This paper discusses why our life needs to be complex, not simple, and design is helpful to the realization of complex life. When the designer of an article can be understood, managed and enjoyable at the right time in a moderate situation, what we long for is complexity. Based on good design, we can manage complexity, produce the most practical products and form an ideal and people-oriented design;

Note: the contents of the following subheadings are different from those in the book; It is some knowledge points that I think are helpful to me after reading a book;

Use "complexity" to describe the state of the world and "incomprehensible" to describe the state of thinking.

Complexity is a part of the world, just like those whose desks are messy can see the hidden order. Once we begin to understand the principle of hiding, we can see the order and order in complexity. Modern science and technology is complex, and the meaning of complexity itself is neither positive nor negative. Second, the confusion is negative.

Good design can help us tame complexity; It is not to make food simple (if it is complex to meet the demand), but to manage it complex;

The key to dealing with complexity is to find two aspects of understanding: first, the design of a thing determines its understandability. Does it have underlying logic as the basis? Once you master this logic, everything will become orderly. The second is our own set of understanding abilities and skills. Have we spent time and energy to understand and master the structure? Understandability and comprehension are two decisive factors in mastery.

We can design understandable products through design, and make products understandable through design, thus taming complexity. It is not simply to reduce functions, but to make all functions understood.

Some complexity is enough (for example, freshly ground coffee)

When the complexity of a new thing is appropriate, it is reasonable to spend time and energy to master it. Those unnecessary technologies and facilities that are puzzling, confusing and have no clear structure are worth complaining about;

Conceptual model is implicit in people's belief structure about how things work. When you look at the file structure in a computer, such as moving a file from one folder to another, you use a conceptual model carefully put into your mind by the software designer.

Conceptual models exist in people's minds, also called mental models. Help us to transform complex natural phenomena into usable and understandable mental models. It is a very important tool to sort out and understand those complicated things, so that we can understand things, understand how things work, and figure out what to do when mistakes occur, such as the case of sleep cycle in the book: the conceptual model about who enters the atmosphere through evaporation, transpiration and sublimation, and then returns through precipitation 2;

It is not the number of controllers or how many functions they have, but whether people have a good conceptual model about how it works when using the device.

Understand the whole system and design it as a way to combine all parts well, so that the initial learning and use can reach the most ideal state;

The book talks about' Tesler's law of conservation of complexity': make part of the system simple, and the rest will become more complicated; This is a balanced relationship, which is easier for users to use and more difficult for designers or engineers, which leads to the measurement of simplicity from what angles?

Feeling simple doesn't mean using or operating simply. With the increase of the number of visual controls and monitors, the simplicity of perception decreases, while increasing visual options will reduce the simplicity of perception. The book lists that Apple's mouse has two buttons, the left button and the right button, and the mouse has one button on the keyboard? Example)

Simplicity does not mean less functions. Complexity is an inevitable part of the world we live in, but complexity should not become confusing and puzzling. The whole meaning of people-oriented design is to tame complexity and turn those seemingly chaotic tools into a task-adaptive, understandable, usable and enjoyable device.

Simplicity is not the opposite of complexity, complexity is the real state of the world, but simplicity exists in the mind (the central idea of this section), that is, simplicity refers to the conceptual model in the mind;

A characteristic of people's aesthetic preference, a basic principle: people have a preference range in complexity-things that are too simple are boring and superficial, things that are too complicated are chaotic and annoying, and people like moderate complexity. Taming complexity is a psychological task, not a physical task.

Daily life is complicated, but not because a particular activity is complicated, but because there are so many seemingly simple activities, and each activity has its own set of specific needs. Combining a lot of simple activities, the result will be complicated and chaotic: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

When we have to remember a lot of simple and trivial information, which eventually makes even simple tasks complicated and chaotic, we should put the necessary information directly into material life. Don't let users remember the information, but give some hints.

People's behaviors are extremely complicated, especially social behaviors. We must design according to people's behavior, not according to what we want them to do. When the equipment used is obvious and provides gentle guidance, semantic symbols, mandatory functions and feedback, people can easily use it.

The perfect feature of a well-designed mandatory function is to solve problems or make decisions with minimal requirements. People are gently guided into material life, except for proper behavior. A simple solution is to add hints and suggestions.

Semantic symbols are a bit like indicators, which make some signals summarized in society get meaningful interpretation. Semantic symbols of memory are consciously created and not only good, incidental symbols are unexpected by-products of behavior and time in life, and social semantic symbols come from the behavior of others. Designers use deliberately placed semantic symbols to help people adopt appropriate usage. The case in the book is how to judge whether the train has left or not. The status of the platform and the waiting crowd acts as semantic symbols)

Even though social semantic symbols are sometimes vague and misleading, they are valuable clues about the operation of the world. They provide powerful examples for our clue library and help us understand the significance of this complex world. It also helps us to understand how to arrange our own behaviors by observing others' behaviors-whether consciously or unconsciously, they all convey some kind of information.

Apologize, try to solve the problem, actively help and maintain a polite attitude from beginning to end. This is the basic attitude that our machine should show.

Pay attention to the correct behavior and give meaningful hints:

While paying attention to the correct behavior, we should also give the machine some hints about the wrong behavior. It is time for us to socialize our interaction with technology. We need communication machines, communication skills and basic etiquette rules. Machines should show concern for the people they interact with, understand their positions, and communicate so that everyone can understand what happened.

A gregarious machine can meet different needs;

People do things for some high-level goals, and activities composed of a single task are the steps to achieve this goal. Every activity has a variety of needs, and communication machines can meet the needs of different activities.

