Which is more important, design norms or design creativity? This is a controversial topic. If I had been asked this question three years ago, I would have chosen design creativity without hesitation. There is no doubt that a good design creativity can really make people crazy.
Originally in the university, I feel that he is a Bohemian love of freedom, the heart is also high, they want to design things really is to “unconventional”, seconds to kill the audience will give up. To my great dismay, the work I was so proud of was given a passing grade on graduation day.
After graduation, I joined an Internet company and became a product manager. I still stick to my “design creativity” theory and hope that one day our company can be proud of my design. It turned out to be a road of no return. I didn’t become the pride of the company, and I didn’t design an amazing product.
At the time, I naively thought that “design creativity” really meant “design norms.”
After two years of baptism, I suddenly had an Epiphany and realized that design norms are the prevailing trend.
Alt: Design specification interface
Here I have to mention Alibaba’s AI intelligent robot employee Lu Ban. This guy does not eat or drink or do anything else. The only thing to do is to integrate resources to complete the banner of taobao home page according to the code written by programmers and the requirements of design specifications. To know, during the Double Eleven, if the banner is made according to the magnitude of the number of visitors, then the designer will design the banner according to the taste of each user until he is too busy to finish the task of fainting, vomiting blood and balding. But Lu Ban designed 170 million banners all by himself. 170 million! You can imagine that for yourself.
I believe that everyone will be surprised to see that the banner is designed by a robot. I really can’t tell! This is an example that really confirms the statement that design specifications increase the efficiency of the design process and can produce more valuable things in a relatively fixed pattern.
Grasp the design specifications, is the perfect guarantee for the success of your product landing.
“Less is more” seems to be a philosophical word, but in fact it is also an evidence that design norms are superior to design creativity in the current society.
Now the company is mostly flow, the cooperation between employees to create a phenomenon product, but as the saying goes, “everyone is hard to tune”, everyone is bone surprise, creative full marks, but we put their creative set up really a little bit different.
There’s one that looks awesome one second and then says, “Can’t you really fall to your death standing that high?”
Just like I want to design a pure e-commerce product, but you forced me to add a dating section. This dissonance comes from the absence of standards.
Therefore, the importance of design specifications is reflected. Let the assembly line staff have a fixed standard format on which creative germination occurs, to integrate the creative collection of everyone to shape the product, so as to ensure the integrity and continuity of the design.
It would be embarrassing if the products designed by Company A were thought to have been designed by Company B.
Design specifications have been tested by the market and are effective measures to control design risks.
In fact, “copycat” things are not “cheap”, for some small start-up companies, they stand on the shoulders of giants to develop the market, imitate the “products” of predecessors, to help themselves through the early stage of growth, this is understandable.
The so-called “explosive products” are through the test of the market, fixed down some mature models. For example, A book is designed and produced in red and green, and the feedback of A-B test and market sales data shows that red is better than green. Then, in the early stage of the company, there is no need to take A risk to design black book and put it into the market.
Under such circumstances, if you insist on launching black book, I can only say, is this kind of gambler’s mentality really responsible for the performance of the employees? Obviously the red book is to avoid risks, in accordance with the mature model to easily create “explosive”.
In fact, “shanzhai” is the biggest innovation, in fact, “shanzhai” is equivalent to “model”, through “imitation theory” learned the ability to endure survival.
Design norms do not lower standards, design norms are the foundation of everything, design creativity is the icing on the cake, is a 1 after the infinite number of zeros.
Alt: Brand design specification
A good design specification can become the master of the industry, and this master is not the reduction of the industry standard, but a 16-channel highway, we can quickly enter the state of design, find their own best positioning, the formation of their best product solutions.
Therefore, design norms are the foundation of all things. Only when the foundation is firmly laid, can high-rise buildings be built. And design creativity is like icing on the cake to decorate the building beautifully, thus increasing the bargaining power of this product.
Having said that, LET me summarize my point:
- The design specification is confirmed by the industry and forms a mature master. The materials selected from the material library can be combined at will without damaging the integrity of the design product and the continuity of user experience.
- Design specification is the basis of design creativity, can reduce manufacturing costs, improve output efficiency, convenient and quick selection of a set of error-free scheme, output a complete product prototype;
- After a number of design specifications repeated printing, design specifications can make your design let users quickly remember, help you increase the bargaining power of the product.
There is no contradiction between design norms and design creativity. Design norms ensure the consistency of design, improve the efficiency of design, and do not limit designers’ freedom and ideas in deep level. Therefore, forming your own enterprise design specifications is a great thing.
Having said that, building design specifications is not particularly easy. Is it possible to have a system that can customize design specifications and manage them? The author found the copy guest design system.
As the only exclusive Design System in China, Mockplus DS (Design System) is strong?
1) Easily use and manage your design resources
Users can manage all design resources in the cloud, including colors, logos, ICONS, text, components, metrics, shadows, etc. You can also create multiple libraries, categories and sub-categories to manage.
Alt: MockPlus Design specification features
2) Quick design and application
In Mockplus and Sketch, users can upload design elements to the design system to form specifications. Design resources from the library can be quickly applied to Mockplus and Sketch, with automatic synchronization and updates.
3)Mockplus design system makes perfect docking with Sketch
MockplusDS provides Sketch with six design modules: Logo, Colors, fonts, components, images, and ICONS. Once installed, designers can add and utilize various design specifications and resources directly on the Sketch and Mockplus desktop to improve design efficiency.
4) Powerful multi-format function support
MockplusDS not only provides multi-format image upload capabilities such as PNG, JPG, JPRG, GIF, SVG, etc., but also provides a powerful selection of Google and system font libraries to meet the multiple choices and needs of designers.
5) Share quickly
All members of the team can share design resources with each other and share them with their peers with one click. In addition, CSS, SCSS, LESS and other applications can be exported to front-end development, and design specifications of various formats can be automatically exported to achieve efficient communication and collaboration between design and development teams.
If you are interested, you can click the link:
Design system through train: https://ds.mockplus.cn/
Design specification video tutorial: http://doc.mockplus.cn/?cat=116
There’s no denying that the Mockplus team’s new design system is well worth a try. This design system represents not only an important milestone for copycat companies, but also a great benefit for many design firms, designers and product managers, which means that designers can be more efficient at a lower cost. Mockplus has been adhering to this concept since its birth. Everything exists for service and provides the simplest design solution for millions of designers. The development and design system is a continuation of Mockplus’ faster and simpler design concept. As the famous designer Liu Gang has said, design systems represent an exciting shift in the field of design and development, with mimics leading the way.