Anthropomorphism - a new method of managing the chaos of thoughts of designers and designers
How to start designing a complex information system? How to find the starting point of support, from which it will be possible to push off in inventing the functional, algorithms and pleasant features in the design? In this article, I propose to look at an example of an interesting method of projecting a human person onto a website or application being created, a kind of analogue for creating an identikit for the sought concept.
The last five years, the design technique, repelled by fictional characters, causes me more and more mistrust. It cannot be said that this approach is outdated - no, it also helps to structure the chaos of the thoughts of the development team and tune everyone into a single mental wave, allowing you to generate hypotheses and build predictions in a single vector. This is all true, but here are the guarantees of success ...
Increasingly, the feeling that a system designed for 2, 3, 5 fictional people does not leave me - as a result, will work only with these few invented characters. I will repeat my favorite idea that in an open system, which is our reality with you, it is impossible to a priori take into account all factors affecting the process of interaction of each live user with the system, and that is why the character method initially contains some kind of fantasy conventionality , the error is sometimes up to 99% of the actual results at the first baptism of the work program.
')
My own design methodology proposes to leave imaginary users alone and concentrate on the character that will be our information project. In other words, we need an image that perfectly embodies our promise, the original idea, humanizing the soulless letters and pictures on the monitor screen. We need to invent such a system that users (any, with any cockroaches in their heads) will be able to humanize with joy and feel their own sympathy. Something like this:
Yes, the weak side of this approach is the insistent desire to “not know” your user, not to penetrate his privacy, but do we need such an invasion at all? For example, let's try right now to design a purely hypothetical system of online courses (good, they are now in vogue), and for this we will humanize the system being designed (using a life hack like human thinking to anthropomorphism) and create a virtual image of a teacher, mentor , tutor, describing the qualities that we, the designers, would like to present to living people. The main thing - now we will not assume anything about the interests of the user Vasi from Syktyvkar or a student Marina from Singapore, but at least a brain slug from Andromeda, who wants to enslave the Earth, having studied our history and culture.
Let's leave users alone, their personal thoughts are their own business, we are only designing the “personality” that will interact with them, if people suddenly need online training (and it will arise, the demand is actually just huge ). We will refrain at this stage from a value judgment on whether such a strange approach is good or bad, just try. In the end, bad systems created on the basis of the fictitious Konstantinov of Constantinople are already enough to gain the moral right to try anything new.
For such a hypothetical design, such an interesting format as an educational portal with online courses was deliberately taken. I would not like very much in this example to create an image of a merry peddler from the fair, or an obsessive sticky seller of a consultant by the name “Vamchtot Podskazhat” - we need deep serious projects for example. So, the portal with online courses ...
We go from afar
Real knowledge is always valuable and sacred. Since ancient times, mankind has developed a stereotype that true wisdom cannot be easily accessible, discounted, with a promotion, with a bonus - this is always only the difficult path to the goal. A real Teacher has no right to be a shirt-guy, a kind of friend, with whom he can be familiar - otherwise what he knows - is instantly devalued. “If he himself is the same as me: he also speaks, lives, thinks, dreams, has the same amount of money — what is the use of his wisdom?” Every neophyte rightly thinks. And only when the way of thinking, behavior, respect in society, personal achievements cause respect - the student is motivated to receive Wisdom from the lips of the Teacher and is ready for many years of pain and hardship in the name of the final result.
Let us recall the Shaolin monastery — people were willing to stand at the door for an invitation to wait for an invitation, to exhaust themselves with workouts, diet, and a change in their old way of thinking for days to get the right to start training — and only then showed impressive results. So we come to the first conclusion: learning is impossible without the indisputable authority of the teacher and the motivation of the student . The reverse is also true: a demotivated student, a lazy employee - they will never come close to real knowledge, they will not be able to "form" a real professional from themselves.
