Bad Habits of UI/UX Designers (交互设计师的那些坏习惯)

Posted 2021-02-02 lixiang12

From creating imaginary users to forgetting about budgets, the design process has some flaws.

Recently, I was pulled into a UI/UX meeting with a big regional bank’s internal team and IT vendor. The bank had hired a whole army of UI/UX designers to revamp both internal and client-facing systems. The senior team members were paid five-figure salaries a month and given senior vice president titles.

It was bizarre and almost illogical how they went about their UI/UX design process. Out of that meeting came a few revelations I just had to share.

（作者最近加入了一个项目，一家地区银行花了很高昂的成本雇佣了一个资深交互设计团队来负责对内和对外的产品设计，然而作者在了解了他们的设计流程之后忍不住挑出了他们的一些坏习惯）

Creating Imaginary Personas Instead of Asking Real Users（创造想象的用户画像而不是去问问真实的用户）

Why do some UX designers create imaginary “personas” to determine requirements when there are thousands of existing end users who can tell you what they want?（为什么有些交互设计师总会创造一些想象的用户模型去决定需求，而不是去问问那些真实存在的成千上万的用户到底想要什么？）

I’m not against using personas for brainstorming sessions if it’s difficult to survey real users. But if the actual end users are available, why wouldn’t you just go out and talk to them? Instead of having a bunch of UI/UX folks sitting in a room imagining themselves to be a 16-year-old or a 60-year-old using the app and then sticking Post-it notes all over a wall.（如果用户需求很难直接去采集，作者也不反对用头脑风暴的方式去使用用户画像分析，但如果直接采集需求可行，那为什么不呢）

To make things worse, wireframes and design mock-ups are approved by managers who aren’t the end user or target audience of an app.

The proof of a pudding is in the eating.（布丁好不好吃，吃了才知道，实践才能出真知嘛）

The judge of a good UI/UX design shouldn’t be the designer, the manager, or even the CEO. It should be the user. Why else would it be called user interface and user experience?（评价一个设计方案好坏的应该是用户，而不是设计师、经理或是CEO）

Brainstorming Without Regard for Budget and Technical Constraints（不顾及项目预算和技术条件限制的头脑风暴）

I left that meeting wondering if the team’s projects typically lead to bad outcomes since they’re based on a bunch of designers playing out hypothetical, idealistic situations. It turns out I was right.（作者看到这些爱猜想的设计师的设计过程，有预感这项目要凉，果然不出所料）

A few days later, I had the chance to catch up with an old friend who is also a senior vice president in the bank. He’s been with the bank for some years, and he knew the UI/UX lead I had met with. He had sat in a few meetings with her team for a revamp of one of the systems his department uses. I asked him about the outcome. He said it was a sad and regrettable affair; “a missed opportunity” were his exact words.（作者从银行副总那得知，项目最后黄了，并且觉得很后悔因此错失了大好的机遇）

Why? Because after all that idealistic brainstorming, the team took the design to the developers, who said too much of it required customization work due to the platform the system sat on. In the end, the bank decided the cost was too high and went for something simpler.（由于技术上受到限制，成本又太高，最终银行选择了更简单的方案）

So, my friend said, the chance to greatly improve a platform the bankers used frequently was missed. The result wasn’t what the end users were hoping for. All those hours spent brainstorming by the designers in their “scrum sessions” amounted to wasted time and money.

I heard about this pitfall in an Adobe conference many years ago. One of their product evangelists said that designers and developers in a web design company often end up hating each other. Designers create beautiful mock-ups in Photoshop. Clients love it and sign off. But when the coders receive it, they find the beautiful artwork and concepts difficult, or even impossible, to implement given the technical constraints. Hence they quarrel.（设计师和开发人员之间的争执很多时候也是因为设计出来的产品看起来很漂亮却很难实现，有时候甚至根本实现不了）

Wouldn’t it be easier if everyone just talked to each other from the beginning?

To be fair to designers, their final product is often more reflective of the clients’ vision than their own. But having been involved in projects big and small for years, I’ve learned how important it is to manage client expectations and involve developers in the discussion from day one to ensure the vision fits within the budget. Clients should realize that they can’t ask for the sky if their budget doesn’t cater for that… Ideals seldom come cheap!

Reducing Clutter by Rearranging Layouts and Elements（通过传统重排布局的方式去减少海量信息带来的混乱）

We are in the cognitive era. It’s time design caught up with technology, instead of just using clever artwork and neat layout. Science and art needs to meet… and marry.（我们生活在认知的时代，艺术应该拥抱科学）

Most designers still think very much in terms of fixed navigation menus and content layouts. It might well be the case that the basic navigation items should all be there by default. But beyond that, we should always let users customize their UI based on their own preferences. Or better still, in the case of enterprise software, we can use the login profiles to vary the UI menu according to the user’s role. In the middle of a session, A.I. can predict the next command the user is likely to need. The best mobile apps and productivity software are already doing this.

With screen devices getting smaller and smaller, the best apps and sites are also increasingly using A.I. to customize the content served to the user. Designers need to think in more dynamic terms when planning menu items and content layout. Only then can clutter be truly reduced in this information-overloaded era of ours.（用户的屏幕越来越小，最好的应用或网页应该能通过人工智能的方式为用户提供定制化的服务，设计师应该更动态的处理页面菜单和内容，这样才能真正的解决海量信息带来的混乱）

Of course, none of this is easy. It requires a UI/UX designer to think like a programmer and draw like a designer. But then, with the number of jobs being replaced by algorithms, even in design, being able to do this is how you won’t lose your job to a robot.

A good joke is simple and intuitive. That should also be the case for good UI/UX. It should leave the user delighted and wanting to share it with others.

作者：Lance Ng