Ivan Tolmachev

Ivan Tolmachev，来自俄罗斯，毕业于爱尔兰都柏林市立大学，先后就职于Rackspace，eShares，Aibrake等公司。现任Onfleet的高级产品设计师，这是一家坐落于圣弗朗西斯哥的物流软件公司，专注于提高全球运输业务的操作效率。

让我们听听看关于UX设计，他都做了哪些分享。

Narkii

您是怎么成为一个产品设计师的呢？

How did you become a product designer?

Ivan

我从小就对电子游戏、视觉艺术、音乐、漫画、电脑图像界面等充满兴趣。很幸运学校当时有计算机课，这在90年代的俄罗斯还是新奇的。我很早就接触Photoshop和Macromedia Flash，我想我应该会成为一个游戏开发者，不过具体它是什么我也不清楚。

I was always into video games, visual arts, music artwork, comic books, CGI. Growing up, I was lucky enough to be at a school with computer classes, a novelty for Russia in the 1990s. I was fooling around in Photoshop and Macromedia Flash pretty early on and always thought I’d be a game developer, not really knowing what that entails.

高中最后一年我搬到爱尔兰，在那里上了大学，学习多媒体。当时学习了平面设计，为学校的广播和报纸做了一些项目，制作logo，传单，名片，等等之类的东西。

I moved to Ireland for my final year in high school and, later, college to study Multimedia. I learned about graphic design, did a couple of projects for college radio and college newspaper, got my hands dirty making logos, flyers, business cards, that sort of thing.

为了补贴大学的费用，以及建立我的作品集，我开始接单。我最后一年的项目里，有一个部分就是和朋友一起做了一个应用，来帮助学生进行论文的研究。这也是我第一个产品设计的项目。毕业之后有一段时间我都没有再做产品，而是专注在平面和网页设计上。那时候我对产品设计的认识大部分来自于网上的出版物，后来，我终于有机会和一些产品设计师一起工作，并向他们学习。

To support myself through college and build up my portfolio I started working as a freelancer. As part of our final year project, my friends and I built an app to help students do research for academic papers. This was my first product design project. I didn’t work on product for some time after graduating, mostly focusing on graphic and web design. Back then most of my knowledge regarding product design came from online publications and eventually, I had a chance to work alongside some product designers and learn from them.

Narkii

您认为现在UX设计最大的趋势是什么呢？

What are the biggest trends in the UX design right now?

Ivan

或许没有什么最大的趋势，不过我认为近几年发展最大的是设计师如何接近他们的用户。过去，为了教用户如何使用应用，UX设计师会在用户真正开始使用之前就向他们抛出大量信息。这样导致用户要么花很多时间入门，要么干脆跳过。

Perhaps not the biggest trend, but what I think evolved the most in the last couple of years is how designers approach onboarding their users. It used to be that in order to teach users how to interact with the app, UX designers would throw a massive amount of information at a user at the very beginning of their journey, before they could even start using the app. This resulted in an onboarding that either took a lot of time to go through, or that would get skipped entirely.

随着用户的技术更加精湛，以及产品团队能够利用如细分市场等工具来捕获应用中的复杂状态，UX设计师可以制作出优雅的入门流程，根据使用者的技术精湛程度以不同的速度来教他们。 

As we approach a time when users become more tech savvy and product teams are able to capture intricate states within our apps, using tools like Segment, UX designers can produce elegant onboarding flows that teach users at their own pace, according to their own levels of sophistication and tech savviness.

另一个我注意到，并且个人也喜欢的趋势就是手机屏幕下方的信息的集中化。随着屏幕尺寸的增加，我们越来越难仅仅用一只手来使用应用，除非大部分信息都集中在屏幕下方，我很高兴这变得越来越普遍。不过，这还没有成为行业标准，因为当我在iPhone上使用 Chrome 时每次都还要辛苦地去点“返回”键。

Another trend I’ve noticed that I am personally a fan of is the concentration of the information available on mobile that is in the lower part of the screen. With an increase in screen sizes across the board, it became harder for us to use the apps with one hand, unless most of the information was concentrated at the bottom of the screen, and I’m happy to see this becoming more popular. It’s yet to become an industry standard though, as I’m struggling every time I try to tap “back” button when using Chrome on my iPhone!