Let's compare this technique with mass involvement, easy accessibility and an increase in selling properties: now, when a brochure with a technique from Shaolin itself can be bought at any provincial stall, has the number of great masters increased many times? On the contrary, the base level fell as low as possible along with the lower entry threshold. We take this approach to note, we begin to draw a table of properties. Or a chart. Or even to draw identikit - the main thing is to make it convenient to visualize all the thoughts of the designer, and the presentation format itself is secondary.
For certain projects, even comics that describe the scenario of communication of a virtual character with a group of users are perfect. You can, for example, push off from the idea that in order to design any really cool super-site, you need to select an image of a certain superhero, inventing a legend, a costume-design, and most importantly - a superpower functionality:
“The Superuser is on guard of the galaxy in the eternal struggle against ignorance, obscurantism, laziness and illiteracy!” - sounds? Or vice versa, you can use the image of a strict laconic guru, without flirting and unnecessary simplifications of the interface. To choose you, in any case, the image should be integral, make you respect yourself, substantiate your claims to your leading position in the society of Internet projects.
Bricks collect properties
If we want to create a solid educational system that reminds people of the legendary Kung Fu masters, then we will not need any extra filters for searching, sorting, and selecting courses. It is necessary to immediately take a position that hints to the user that his ignorance of one or another subject a priori also implies a high degree of ignorance of his real need for it. While the person did not know the Internet - did he know that he needs it daily more than drinking water? Everything is the same here - the true Teacher will have to choose the most worthy ones based on the abilities and potential of the students and give them a curriculum that never begins immediately with the realization of key knowledge. We recall the classics: learning meditation and cleaning, dragging water and observing animals, then acquiring basic humility, breaking with the old thinking of “ignorance” - this is where the passage of each virtual or real course should begin.
Well, the worst that can be imagined in the image of the information system that we create is the opportunity to poke at a lecture from the middle of any course to watch it on fast-forward. It will instantly devalue everything and destroy the planned concept. Therefore, this is what we write in the brief: not to use open access to the full list of lectures, to show the final advantages and skills obtained, but not to reveal all the cards on the course page at once .
Back in ancient times, when I was working in the Russian education system, I was always personally irritated by the factor of the requirement for a constant increase in student performance. Grades are getting better, students are getting more, medals, diplomas, Olympiads - all this was required to constantly increase exponentially. Such a path simply kills the true education, forcing teachers to constantly reduce rather than raise the bar for quality in their profession. The same disease can infect your designer of a complex educational portal that used to do only online stores and landings: as many clicks as possible, quick order courses, “we will call you back in 15 seconds”, as few failures as possible at the beginning or middle of the way - everything This disgrace in our specific task leads to the fact that any wisdom turns into pop music, accessible to everyone. It is right? Of course not.
Well, this is how the world works: how can not all the inhabitants of the world be billionaires - this devalues ​​money; so real knowledge cannot be accessible to all - it devalues ​​education, reduces the authority of any profession (which we, in fact, are now seeing in all its glory).
Thus, at the first design stage we come to the conclusion that a good educational portal, made not for populist reasons, can have the highest percentage of failures, a huge number of “jumpers”, the most complicated interface - and all this will only benefit the quality and status of those yet passed and completed the course.
Taking again the ancient wise tactics of “learning is in everything”, one can add another interesting feature: the portal interface itself can train as well as lecture notes or lecture scans . We're talking about a modern interactive portal, and not just about electronic storage, where technology allows us to implement any tools and virtual simulators for developing the student's mind in the right way:
Suppose all buttons on a physics course have a gravitational effect, and links simulate the resistance of a current (you need to select a certain current with the help of push time — to click on it and move on). With a low academic performance at the rate of botany, the user must die his personal tree, and the successful calculation of the certificate for the results of studies depends on successful calculations of the equations for algebra. So you can achieve maximum realism, when every activity, every second of interaction in your profile or on page 404 - can and should be a lesson for someone who is ready to see and hear this lesson. That is how people have been taught for thousands of years before us, and perhaps you should not reinvent the wheel again?
