Some time ago, I was invited to teach a basic class of design rules to newly recruited designers in the department. As an interaction designer, the laws of interaction design are definitely a knowledge point that cannot be avoided. "The Law", I actually always have some doubts.
Because I didn't understand the author's organization idea, and I couldn't find any introduction to the document, I felt that it would be irresponsible to phone number list talk about the 7 laws of interaction design just like the script, so I based on my nearly 10 years of interaction design experience, It redefines today's "5 Laws of Interaction Design", hoping to inspire you to understand and apply design laws.
Before introducing the redefined laws of interaction design, let's review the classic "7 Laws of Interaction Design":
Fitts' law tells us what to do to save operating time: zoom in on the target object and reduce the target distance.
Hick's Law tells us what to do to phone number list save decision time: reduce the number of options as much as possible.
Miller's law tells us the upper limit of human memory, so the amount of information should be controlled within 4±1.
The proximity law tells us that adjacent ≈ related, so organize their positional relationships according to information closeness.
Tessler's law tells us that complexity is conserved, and we need to balance the balance of complexity in order to maximize the overall benefit.
Error-proofing principle tells us that user error is inevitable, we can only reduce and reduce the possibility of it.
The principle of Occam's razor tells us not to increase the entity if it is not necessary, and the design should be as simple as possible.
I don’t know how you feel after reading the above 7 laws. My feeling is that they are somewhat overlapping with each other (Occam’s razor principle, Hick’s law, Miller’s law are all conveying information to be simplified), but use it to summarize The essence of interaction design is not complete (is it enough to do these points?), and the essence of overall interaction design is not clearly expressed (how to summarize the goal of interaction design in one sentence?)
With these questions, I reconsider what is the underlying design goal of interaction design? Which interaction design laws can better reflect its essence? Here are the results of my thinking:
The ultimate goal of interaction design is to change and influence user behavior to achieve desired business results, such as the order rate, search rate and other result indicators. The result indicators vary from product to product and are not universal and cannot be generalized.
In the process of interaction design, the process indicators guided by the laws of interaction design are universal, and can be said to be applicable everywhere. understand?
The so-called less means that the information functions should be refined and clear at a glance, and the complexity of functions/information should be reduced as much as possible.
The so-called fast, both performance and efficiency, refers to responding to user operations as quickly as possible to achieve user goals.
The so-called good is that the design of the product must meet the first-class design standards in the industry, so that users can use it smoothly and with satisfaction.
The so-called saving means saving effort and time, which can help users save time and reduce operational and cognitive load.
Based on such process indicators, I have selected 5 design laws for design guidance. Let's take a look at them one by one.
The principle of Occam's razor
The principle of Occam's razor tells us: don't increase the entity if it is unnecessary, that is, the "simple and effective principle". This applies to industrial products as well as software products. Because any additional non-essential information and functions will increase production/maintenance costs, as well as user awareness/operation costs.
In today's attention-scarce age, complexity can be daunting and easy to get lost, and streamlined products are better for people to understand and operate.
Typical Case:
Compared with the traditional remote control design, Xiaomi's TV remote control design uses the principle of Occam's razor to the extreme. I believe everyone can feel the reduction of visual/operation/cognitive load before and after streamlining.
Let's look at another case of Internet product design:
At the beginning of 2019, the export browser made a major visual redesign, and the changes from the interaction structure to the visual interface were relatively large, so we added a new version of the sliding screen guide to tell users what interface and function changes have been made.
As a result, during the new version of Grayscale, the penetration rate of information flow dropped by 33%, and the search dropped by 18%. After careful data investigation, it was found that it was all the fault of the sliding screen guide. The data is back to normal.
At the end of 2019, another operational activity we did experienced a similar lesson. At that time, koi were very popular, so we did a small activity of koi battle. The pictures were exquisite and the rewards were more attractive.
However, it was found that the conversion rate effect was not as good as expected after the event was launched. We once again aimed at the masking guide. By removing the masking guide, the CTA button was scene-based, and micro-motion effects were added, and the conversion effect was immediately improved.
Remove unnecessary guidance and let the interface speak by itself, which is also a manifestation of Occam's razor principle.