Let’s start with an example of communication skills: they are important for any profession, and you expect any professional to have a decent level. However, excellent communication skills won’t make up for the lack of core expertise. Imagine a plumber who is a great communicator (just look at his sense of humor!), would you still hire him if he was a terrible plumber? Nope.

讓我們從一個溝通技巧的例子開始：它們對任何職業都很重要，并且您希望任何一個職業都具有體面的水平。 但是，出色的溝通能力無法彌補核心專業知識的不足。 想象一下一個管道工，他是一個出色的交流者(看看他的幽默感！)，如果他是一個糟糕的管道工，您還會雇用他嗎？ 不。

The same goes for software and visual design — it’s good to have your app looking great, but it won’t make up for the lack of core functionality or bad experience. If I’m comparing two products that are otherwise almost identical, I’ll go with the one that has a better design. But visual design is not a silver bullet — if a product doesn’t function properly, not usable or even worse, does something no one cares about, no amount of special effects will save it.

軟件和視覺設計也是如此-讓您的應用看起來很棒是很好的，但不能彌補缺乏核心功能或糟糕的體驗。 如果要比較在其他方面幾乎相同的兩種產品，那么我將選擇設計更好的產品。 但是視覺設計不是靈丹妙藥 -如果一種產品無法正常運行，無法使用甚至更糟，并且做了沒人關心的事情，那么沒有多少特殊效果可以節省下來。

It sounds obvious yet gets ignored a lot — with stakeholders expecting all product problems to be solved with a nice animation, and designers spending hours refining line thickness. What are we not usually talking about?

聽起來似乎很明顯，卻被很多人忽略了-利益相關者期望所有產品問題都可以通過精美的動畫來解決，而設計師則花費數小時來精煉線條粗細。 我們通常不談論什么？

用戶界面上花費的時間收益遞減 (Diminishing returns on time spend on UI)

Once you’ve covered all the basics, investing time further will bring less and less tangible benefits. You can be surprised how little users pay attention to a detail you just spent 3 hours refining.

掌握了所有基本知識后，進一步投資時間將帶來越來越少的切實利益。 您可能會驚訝于很少有用戶注意到您剛剛花費了3個小時進行細化的細節。

To make it worse, visual design is a common topic for bikeshedding which makes it likely that more than one person was involved in a one-hour decision neither business nor user would care about.

更糟的是，視覺設計是自行車棚的一個常見主題，這可能導致一個小時的決策中涉及多個人，而業務和用戶都不關心。

視覺設計不能解決所有問題 (Visual design doesn’t solve all the problems)

There’s a myth about visual design making everything better (just “make it wow!”). In some cases, the product improvements lie in different areas, and visual design won’t make any difference or will make a very limited impact. A real-life example:

視覺設計有一個神話，它可以使一切變得更好(只是“哇哇！”)。 在某些情況下，產品的改進位于不同的領域，視覺設計不會產生任何變化或產生非常有限的影響。 一個真實的例子：

Form with 80 fields — no one is going to use it no matter how delightful the UI is. You need to review your data requirements and see what data can be obtained automagically.

具有80個字段的表單-無論用戶界面多么令人愉悅，都不會使用它。 您需要查看數據要求，并查看可以自動獲取哪些數據。

因此，您應該在UI上花費更多時間嗎？ (So, should you spend more time on your UI?)

Does the UI enable the product to function well and serve the purpose?The function is clear for each element, there’s enough contrast, the interface is predictable, hierarchy is clear etc.

UI是否使產品正常運行并達到目的？ 該功能對于每個元素都是清晰的，具有足夠的對比度，界面是可預測的，層次結構清晰等。

Does it properly communicate emotions/tone?What would you like your users to feel? How would your product appear for them — friendly, badass, strict and professional?

它能正確傳達情緒/語氣嗎？ 您希望用戶感覺如何？ 您的產品對他們來說將如何出現-友好，壞蛋，嚴格和專業？

Is it reasonably aligned with the brandHow much personality does it need to have?

是否與品牌合理地結合在一起 ？它需要多少個性？

Will it scale?Would your current choices restrict you in the future?

會縮放嗎？ 您當前的選擇會在將來限制您嗎？

Is there anything else you want to achieve“Make it pretty” doesn’t count, “explore” does

您是否還想實現 “讓它變得漂亮”不重要，而“探索”卻沒有

Are there other priorities?Is there something more impactful you can use your time and energy for?

還有其他優先事項嗎？ 您可以用時間和精力來做一些更有影響力的事情嗎？

(How to find something more impactful to work on? here’s a cheat-sheet of relatively fast and easy discovery methods/data sources)

(如何找到更有效的方法來工作？這是相對快速簡便的發現方法/數據源的備忘單 )

你為什么要在乎？ (Why would you care?)

• Knowing when to stop will free up your time and your brain to work on something impactful
  知道什么時候停下來可以騰出您的時間和精力去做一些有影響力的事情
• Wasting man-hours on insignificant detail will diminish design community effort to be taken seriously by business and “having a seat at the table”
  將時間浪費在微不足道的細節上將減少設計界的工作量，這些工作需要企業認真對待并“坐到桌旁”

At the end of the day, if you improved your UI, but no one noticed,did you improve your UI?

歸根結底，如果您改進了UI，但沒有人注意到，您是否改進了UI？