So, how do we get the perfect scenario for interacting with such an authoritative teacher site that befell Zen? Minimalism in design, the search string is replaced by a step-by-step questioning of each incoming visitor, during which his abilities, skills, needs, skills and most importantly - the strength of the desire to reach the end will be revealed. Speaking figuratively, it turns out that the USE should precede any training to assess the potential for learning, but not to complete it. And this is absolutely true.
Then, after a week of waiting, during which any user, 18 or 68 years old, from Moscow or Quebec, would develop resilience or would finally cool down to study; an invitation is received to start the first stage of training and to offer a finished individual training course with lectures corresponding to the student’s level of knowledge and consisting of those disciplines in which the teacher system has revealed obvious gaps or critical needs for current or planned future user activities. After successfully completing stage 1, each user receives the status of the Student, then a new enhanced program is opened in the curriculum, other courses and the Master looms ahead, then the next stages and so on ...
We do not know that - what we do not know
Thus, a person will be ready to learn within our system all his life, replenishing his luggage not with one-sided subjective information, but expanding his outlook as a whole, according to his profession and ability to perceive. Let me remind once again one truth, which is the basis for understanding the essence of education as a whole: “every person does not know what he does not know.” And without knowing, can not adequately assess the benefits, the need, their need, the effect of future knowledge for solving urgent problems, etc.
Well, the main page of this educational portal let it look like this:
So, what is the strength of such a strange approach - here we do not dwell on our own fantasies and do not write a lengthy literary novel about the difficult life of Ivan Ivanov who never existed in reality. We simply use the features of the human perception of the world and create a verbal portrait, humanizing the system itself, plan its perception by any people who come across it. We expand the question differently, not “what people may need from the system,” but “ what the system can give to all those who intentionally or by mistake, out of curiosity or under pressure from outside, but followed the link or downloaded the application to the phone ” .
As for monetization and problems with the promotion of such a concept, marketers around the world will confirm to you - often closeness and elitism, inaccessibility and status can give a brand promotion even more than cheeky accessibility, permissiveness and deliberate simplification.
The last five years, the design technique, repelled by fictional characters, causes me more and more mistrust. It cannot be said that this approach is outdated - no, it also helps to structure the chaos of the thoughts of the development team and tune everyone into a single mental wave, allowing you to generate hypotheses and build predictions in a single vector. This is all true, but here are the guarantees of success ...
Increasingly, the feeling that a system designed for 2, 3, 5 fictional people does not leave me - as a result, will work only with these few invented characters. I will repeat my favorite idea that in an open system, which is our reality with you, it is impossible to a priori take into account all factors affecting the process of interaction of each live user with the system, and that is why the character method initially contains some kind of fantasy conventionality , the error is sometimes up to 99% of the actual results at the first baptism of the work program.
')
My own design methodology proposes to leave imaginary users alone and concentrate on the character that will be our information project. In other words, we need an image that perfectly embodies our promise, the original idea, humanizing the soulless letters and pictures on the monitor screen. We need to invent such a system that users (any, with any cockroaches in their heads) will be able to humanize with joy and feel their own sympathy. Something like this:
Yes, the weak side of this approach is the insistent desire to “not know” your user, not to penetrate his privacy, but do we need such an invasion at all? For example, let's try right now to design a purely hypothetical system of online courses (good, they are now in vogue), and for this we will humanize the system being designed (using a life hack like human thinking to anthropomorphism) and create a virtual image of a teacher, mentor , tutor, describing the qualities that we, the designers, would like to present to living people. The main thing - now we will not assume anything about the interests of the user Vasi from Syktyvkar or a student Marina from Singapore, but at least a brain slug from Andromeda, who wants to enslave the Earth, having studied our history and culture.
