First of all, explain the background, it refers to the management operation part of the service, mainly on the content, data add, delete, change and check. Background products are mainly To B platform products, such as internal management, operation and maintenance products. This paper sorted out the challenges and thoughts I had encountered in the background operation and maintenance product design for more than a year. On the one hand, I could share my experience with you, and on the other hand, I could summarize myself thoroughly. In backstage product design, designers act as the “translator” for business transformation into interface. Especially when there is no product manager in the team, designers need to have a deeper understanding of business and more professional ability to coordinate demand side and development and design empowerment. This paper is introduced in the following two parts.
01
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Background product feature analysis and design challenges
There is still a big difference between making background products and c-end products at work. The following is only a comparative analysis of the challenges I have encountered in the design work.
1. It is difficult to understand the business and has many professional vocabularies.
Understanding the business is the first task of working with the backend product, which is especially important for the product and difficult for designers. For example, the cloud platform background operation and maintenance system provided by enterprises, as shown in Figure 1, involves a variety of cloud computing service types, data structures, business logic and authority control, covering a wide range of fields and requiring strong professional knowledge. Such a huge amount of background and business understanding is difficult for a novice (who has not been exposed to product design in the background) to get started. Moreover, such background operation and maintenance products are all used in the company, so it is difficult to find reference cases, and the previous experience cannot be directly reused. Moreover, all kinds of technical vocabularies are often used in backstage products, which require us to learn and communicate to understand their meanings and functions in the business.
2. Strong professional user group.
We’re dealing with a group of professional power users, and “empathy” or “pretending to be a user” is a pale way to go. Through the following figure, the user characteristics of the two products are compared and analyzed. C-end products, a large number of users, at least tens of thousands of users, user distribution is relatively miscellaneous, different levels of education and computer operation level, they are used to single thread operation with guidance, as far as possible to simplify the page information. Products for the background, user base is less, give priority to with internal operations staff, personnel features relatively concentrated, have good computer operation level, user characteristics are obvious, they focus on high efficiency operation, editors often use input the search, edit the code interact, targeted, fast accurate direct; When troubleshooting problems, it is necessary to judge problems from multiple perspectives and from multiple dimensions.
In view of different user characteristics, we also focus on the interface design. For C-terminal products, the user level is quite different, so the design interface should take into account the understanding of middle layer users as far as possible, so that the operation conforms to their cognition. However, for background operation and maintenance personnel, too much encapsulation may affect the operation efficiency, even if the mouse hover display or click to view the details. Of course, over-encapsulation of interfaces can also increase the cost of user understanding.
FIG. 3 Relationship between user understanding and interface encapsulation
Take two examples of interface design to understand the impact of user characteristics on interface design from a more intuitive perspective. C-terminal products, as shown in Figure 4, designers will consider appropriate interaction effects when designing interfaces to attract users. Simple and intuitive navigation and architecture to guide users; The combination of text and text information layout, pay attention to information density, white space, conducive to the user’s reading efficiency and browsing mood; The language is easy to understand and emotional.
Figure 5 Background product interface
Image source: https://dribbble.com/JanLosert
(1) Mostly full screen information, making full use of page space; (2) The information on the page will contain English professional terms used by technical staff, so it is difficult to express semantics clearly with ICONS or Chinese, resulting in low recognition rate; (3) Data display in the form of charts, lists, forms, etc., with little interaction effect; (4) Necessary details are exposed to display multi-dimensional global information for users to determine the priority of exceptions; (5) Entrances are reserved for common operations and feedback hot area is enlarged to facilitate user operation; (6) In the selection of components, scalability and information consistency should be considered to avoid wasting space and distracting users’ attention.
3. There are differences in product design ideas
First of all, from the perspective of demand, backstage products, general demand is technology or business directly promoted to demand. It is less likely to analyze user behaviors and explore user needs through user portraits and empathy as the C terminal does. In contrast, the requirements of back-end products are clear, but the clear requirements do not mean that the requirements are simple. Because the business logic of background products is complex, and the flow will be stronger. A large number of field accumulation and tedious operations need designers to think and sort out the whole process. Which fields to keep or remove under the current operation; How to redirect business processes can clearly guide users; How to display various thresholds effectively; Whether actions on a page are associated or conflicting depends on knowing the business well enough. The second is the design output. Sometimes, from a technical perspective, background products will first set up the main structure to provide pages and show the business, and then iterate through technical improvement and user feedback. When designing c-end products, the product manager and designer will discuss a comprehensive and perfect operation process together. Related functions and operations are fully equipped; Pay attention to user experience and beautiful interface.
