如何做出產品設計決策 (How Product Design Decisions are Made)

Recently in a Facebook group dedicated to designers, known as Designers Guild, a young design student named Marina Candela asked why many modern designs tend to feel so terrible or “backwards” looking, like digressions. Specifically designs from large tech companies like Uber, Apple, or Facebook.

最近，在一個名為Designers Guild的致力于設計師的Facebook組織中，一位名叫Marina Candela的年輕設計專業學生問為什么許多現代設計趨向于看起來如此可怕或“向后”，像題外話。特別是來自Uber，Apple或Facebook等大型科技公司的設計。

You don’t have to read all the latest headlines or browse the countless unsolicited redesigns on Dribbble to understand what this question entails. For many people, both designers and not, the gut reaction to seeing a new design is typically: that is stupid.

您不必閱讀所有最新的頭條新聞，也不必瀏覽Dribbble上無數不請自來的重新設計即可了解此問題的含義。對于許多人(包括設計師和非設計師)而言，看到新設計的直覺通常是： 愚蠢的 。

The problem with this is that design is not a process of beautifying things. Designers don’t get paid to make things necessarily look nice. Yes craft is certainly part of the job, but it’s not the job.

問題在于設計不是美化事物的過程。設計師沒有得到報酬以使事物看起來一定不錯。是的手藝肯定是工作的一部分，但它不是工作。

There’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes when design decisions are made. More than you might imagine.

做出設計決策時，幕后有很多工作要做。超出您的想象。

This is particularly true for companies like Uber and Facebook, or really any large company today. Design at these companies entails everything from research, experimentation, iteration, lab or small group testing, and real-world testing. Each of these steps can take anywhere from a few weeks to months, with the time invested in researching, conceptualizing, and testing, reflecting the potential impact of the design decision. The larger the design task, the longer it takes to move on it.

對于Uber和Facebook之類的公司，或者今天的任何大型公司，尤其如此。這些公司的設計涉及從研究，實驗，迭代，實驗室或小組測試到實際測試的所有內容。這些步驟中的每一個步驟都可能花費數周到數月的時間，并且花費了時間進行研究，概念化和測試，從而反映出設計決策的潛在影響。設計任務越大，進行該任務所需的時間越長。

It’s common for amateur designers and the average Jane or Joe to look at design projects like Uber’s logo or a new design for Instagram or Facebook, and respond solely with their gut. “This looks worse than before! How can anyone understand this?! What were they thinking? This is terribly designed.”

對于業余設計師和普通的Jane或Joe來說，查看Uber徽標之類的設計項目或Instagram或Facebook的新設計是很常見的，并且僅憑直覺來回應。 “這看起來比以前更糟！誰能理解？他們在想什么？這是經過精心設計的。”

In reality, these are vastly more surface level responses then what design intends to deal with.

實際上，這些響應比設計要處理的響應要多得多。

The purpose of the design isn’t always to make something look good, or even better than before. What these design processes are about is solving a problem.

設計的目的并不總是使外觀看起來更好，甚至比以前更好。這些設計過程所要解決的是問題 。

Good design solves problems.

好的設計可以解決問題。

Sometimes the problem is that customers view your brand as a lower-scale version than what they are paying for, which dilutes the value of the company. Other times the problem is that the platform you’ve created is itself outweighing the content it produces or hosts. Or that a primary feature has become hidden, or an influx of new features has crowded the interface, or what you and your team thought made reasonable sense is immensely confusing for people who use the product out in the real world.

有時問題在于，客戶將您的品牌視為比其付費版本低的版本，這削弱了公司的價值。其他時候，問題在于您創建的平臺本身超過了它產生或托管的內容。或者主要功能已被隱藏，或者新功能的涌入使界面擁擠不堪，或者您和您的團隊認為合理的想法對于在現實世界中使用該產品的人們造成極大的困擾。

Other times still there are issues the common designer may never be aware of: scaling a website to suit the needs of almost everyone on the earth, for example. That’s a really hard problem to solve, and an equally hard problem for most people to wrap their heads around.

在其他時候，仍然存在一些普通設計師可能從未意識到的問題：例如，擴展網站以適應地球上幾乎所有人的需求。這確實是一個很難解決的問題，對于大多數人來說，同樣難以解決。

My own experience at Facebook is a good example of this. Most designers will say that Facebook is extremely ugly (and as a designer myself, I tend to agree). Yet Facebook doesn’t have to look phenomenal to work well. And this is what I’m most proud of being a Facebook product designer: the problem of scaling a product for the entire world to use is really, really hard, and yet Facebook is doing it fairly well.