Let's leave users alone, their personal thoughts are their own business, we are only designing the “personality” that will interact with them, if people suddenly need online training (and it will arise, the demand is actually just huge ). We will refrain at this stage from a value judgment on whether such a strange approach is good or bad, just try. In the end, bad systems created on the basis of the fictitious Konstantinov of Constantinople are already enough to gain the moral right to try anything new.
For such a hypothetical design, such an interesting format as an educational portal with online courses was deliberately taken. I would not like very much in this example to create an image of a merry peddler from the fair, or an obsessive sticky seller of a consultant by the name “Vamchtot Podskazhat” - we need deep serious projects for example. So, the portal with online courses ...
We go from afar
Real knowledge is always valuable and sacred. Since ancient times, mankind has developed a stereotype that true wisdom cannot be easily accessible, discounted, with a promotion, with a bonus - this is always only the difficult path to the goal. A real Teacher has no right to be a shirt-guy, a kind of friend, with whom he can be familiar - otherwise what he knows - is instantly devalued. “If he himself is the same as me: he also speaks, lives, thinks, dreams, has the same amount of money — what is the use of his wisdom?” Every neophyte rightly thinks. And only when the way of thinking, behavior, respect in society, personal achievements cause respect - the student is motivated to receive Wisdom from the lips of the Teacher and is ready for many years of pain and hardship in the name of the final result.
Let us recall the Shaolin monastery — people were willing to stand at the door for an invitation to wait for an invitation, to exhaust themselves with workouts, diet, and a change in their old way of thinking for days to get the right to start training — and only then showed impressive results. So we come to the first conclusion: learning is impossible without the indisputable authority of the teacher and the motivation of the student . The reverse is also true: a demotivated student, a lazy employee - they will never come close to real knowledge, they will not be able to "form" a real professional from themselves.
Let's compare this technique with mass involvement, easy accessibility and an increase in selling properties: now, when a brochure with a technique from Shaolin itself can be bought at any provincial stall, has the number of great masters increased many times? On the contrary, the base level fell as low as possible along with the lower entry threshold. We take this approach to note, we begin to draw a table of properties. Or a chart. Or even to draw identikit - the main thing is to make it convenient to visualize all the thoughts of the designer, and the presentation format itself is secondary.
For certain projects, even comics that describe the scenario of communication of a virtual character with a group of users are perfect. You can, for example, push off from the idea that in order to design any really cool super-site, you need to select an image of a certain superhero, inventing a legend, a costume-design, and most importantly - a superpower functionality:
“The Superuser is on guard of the galaxy in the eternal struggle against ignorance, obscurantism, laziness and illiteracy!” - sounds? Or vice versa, you can use the image of a strict laconic guru, without flirting and unnecessary simplifications of the interface. To choose you, in any case, the image should be integral, make you respect yourself, substantiate your claims to your leading position in the society of Internet projects.
Bricks collect properties
If we want to create a solid educational system that reminds people of the legendary Kung Fu masters, then we will not need any extra filters for searching, sorting, and selecting courses. It is necessary to immediately take a position that hints to the user that his ignorance of one or another subject a priori also implies a high degree of ignorance of his real need for it. While the person did not know the Internet - did he know that he needs it daily more than drinking water? Everything is the same here - the true Teacher will have to choose the most worthy ones based on the abilities and potential of the students and give them a curriculum that never begins immediately with the realization of key knowledge. We recall the classics: learning meditation and cleaning, dragging water and observing animals, then acquiring basic humility, breaking with the old thinking of “ignorance” - this is where the passage of each virtual or real course should begin.
Well, the worst that can be imagined in the image of the information system that we create is the opportunity to poke at a lecture from the middle of any course to watch it on fast-forward. It will instantly devalue everything and destroy the planned concept. Therefore, this is what we write in the brief: not to use open access to the full list of lectures, to show the final advantages and skills obtained, but not to reveal all the cards on the course page at once .
