn the design into an "interface language" that users can understand, and at the same time, it also plays a certain guiding role for developers (even as part of development). The value of user interface prototype lies in that it can help software designers find the defects in each stage of design as early as possible, solve these potential problems before development, and greatly reduce the risk and cost of software development. This is essentially different from the traditional waterfall development. At present, most domestic companies still adopt waterfall development mode and put ui design in the later stage of development. This not only makes ui designers unable to give full play to their strengths, but also makes up for it by "beautifying", and also makes the developed products often have fatal design defects, which can not meet the needs of customers. Therefore, the "art designer" in every company is a result of the backward and imperfect software development method, not the profession of "art designer" or the ui designer itself. Let's talk about graphic design ability. In fact, ui designer is just a general term. Within the ui design industry, it can be roughly divided into the following roles: usability and interaction designer, visual planner, user experience researcher, graphical user interface designer, etc. The commonly understood ui designer is actually a gui designer (such as rokey of China, who is an excellent gui designer and currently works for Microsoft). The main job of gui designers is visual positioning and creation. The following chapters will introduce the responsibilities and daily work of gui designers in detail. If the ui designer does not have excellent graphic creation ability, then he can't express the beauty in his mind at all, and "communication" is out of the question. Graphic design ability is the most basic ability of every ui designer at the beginning. It is also the part that can best measure the ability level of a ui designer.

4. The theory of human factors and cognitive psychology: Although this concept is a bit big, it is an area that every ui designer should strive to explore all his life after his career is stable. It can be said that the essence of design is "people". As a human-oriented interface, it is natural to understand people and their behaviors. For example, you can't design an interface that displays two important tips at the same time in different positions on the same interface-because people can only have one focus at the same time, which is determined by physiology, not someone's subjective assumption. For another example, why does windows find its previous shadow more or less every time it is upgraded? You might say that this is the design style of Microsoft. No, it's not a style, but a habit. It used to be a habit of Microsoft. Now, you use windows, so you have this habit. Which operating system is better, Apple or Microsoft? The answer is whatever you like. Yes, what a simple truth-like, like is a habit, how can you be sure that the design you think is "correct" is exactly what people like? Here you can mention the style of extjs, in short, the traditional interactive style (wmip) of desktop applications. What is the style of web? If I ask you, I prefer the internet to be an open magazine and a hot spot to show designers' talents. In my experience, webui design is the most difficult and restrictive in all software ui design fields (these restrictions are often uncertain). Even if an excellent webui designer turns to desktop ui design or mobile device interface design, it is relatively easy to succeed. Therefore, as a webui designer, it is understandable to reject the desktop ui style, which stems from his habit and his "liking". 5. Have high-level aesthetic ability, spatial thinking ability, logical ability and certain literary accomplishment, keep a young heart and don't fall into the mode of digging your own grave, and your creativity will never be exhausted. At this point, you should have a general understanding of the names ui design and ui designer. On the issue of "art design", I should have my own conclusion, so I won't explain it any more. Another digression: ui designer is a relatively high technical position in the position system of the company where I am currently working, equivalent to a senior software engineer, and needs more than 3 years of industry experience to be competent; Senior ui designers and software designers are at the same level, and their common upper-level position is architect. This is very different from the "artists" recruited by some companies. Give everyone a little confidence and look at the prospects of domestic UI designers. The status quo of domestic UI design is still a relatively unfamiliar word in domestic UI. Even Rococo design is constantly exploring the needs of customers and users on the road of UI design. We often see some job advertisements that say: interface artist, interface art designer and so on. This shows that the understanding of UI in China is still in the aspect of art design, and the work of UI is only to draw lines and strokes, lacking the understanding of the importance of user interaction. On the other hand, in the process of software development, there is still a phenomenon of attaching importance to technology and neglecting application. Many merchants think that the core of software products is technology, and UI is only an aid, which can be reflected in the proportion and treatment of personnel. However, this is not the real value embodiment of UI design, but an inevitable process for the development of UI design. Let us take the mobile phone industry as an example. When mobile phones first entered the market, they were not only prohibitively expensive, but also had no other functions except talking. Because of the dominant technology at that time, everyone was concerned about signals, standby time, life and so on. , but pay little attention to the shape of the product and the rationality of use. Time has passed, and the current technology has fully met the needs of users. Therefore, in order to create selling points and improve competitiveness, businesses attach great importance to product design, in addition to frequently launching SMS, color screen, harmony, MMS, camera and so on. In this way, the beauty, individuality, ease of use, easy learning and humanization of the product have become the selling points of the product. The development of software products and material products is the same. In the past, due to the limitation of computer hardware, coding design became synonymous with software development, and the beautiful and friendly graphical interface and reasonable and easy-to-use interaction mode were not paid enough attention. In fact, the software of this period is called software program, not software product. Nowadays, with the rapid development of computer hardware, the past software programs can no longer meet the requirements of users. In the fierce market competition, it is not enough for software products to have powerful functions, and it is not enough to defeat powerful opponents. Fortunately, some far-sighted national enterprises in China have begun to realize the huge selling points that UI brings to software products, such as Kingsoft's movie tyrants, word tyrants, drug tyrants and Internet logos. Due to the emphasis on UI development and status, Jinshan products are second to none among similar software products. The UI department of Lenovo Software actively carried out user research and usability testing, combined ease of use and aesthetics, and launched successful UI examples such as dual-mode computers and happiness series, which won Lenovo the title of the third consumer PC in the world, and so on. Practice has proved that merchants will have great output if they invest less in the beautiful and easy-to-use design of products. Its input-output ratio is far greater than the input of function-led development. We have to admit that there is a considerable gap between China and western developed countries in many fields at this stage. How to catch up with them is the historical mission of our generation. The field of software products is not limited by technology and materials like material products, and the core problem of software products is people. Improving the personal ability of software UI designers and reducing the personnel gap is the first key issue in the development of UI in China. At present, there is no relatively sound UI design major in domestic universities, so the key to improve the ability of UI designers lies in providing a good resource environment for learning and communication. There are many communication design websites in China, which introduce industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, painting art, multimedia flash and so on. However, UI design has not received due attention, and it is only placed in the column of digital design or graphic web design. This unique resource is not enough to train excellent designers. It is necessary to have a place with fast information, rich resources, first-class design level and professional authority to learn and exchange UI design to meet the needs of growing UI designers.