FIG. 6 Comparison of c-end product and background product design
Therefore, there will be different focus in product design. Background products are “efficiency above all” and focus on the practicality and operation efficiency of the interface. They don’t have very high requirements for interaction details and only need to provide necessary functions to ensure user stability. C-end products are “experience is king” and focus on data such as flow, PV and UV. It needs to satisfy users with beautiful visual experience and smooth interactive experience.
4. Fast technology iteration
The rapid development of Internet of Things, cloud computing and other fields will urge the update and iteration of technology. Background operation and maintenance products, as a product category dominated by technical teams, will naturally be affected. In particular, new products under development will constantly iterate in the development of technology and use new technologies to improve operation and maintenance efficiency.
5. There are differences in the hierarchy of needs
The difference here is mainly caused by the difference in the order of magnitude, authority and habit of the user’s management target. For example, users manage more than 50 clusters and it is troublesome to upgrade multiple services one by one. Such users are more accustomed to batch modification directly by code, while for users with less operation and maintenance orders, they can complete the operation by selecting the service and the version to be upgraded. Background product design needs to take into account the use habits of advanced and primary users, not only to meet the efficient operation, but also to ensure that new users know how to operate. It should not only provide the necessary page flow guidance, but also meet the need to quickly switch between related operations. This will be different from c-terminal products, most c-terminal products are designed by designers to confirm a clear linear operation process, and users will gradually find the corresponding target according to the guidance.
02
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Backstage product design thinking
As a background interaction designer, SOMETIMES I not only need to act as PD to connect with business parties and be responsible for demand analysis and functional structure sorting, but also cooperate with development, carry out test acceptance and collect online feedback, and even take charge of related visual design, use promotion and other work. In the specific work, we need to have a more comprehensive perspective, the following points of thinking and we encourage each other.
Change your attitude
(1) Build and cooperate with the team and be responsible for the product. When the functions of the team are ambiguous, we, as user representatives of the product, need to be responsible for the final experience, coordinate upstream and downstream work, and ensure that the product provides the required services for users. (2) Designed for users, respect user habits. Different products have different target users, which requires us to base ourselves on the product to understand users’ usage habits, explore pain points and insight direction. (3) Respect platform features and understand technical limitations. (4) Design empowerment. Analyze requirements forward and coordinate development backward.
2. Dig deep into your business
This is particularly prominent in the background products, only understanding can have the right to speak, put forward reasonable suggestions, and correctly promote the front and back end coordination, otherwise divorced from the business, the design work will have no substance, that is, can not solve the needs of users, can not bring quality experience.
FIG. 7 Relationship between background product user experience and business
3. Design method
Every designer has his or her own habitual ways and methods in his or her work, or a set of methodology that he or she agrees with. This paper will not go into details. Here, I can offer three effective skills from my personal working habits and experience, especially in backstage product design, which can improve work efficiency and gain recognition from the business partners.
(1) Assist in carding business. Translate the business into easy-to-understand content, sort out the different roles, tasks, and possible pages of the product, and refine functionality and content. (2) Dare to try. Provide alternative A\B solutions, allowing users to make repeated corrections based on an interface for discussion and comparison, and on this basis, add details to improve product design efficiency. (3) Small and fast. Divide requirements into segments to quickly develop products and subsequent iterations.
4. Focus on product experience standards
(1) Operational efficiency. The order of magnitude of background management operation and maintenance is large, which will involve repetitive operation of multiple objectives. How to simplify the operation process, merge repetitive modules, reduce options, and effective design information is a relatively important point. (2) Accuracy. In the face of a large amount of information and multi-dimensional judgment, providing accurate information display and feedback can also improve operation efficiency, such as accurate copy, reduce the interference of interface visual elements, increase error prevention mechanism, improve accuracy, and let users focus on the current task. (3) Reduce the cost of learning. Background product itself has a certain learning cost, which is inseparable from its professionalism. Therefore, during design, reducing the level of information and using the pure elements and operation mode that users are accustomed to can reduce the additional learning cost.
03
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conclusion
The above is my work in some summary, experience is limited, inevitably some superficial. In short, as interaction designers of background products, we need to constantly strengthen our own learning and supplement our product knowledge and business ability. Here I quote a sentence that “using methods to solve problems on the demand side is the most authentic use of design”. No matter how low-level, complex business and different user demands we are faced with, we should stick to business, serve users and be responsible for product experience.
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