Back in ancient times, when I was working in the Russian education system, I was always personally irritated by the factor of the requirement for a constant increase in student performance. Grades are getting better, students are getting more, medals, diplomas, Olympiads - all this was required to constantly increase exponentially. Such a path simply kills the true education, forcing teachers to constantly reduce rather than raise the bar for quality in their profession. The same disease can infect your designer of a complex educational portal that used to do only online stores and landings: as many clicks as possible, quick order courses, “we will call you back in 15 seconds”, as few failures as possible at the beginning or middle of the way - everything This disgrace in our specific task leads to the fact that any wisdom turns into pop music, accessible to everyone. It is right? Of course not.
Well, this is how the world works: how can not all the inhabitants of the world be billionaires - this devalues ​​money; so real knowledge cannot be accessible to all - it devalues ​​education, reduces the authority of any profession (which we, in fact, are now seeing in all its glory).
Thus, at the first design stage we come to the conclusion that a good educational portal, made not for populist reasons, can have the highest percentage of failures, a huge number of “jumpers”, the most complicated interface - and all this will only benefit the quality and status of those yet passed and completed the course.
Taking again the ancient wise tactics of “learning is in everything”, one can add another interesting feature: the portal interface itself can train as well as lecture notes or lecture scans . We're talking about a modern interactive portal, and not just about electronic storage, where technology allows us to implement any tools and virtual simulators for developing the student's mind in the right way:
Suppose all buttons on a physics course have a gravitational effect, and links simulate the resistance of a current (you need to select a certain current with the help of push time — to click on it and move on). With a low academic performance at the rate of botany, the user must die his personal tree, and the successful calculation of the certificate for the results of studies depends on successful calculations of the equations for algebra. So you can achieve maximum realism, when every activity, every second of interaction in your profile or on page 404 - can and should be a lesson for someone who is ready to see and hear this lesson. That is how people have been taught for thousands of years before us, and perhaps you should not reinvent the wheel again?
So, how do we get the perfect scenario for interacting with such an authoritative teacher site that befell Zen? Minimalism in design, the search string is replaced by a step-by-step questioning of each incoming visitor, during which his abilities, skills, needs, skills and most importantly - the strength of the desire to reach the end will be revealed. Speaking figuratively, it turns out that the USE should precede any training to assess the potential for learning, but not to complete it. And this is absolutely true.
Then, after a week of waiting, during which any user, 18 or 68 years old, from Moscow or Quebec, would develop resilience or would finally cool down to study; an invitation is received to start the first stage of training and to offer a finished individual training course with lectures corresponding to the student’s level of knowledge and consisting of those disciplines in which the teacher system has revealed obvious gaps or critical needs for current or planned future user activities. After successfully completing stage 1, each user receives the status of the Student, then a new enhanced program is opened in the curriculum, other courses and the Master looms ahead, then the next stages and so on ...
We do not know that - what we do not know
Thus, a person will be ready to learn within our system all his life, replenishing his luggage not with one-sided subjective information, but expanding his outlook as a whole, according to his profession and ability to perceive. Let me remind once again one truth, which is the basis for understanding the essence of education as a whole: “every person does not know what he does not know.” And without knowing, can not adequately assess the benefits, the need, their need, the effect of future knowledge for solving urgent problems, etc.
Well, the main page of this educational portal let it look like this:
So, what is the strength of such a strange approach - here we do not dwell on our own fantasies and do not write a lengthy literary novel about the difficult life of Ivan Ivanov who never existed in reality. We simply use the features of the human perception of the world and create a verbal portrait, humanizing the system itself, plan its perception by any people who come across it. We expand the question differently, not “what people may need from the system,” but “ what the system can give to all those who intentionally or by mistake, out of curiosity or under pressure from outside, but followed the link or downloaded the application to the phone ” .
As for monetization and problems with the promotion of such a concept, marketers around the world will confirm to you - often closeness and elitism, inaccessibility and status can give a brand promotion even more than cheeky accessibility, permissiveness and deliberate simplification.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/290774/
All Articles