我在Facebook上的經驗就是一個很好的例子。大多數設計師會說Facebook非常丑陋(作為設計師，我傾向于同意)。但是，Facebook不必看起來出色就可以正常工作 。這就是我成為一名Facebook產品設計師時最引以為傲的問題：確實很難擴展整個產品以供全世界使用的問題，而Facebook卻做得很好。

Consider a few of the problems a designer working on Facebook may encounter: Every word, every button, needs to be translated to hundreds of languages, which creates issues with layout spacing among other major hurdles. Content reverses sides of the screen depending on which part of the world you’re in (left-to-right text VS right-to-left text). In some parts of the world certain types of content are simply outlawed, and placeholder or legalese must be put in its place dynamically. Some people use Facebook on their $700 iPhone with unlimited data plans while others use it on a $5 flip phone and only 1mb of data to spare each month. Some people have an internet connection that is 1,000 times slower than others, which means things like images and app size really matter

考慮一下在Facebook上工作的設計師可能遇到的一些問題：每個單詞，每個按鈕都需要翻譯成數百種語言，這在其他主要障礙中造成了布局間距問題。內容會根據您所處的世界區域(從左到右的文本與從右到左的文本)而在屏幕的兩邊反轉。在世界某些地區，某些類型的內容被簡單地取締了，并且占位符或法文必須動態地放置在其位置。有些人在700美元的iPhone上使用Facebook并提供無限制的數據套餐，而另一些人則在5美元的翻蓋手機上使用Facebook，每月僅保留1mb的數據。有些人的互聯網連接速度比其他人慢1000倍，這意味著諸如圖片和應用大小之類的東西確實很重要

The best designers consider not only the objective of a project (like the ability to live stream from the app) but also the constraints they must work within and the issues they must work around. Not only that, but much of the design process we encounter day-to-day should be about determining whether or not the problem being solved is the right problem to solve to begin with. And if it’s not: how do we go about identifying the real problems?

最好的設計師不僅考慮項目的目標(例如從應用程序實時流式播放的能力 )，還考慮他們必須在其中工作的約束以及必須解決的問題。不僅如此，我們每天遇到的許多設計過程都應該與確定要解決的問題是否是一開始要解決的正確問題有關。 如果不是，那么：我們如何確定真正的問題？

So while it’s easy to look at a design and think it’s ugly, or lame, or a digression, the reality is that there are many, many, many, many decisions being made and considerations taking place behind the scenes which have led to the latest design.

因此，雖然很容易看清設計并認為它丑陋，la腳或離題，但現實是，有很多很多決定在做，并且考慮到幕后的原因導致了最新的設計。設計。

And if the team behind the design has done their work well, they’ve tested and experimented and validated their work enough to push it to the place where people like you or other designers can finally get a look at it.

如果設計背后的團隊做得很好，那么他們已經對自己的工作進行了測試，試驗和驗證，足以將其推向可以像您這樣的人或其他設計師的視野的地方。

That doesn’t mean the design is done, but it does mean that it’s “done enough” to satisfy any major concerns.

這并不意味著設計已經完成，而是意味著它“足夠完善”，可以滿足任何主要問題。

One thing you can do to better equip yourself to evaluate design work is to step back and think of all the scenarios the person(s) responsible are attempting to address. I outlined a few we encounter at Facebook above, but I’m sure you can come up with many more of your own.

為了使自己更好地評估設計工作，您可以做的一件事是退后一步，考慮一下負責人員試圖解決的所有方案。我概述了上面我們在Facebook上遇到的一些問題，但是我敢肯定，您可以提出更多自己的想法。

Before judging a design you should ask questions like:

在評審設計之前，您應該提出以下問題：

What problem is this attempting to solve?
試圖解決什么問題？
Who is it solving it for? If not me, then who?
它是為誰解決的？如果不是我，那又是誰？
What problems or scenarios might those people encounter that this design is considering?
這些人正在考慮的設計可能會遇到哪些問題或場景？
What are the limitations being designed for?
設計的局限性是什么？
What about constraints?
約束呢？

Lastly, as additional food for thought, consider the fact that people simply don’t like change. Change presents challenges we mostly want to do without. But change is inevitable, and while new designs can feel strange or unfriendly at first, we inevitably grow into them because… well, time works that way.

最后，作為思考的補充，考慮一下人們根本不喜歡變化的事實。變革提出了我們最想做的挑戰。但是改變是不可避免的，盡管新設計乍一看會讓人感到陌生或不友好，但我們不可避免地會融入其中，因為……好吧，時間就是這樣。