Narkii

掌握UX设计，有什么不那么传统的方法吗？

What are some unconventional ways to master UX design?

Ivan

可能我们对UX设计的概念有所误解，认为它只和数字产品有关。实际上，我们日常生活中大部分交互的物体都一定程度上有涉及UX设计。掌握UX设计，其中一个方法就是要批判性地去思考这些日常交互。想想家里的咖啡机，你觉得有什么要改变的吗？为什么设计者没有按着你的想法来做呢？对日常中你所接触的大部分物体都采用这种方法，这样就能做点UX的练习。

There is perhaps somewhat of a misconception that UX design only relates to digital products. In fact, most of the things we interact with in our daily lives have a level of UX design associated with them. One way to master it is to think critically about those daily interactions. Is there something you’d like to change about the coffee machine you have at home? Why did the makers not think of your use case? Apply this method to most things you interact with on a daily basis to get some UX exercise.

Narkii

您典型的产品设计流程是怎么样的呢？

What is your typical product design process?

Ivan

其实流程一直在变，取决于我做哪种类型的工作，不过一开始都是通过提出很多问题，来找到设计问题的核心。   

It varies a lot, based on what type of work I’m doing, but it always starts with breaking the design problem down to its essence by asking a lot of questions.

如果是要开发一个新功能，我会写出用户流程。就是简单描述过程的文本：用户将会做什么以及接下去会发生什么。我喜欢将错误状态包含进流程里，这样我就能确保我不会忘记一些更复杂的情况。有时，当这个功能非琐细时，用户流程就会变得很复杂，因为涉及多方。我会避免使用像“用户A”和“用户B”这样的术语，而使用emoji表情来方便我更快浏览。

If working on a new feature, I write out the user flow. Just plain text describing the progression: what the user would do and what would happen next. I like to include error states into the flow, this way I make sure I don’t forget to account for some of the more intricate cases. Sometimes, when the feature is non-trivial, the user flow becomes complicated as there are multiple parties involved. I avoid using terms like “user A” and “user B” and use emojis instead to help me navigate faster.

       最近，我大部分的工作都包含了已存在的产品，所以一旦我有了一份写得很好的用户流程，我就知道我要修改或增加产品的哪一部分。画出大致的草图作为原型后，我就会和工程师们开会，向他们说明产品的变化，他们会帮我实施我的设计，看看有没有什么我需要注意的技术限制。

Lately, most of my work involves an already existing product, so after I have a well-written user flow, I know which areas of the product need to be altered or added. After I create rough sketches to use as a prototype, I set up a meeting to go over the changes with the engineer who will be implementing my designs to see if there are any technical restrictions I need to be aware of.

接下来的步骤就是完成屏幕和测试，先是在内部之后是在我们的主力用户之间。使用我的样机，我在Invision App中构建简单的原型用来测试，这不需要工程师。根据测试结果，我重复直到确定功能完成。

The next steps are finalizing the screens and testing, first internally and later with our power users. Using my mockups, I build simple prototypes in Invision App that we test with and that do not require an engineer. Based on our findings, I iterate until confident the feature is completed.

Narkii

有什么是产品设计师知道而普通人没想过的吗？

What do product designers know that ordinary people would never think about?

Ivan

每当我妻子使用UI遇到问题时，比如她要做某件事，但找不到那个按钮，就会找我帮忙，然后我一会儿就找到了。我就问我自己，“如果是我来想这个按钮的位置，我会怎么放？”我检查之后，通常能找到答案。产品设计师擅长读取界面，不论这些界面的设计如何，因为我们知道构建它们的思想过程:-)

Whenever my wife is having difficulties with a UI, e.g. she can’t find a button that does something specific, she asks me for help and it takes me a fraction of time to find that button. I ask myself, “If I were ideating on where the button could be placed, what would my options be?” I check them all and usually find it. Product designers are good at reading interfaces, regardless of how well designed they are, because we know the thought process that goes into building those :-)