When thinking work is interrupted, it should be restored in time:

Interruption will cause serious psychological burden. When the interruption is impossible to stop, we need auxiliary facilities to maintain our position and status in various activities. Tools or machines need built-in automatic orientation recording and reminding functions.

Pay attention to the environmental and social impact of usage and design objects;

In the case of the book, the power board is a simple device, but in the real use environment, the tangled wires are disgusting. Regardless of the impact on external people or things. There is a lack of consideration for the actual use environment in the design.

Desire line is an important semantic symbol of people's expected behavior, which should be followed appropriately.

Wise designers and planners will notice these semantic symbols and make appropriate responses. One way to simplify things is to use the traces left by people's actual behavior to design a system to support people's wishes.

Desire first shows true preferences, but not all preferences should be adapted.

Traces and networks constitute a recommendation system.

We will benefit when we recommend books or restaurants so that we are free to ignore suggestions. This system simplifies our interaction with complex components in life, but when the system fails, the wrong prediction will bring confusing complexity to individuals and society.

The design of machines and services should be regarded as a social activity, and the sociality of interaction should be paid as much attention as the successful completion of the activity, which is communication design.

A service is usually defined as an action or work that is useful to others. The only difference between a service and a product is usually the location. Every product provides services for its users. Cameras and refrigerators seem to be very typical products, but they provide valuable services to users. Refrigerators keep food at a safe storage temperature: this is a service. Camera is a material product, but it provides users with the experience of meeting and sharing, which is also a service.

How to involve all participants-customers and employees. Get the information they need so that they can understand the business operation? Feedback and conceptual model are the two most important stages in the use process.

Feedback: When a product or service is first experienced, these experiences help people learn what to do and what to expect.

Conceptual model: When there is a problem or unexpected delay, more information or authentication may be needed to show what is wrong somewhere in the operation chain.

It is usually easier to deal with these situations in the product. However, in terms of services, especially in complex situations involving multiple organizations and locations, it is difficult to provide correct information, and the design of services is much more complicated than the design of products.

The real secret of Apple's success is that they understand that the core issue is not product design, but the whole systematization of legal issues such as finding, buying, playing music and customer service. Apple regards the iPod as a service, not an isolated product. Process oriented user experience.

With the change of business environment, Apple is constantly updating its products, but it is good at three things:

Build tightly integrated systems, not isolated products.

Realize that the quality of a system depends on its weakest link.

Design for the whole experience

Waiting occurs when one system sends an object or information to another system. I have a problem when using some applications or participating in some H5 page activities. For the good experience of users, I pay attention to the design of waiting in line. )

Provide a conceptual model

Make waiting seem reasonable.

Meet or exceed expectations

Keep people busy

fair

Actively start a positive ending.

We need two sets of principles to manage complexity:

One group is used for design: the design must include an appropriate structure, such as learning tools, to help human beings understand and remember, and to deal with emergencies.

One set is used to deal with: design must also be able to cope with the inevitable failure in life;

The basic requirement is to make things easy to understand and make good usable designs. The main way is communication. "Divide and rule", multi-segment modularity, so that only relevant segments are concerned at different time points and organized in groups. Targeted communication and convincing conceptual model.

(1) accepted:

Accept complexity and realize that life itself is complicated.

(2) Divide and rule:

Dividing multi-tasks into smaller modules and learning only one module at a time is helpful to stimulate enthusiasm.

(3) learn in time:

Don't try to learn everything at once, just learn the parts needed by the tasks you are interested in, and then slowly add new tasks and learn advanced functions.

(4) Understanding, not rote learning:

What is it doing? How does it work?

(5) Observe others:

See how others use technology, see what they do and how to do it.

(6) Applying the knowledge in life: semantic symbols, functional visibility and mandatory constraints.

Find out functional visibility, creatively find out unusual or novel ways of doing things, and use mandatory constraints to help find out what can and cannot be done, what should and should not be done.

(7) Using the knowledge in life: making symbols, labels and marks;

Take the initiative: when you find it difficult or confusing to do something, take a moment to carefully consider which steps are most confusing, and then go back to which steps to add comments. It doesn't matter what you do, what matters is that you must do something.

(8) Applying knowledge in life:

The list is a valuable supplement to our memory and records what to do. memorandum

The designer's customer is the manufacturer, the second manufacturer's customer is the operator, and the operator's customer is their shop, and then the final mobile phone user. Mobile phone salespeople may not have the best demands of customers in their minds. (Take Kodak as an example in the book. Kodak's success lies in its understanding of customers and the design of end-to-end sales experience, which can better meet customer needs than similar products. )

Coexistence with technology is a cooperative relationship between us and designers. Many times, we just want to do one thing, but we are asked to master a complex system, but this is the way things work in the world. The technology we use must adapt to the complexity of the world, and the complexity of technology is inevitable.

Coexistence with technology will be a continuous but necessary challenge, and taming technology requires cooperation between designers and users. Designers must provide organizational structure, effective communication and an interactive technology for learning and communication. We users must be willing to take the time to learn the rules and the underlying structure and master the necessary skills. We had a partnership with designers before.

Summary:

The first three chapters of the book are about why it is different from complexity, and where is the dividing point between simplicity and complexity. The fourth chapter discusses the key "semantic symbols" to solve the complexity. Chapters 5 to 7 talk about the inconvenience brought to people and how to deal with these complexities (how designers and others deal with them). Chapter 8 gives the methodology of management complexity.