In the eyes of an excellent product manager, everything is a product. Product managers should love life, love to think, and take the attitude of knowing things, and have an insight into the product logic, such as smashing and smashing.
Today, I will analyze the elevators that we are familiar with in our daily life from the perspective of products, as well as some of our own thinking. I will use the logic of the front and back ends to divide, the front end carries more user experience, and the back end carries logical processing that the user can't see.
The above flow chart is the simplest and most normal process in the process of using the elevator. The actual situation is much more complicated. There is a point of view in the product that the exception process is much more than the normal process. Front end arrangement
I must have had such an experience. When I entered a strange elevator, I took a lot of effort in the pile of digital buttons to find my target floor. The arrangement of the elevator buttons was not the same as I thought. Is it very similar?
From the point of view of the product, in fact, before we enter the elevator, our psychology already has the arrangement we think, which is the psychological expectation of the user is also called the psychological model. Once the actual situation does not match our default mental model, the user has to rethink the elevator's control panel and re-establish a new mental model, which consumes a lot of patience and time.
In the actual application scenario, the elevator buttons are arranged in a variety of ways, and even some are odd-shaped, but there are some for entertainment and entertainment needs.
The title of the first chapter of "Don't make me think" is: Don't let users think. Compared to reading, users are more adept at scanning, and user patience is extremely limited.
Align
The four basic principles of design: intimacy, alignment, repetition, contrast. Alignment is to make the interface look uniform and organized. Designs are often connected, no elements can be placed on the interface, and each element should have some visual connection to another element on the interface. None of these designs meet the user's psychological expectations and violate the basic principles of design.
metaphor
Satisfy the principle of alignment, just in the visual layer to meet the user experience. During the reading process, the user develops a habit of going from left to right and top to bottom. However, the user's choice of floor button is not just a reading experience, but an interactive process. Floors and buttons have a mapping relationship, so the buttons should convey metaphors to the user. The actual numbering of the floors is arranged from low to high, so the bottom-up is more in line with the user's psychological expectations.
Metaphor: When virtual objects and interactions in an application are similar to those already familiar to users—whether those experiences are derived from real or digital life—users can quickly grasp how to use the application.
Feedback
Response analysis after pressing: After clicking, the selected floor button is highlighted, giving the prompt of “operational success”. When some elevators arrive at the target floor, there will be ringtones, which are all feedback.
An important point in the process of human-computer interaction is the feedback of the operation. We need to give timely feedback to the user's operation. The immediate response will give the user a sense of trust and security. Our most common forms of feedback in product design are: page feedback, pop-up feedback, toast feedback, tips feedback, and more.
Feedback principle:
1. Provide necessary, positive and immediate feedback for users to operate at various stages;
2. Avoid excessive feedback, so as to avoid unnecessary interruption to the user, and can see the effect and simple operation in time, and the feedback prompt can be omitted. In general, feedback that exceeds user expectations and is reasonable can lead to a great user experience.
Designed for special people
The general elevator button is placed in the middle of the right side of the door. This design actually ignores some users who use the elevator: disabled people. It is very difficult for a blind or wheelchair user to use a normal control panel. In order to be more user-friendly, more and more elevators are individually provided with button panels that are convenient for disabled people to operate.
Good products will be designed separately for special people. The AssistiveTouch on the iPhone was originally designed for the disabled, so that they can also feel the convenience that technology brings to life.
Android also has native accessibility features: large font settings, zoom gestures; text-to-speech (TTS) output, voice assistant; color flip function; Voice Access function, Talk back.
According to the data, the number of people with disabilities in the world has reached 500 million, a very large number. So we need to spend more energy to help these special groups and let them know the world better.
Backend rule design
I said a seemingly joke, the program that does not understand the algorithm is not a qualified product dog. In my opinion, a large part of the daily work done by product managers is to design rules. These rules must make the service process more reasonable, convenient, and human in the scope of technology implementation. Rules require algorithms to implement, and more and more functions are based on algorithms, so product managers need to learn a lot of knowledge, and continuous learning is king.
The elevator has a complete elevator scheduling algorithm. Interested students can go to learn more.
Everyday the elevator we use has a basic operating rule: when the elevator is in the ascending state, it only responds to the request of the user who is higher than the elevator position; when the elevator is in the descending state, it only responds to the lower user request than the elevator position.
With the development of artificial intelligence technology, intelligent group control technology will develop rapidly. In other words, the elevators in the entire building will be associated with each other and will work together like a human. The scheduling is performed according to the actual passenger flow to maximize the scheduling efficiency.
Exception logic
The longer the product is made, the deeper the pit of the product will be discovered. Design products must be thoughtful and avoid loopholes in the details. If you design an elevator, it is easy to ignore these problems: the top button is not set to the top button, the bottom button is not set to the down button, the elevator weight and waiting time are limited. . .
The limitation of abnormal operation in product design is the instinct of the product manager. For example, you should shield yourself from transferring money, commenting, adding friends, etc. Regarding the elevator, I have listed some abnormal behaviors that everyone can think about and practice, perhaps inspiring the product design process.
While the line is going up, when the floor lower than the current floor is going down, press the floor button higher than the current floor. When the elevator rises or falls, press the door open button. Only one person requests the elevator. The external button is selected and enters the elevator. After selecting the floor closing button higher than this floor
In fact, I have always been skeptical about closing the button, once suspected that this button is a display. A lot of people obviously waste a lot of time and can't see it, but it is particularly anxious to save a few seconds.
After my own comparison test and query data prove that the closing button will have a role, some buildings for efficiency reasons, closing the button will be less waiting time. But I also saw an article on the Internet saying that the elevator button in foreign countries didn't work at all, but it was designed as a button with only comfort. The switch door is as slow as any button.
No problem can be absolute. The best solution is to analyze the specific situation.
In fact, there is a similar situation in the product design: there are some "skip" buttons of the software startup interface, the actual press does not respond, and there is shadow compression feedback. But there is no denying that some software can indeed "skip" the startup page. These fake buttons, although only furnishings, do play a role in relieving the user's anxiety.
Service design
Personal opinion, product design belongs to service design. Below I summarize some of the surrounding issues discussed in the product forum about elevators. I have summarized these issues into service design, and everyone can think about it.
How to design an elevator for a 100-story building? Why is the elevator number of buttons in the elevator car how to dispatch the elevator in the office area, so that the elevator efficiency is the highest? Why does the office elevator room not display the floor of the elevator to build a 60-story building, you as a designer, from From the user's point of view, how to design the location, quantity and type of the elevator
The simpler the design, the more complex its internal logic may be. This article is only a small reflection of the author, and it is inevitably limited. I hope that I can throw a brick to attract jade.