Editor's introduction: With the continuous development of science and technology, all aspects of life will be affected by the development of science and technology, and more products with science and technology will appear, will this have an impact on the development of designers? The author of this article shares two directions about the development of future designers, let's take a look at it together.
On June 2, Huawei released and open-sourced the IoT Hyperterminal "Hongmeng OS 2.0", which is compatible with all Android and web applications, realizing hardware mutual assistance and resource sharing between multiple types and numbers of devices.
Coincidentally, a few days later, Apple also released the operating system Mac OS 12 Monterey at its Global Developers Conference (WWDC2021), which is intended to achieve seamless docking between all-scenario devices through "Universal Control".
Obviously, the development of science and technology is not moderate, the war without gun smoke has already broken out among the big guys, and with the landing of commercialization, the wave of innovation will also have a huge impact on the old life and work mode.
Back to the design industry of inner volumes, such as "Will designers be killed by artificial intelligence when they roll up?" Questions like this are often asked, how should designers coexist with technology in the future?
In this regard, I have some of the following insights to share with you:
The changes that technological advances have brought to the design industry
Will AI weed out designers?
The direction of future designers
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" >01 The changes that technological advances have brought to the design industry</h1>
There are three main aspects:
Change 1: The design cycle is reduced, and God says that if there is light, there can be real light
Design work was previously considered to be an irreproducible intellectual labor, from the request of the "God" of the various parties to the designer giving a satisfactory design plan, it takes a lot of analysis, thinking, deliberation, and attempt, and this process is sometimes even calculated in years.
But this situation seems to be put to an end by AI machine learning, because AI designers from receiving demand to produce pictures in less than 1 second, the senior designer "deer class" system released at the 2018 UCAN Design Week, during the Double Eleven period alone, 410 million pictures for various businesses, equivalent to 200 Ali P6s do not eat or drink for 200 years.
Change two: Perception is enhanced, and everything can be digitized in real time
In the past, human beings relied on physiological five senses to perceive the world, it is vague, subjective, partial, can not be recorded, calculated, with the popularity of cameras, wearable devices and other sensors, human perception image has been opened to the global God perspective, obtained quantitative accurate records (such as heartbeat, step number, reaction, expression, body temperature, etc.), coupled with the development of 4G, 5G communication technology, real-time acquisition and presentation of these data is not difficult.
Change three: Computing power is enhanced, and user experience design changes from metaphysics to science
What is user experience?
Some people say that it is a collection of subjective emotional feelings, and draw a map of undulating moods as a basis for design.
The question is, since it is subjective, how to know what kind of mood each user is? Based on speculation? Or a quantitative questionnaire? Even if the questionnaire, the user said happy he is really happy? After all, human beings are very duplicitous animals.
First, real-time emotions are easily captured by cameras and smart devices worn around (expressions, voices, behaviors, physiology); second, with the development of computing power, it is possible to do a lot of analysis, calculation, and real-time emotion speculation on group/personal real-time experience.
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" >02 Will AI weed out designers? </h1>
I don't think so, because the advantages of technology have given "design" a new era of characteristics: tools/tools that pursue functionality are slowly dying out, and the culture of satisfying emotional needs is increasingly prosperous.
Feature one: The tools/tools that pursue functionality are gradually dying out
When technology is not developed enough, design advocating is "form following function", for example, the earliest computer, very large and bulky, function is king, other side. With the advancement of science and technology, it is impossible to distinguish between the advantages and disadvantages of products by simply satisfying the function.
For example, although the pixel density of the iPhone 13 screen has reached 460ppi, in fact, the human eye can not distinguish the difference if it exceeds 300ppi, that is, from the perspective of the human eye, the 460ppi screen is not better than 300ppi.
And when meeting the functional requirements is no longer a big problem, the design begins to develop in the direction of de-tooling. Specific manifestations are:
Similarly, in the era of farming, employees with great strength, overtime, and more work were sought after by employers, and after the emergence of machines, a large number of repetitive tasks with patterns to follow could be completed by machines, their speed was fast, high quality, the key was day and night, and the cost was lower; even the most industrious tool people in human beings were difficult to compare, and the status of tool people fell to the altar.
Feature 2: Cultures that meet emotional needs are thriving
Keeping human beings sane is, after all, a luxury - "The Wandering Earth".
Machines have many advantages over people, but the object of design services is still "people", although the current machine can understand the basic human emotions (like, anger, sorrow, happiness) through programming and respond appropriately, but it is difficult to deeply empathize with complex human feelings that are disturbed by education, culture, and human physical weaknesses.
For example, in the movie "The Wandering Earth", the most sensible thing for the protagonist is to take the human "gene pool" and run for his life alone, to find a more suitable planet to reproduce, rather than risking the small probability of success to "ignite Jupiter" and save the weak and dilapidated homeland. However, the protagonist really chose to go to Jupiter and also took life.
Artificial intelligence can not understand the human feelings similar to "waiting for ice to take children to Lake Berga to fish for salmon" after ice, so it is helpless to sigh: let human beings always maintain sanity, after all, it is a luxury.
People first make decisions with emotion, and then convince themselves with logic – Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate in economics and author of Fast and Slow Thinking
Human beings' biggest weakness, emotional things, has become the most insurmountable gap in machine service.
In terms of design, products that meet the emotional needs of specific groups are increasingly different from competitors and are welcomed by the market:
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" >03 The direction of future designers</h1>
As a result, in the age of technology, two types of designers/design teams will develop greatly.
First, the designer/design team dedicated to making the "sense of tool" invisible
They are called "design engineers" and may take the form of a polymath (knowledge of ergonomics, biology, psychology, programming development techniques, etc.) or a flexible design team that brings together "experts" from multiple fields.
On the one hand, they are good at "integrating" multi-domain expertise through creative thinking to achieve the "tool sense" invisibility of the product, so that the product is "made by people, it seems to be made by nature".
This includes, but is not limited to, a more natural, intuitive, fast, fluid, and insensitive interactive experience, and a smaller, lighter, or even disappearing hardware appearance.
On the other hand, they are adept at inductively splitting design "patterns", reusing repetitive patterns or handing them over to machines, allowing them/teams to efficiently meet any new, complex design challenges.
Second, designers who deeply empathize with users
If the last kind of designer does is to make the product invisible, this kind of designer is to make the product personality prominent, this kind of publicity is not the surface meaning of "colorful" as conspicuous, but to seek people's hearts inward, tap the deep emotional needs of the target user group, make the product design personalized, flash "the brilliance of human nature".
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" >04 summary</h1>
In the past few decades, human beings have made great strides in artificial intelligence and big data algorithms, challenging or eliminating many familiar design patterns.
But it is undeniable that technology is also increasingly becoming an indispensable part of the design chain, to adapt to the future design model, designers should learn to use technology as a tool, broaden their circle of capabilities, and work from two directions:
Horizontally broaden cross-domain knowledge/ unite multi-domain talents, eliminate the tooling sense of the product, and do a more natural, intuitive design (NUI).
Seek people's hearts inwardly, tap the deep emotional needs of the target user group, make product design more personalized, and generate emotional links with users.
Author: Yuqiao classmate; WeChat public account: Yuqiao said (ID: yuqiaoshuo)
This article was originally published by @Yuqiao Students everyone is a product manager, and it is forbidden to reprint without permission
The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol