UX / UI DESIGN: you cannot just take and draw a screen

My name is Vadim Rozhnov, I work in a team that develops a mobile application for the Gazpromneft gas station network, where you can refuel, watch promotions or a bonus program. I am a UX / UI designer. I make it so that the client is comfortable, clear and easy to use our mobile application with a monthly millionth audience.

Source

For whom: beginners in UX / UI design
The text was prepared by journalist Ivan Survillo
Reading takes: 15 minutes

How I went to designers

I have been a designer for seven years. There is no special education, he learned everything. Before Petersburg, he lived in Berdsk, a small such city near Novosibirsk.

In general, I have a medical education, I am an ambulance doctor. Dynasty profession: grandfather and dad are also doctors. After the ninth grade, he entered the nurse, studied for four years. Then he upgraded his qualifications to an ambulance doctor. But the medicine never caught fire. The ambulance is hard, but exciting. I tried to work. But I was more interested in creative professions.

How was a businessman

He started the “business” back in college at the age of 17. I had a friend whom my parents gave me a DSLR. I suggested to him: “Denis, there are a lot of girls in college, let’s take photos of them, process them in Photoshop, then sell them to them. We’ll start a business, open a photo studio … ”No business plans were thought out, such“ mother’s businessmen ”. They tried to take pictures, it seemed to work out. They started to deal with photoshop, they just found lessons on the Internet. A friend quickly cooled off, but it became interesting to me, he began to study Photoshop. This was an insight: I realized that there are already enough resources translated into Russian. We earned, by the way, not very much. On the best day, probably, one and a half thousand rubles.

Then he worked in a furniture store as a sales assistant. That was weird. I was 19 years old, and I was selling antique Empire style sofas. He worked for about a year, given that our salary was the percentage. I think that it turned out pretty good for that age, given that those who were over 40 and quite wealthy came.

In general, to sell something, you need to make contact, but unobtrusively. This is just an intuition: you understand that now a person is ready to communicate with you, and you need to enter into a dialogue right now. You also do not need to talk a lot and do not talk in stamps so that you do not sound like a talking advertising booklet. But if you want to become a good salesperson, the theory is not really needed. Just go and sell, but analyze. Is always.

SOME SUCCESS HAPPENED – THINK WHY IT HAPPENED. IF IT WAS NOT THE OCCASION, THINK THAT BECAUSE OF WHAT. AND SO ANYTHING

During work, I bought a laptop and in between work I tried to work in Photoshop. The boss noted: “Oh, Vadik, can you make us a leaflet?” Even paid extra a little. It was not difficult for me: it allowed me to develop.

Then he got a job at a printing house as a designer: he processed photos, advertising signs and banners. He also worked as a designer at a chocolate factory, made candy wrappers and promotional materials for exhibitions. Usually at the meeting I was told that they would launch a set of assorted sweets: “Vadim, here we need the packaging to be bright, tasty, rich!” Then I looked at the references, as the competition did, as the foreign ones, just modern trends and quietly collected the layout.

LAYOUT, GENERALLY, BORN FROM VIEWING, FROM TASTE AND UNDERSTANDING WHAT THE CUSTOMER WANTS

Once on New Year’s Eve it was necessary to come up with packaging for tin balls in the New Year theme and a set of chocolates. For a long time I could not understand what it was to come up with, because everything turned out pretty secondary: snow, a Christmas tree, toys, crackers, a blizzard, Santa Claus, a snowman … These are the ideas of the first level, most often they are not worth taking. As a result, the packaging turned out to be red-green, like a mitten, and snow as an embroidery. Everyone liked it.

After the chocolate factory, he worked for a mobile development company. There was a large staff of designers who made a lot of applications. The focus was on quantity, not quality, but it is impossible to make an adequate design in a day. But there I opened the door to the IT world.

At first he worked as a June in the interface design department. My work was always appreciated by the middle, a more experienced and cool designer, so I had to read a lot, quickly learn and redo everything. It was a good course for a young fighter – he learned to perceive criticism and grew up professionally. In less than a year, I myself became the middle with the team of my jones.

A few months later he went to an outsourcing company, where they paid more. Here I already felt like a confident professional. There is experience working with foreign customers. They made a service for guys from the UK, who had 30 hotels, and they wanted to make a system that would allow guests to book conference rooms in them. And from scratch we made a mobile application, web service and reservation service for hotel administrators.

Many of my familiar people think that design is a drawing of logotypes. REALLY THIS IS MORE ABOUT THINKING AND INTERACTION. IT NEEDS TO BE PLEASANT TO THE EYE AND THE BRAIN IS UNDERSTANDED

The most unusual customer that I remember is a scavenger with a fleet. He wanted an application like Yandex.Taxi: you can order a car, specify the amount and pay online. Cool topic, he would have been struck by it, because he was a monopolist. It’s really convenient: a person has a cottage, he needs to clean the toilet – he took a smartphone, indicated how much, when to arrive, paid online. The project did not go beyond the idea, but it’s a pity.

About moving to Petersburg

Once with a girl who is also a designer, flew to St. Petersburg, we really liked the city. We realized that we must move. And they arrived for the first time in January, when everything was cold, gloomy, but we were still hooked. We felt that it’s cool to work as an IT specialist. First, the girl found a job, went through an interview remotely, an offer was sent to her. Then, in St. Petersburg, I through Headhunter found a job as a designer at Gazprom Neft.

About the specifics of UX / UI design

I’m a “designer” by labor, but actually I am a UX / UI designer.

UX-design – about convenience, about logic, about thinking out the client path: on this screen there will be this, that screen will lead here, it will be on it. As a result, the user will come to the final action, which was supposed by the task.

UI-design – about beauty, styles, colors, “shadows”, gradients, rendering of icons so that they have the same visual weight.

For example, you need to do so that the user can activate the promotional code. I’m starting, as a UX designer, to find out what kind of promotional code, which users it will have, whether any or only registered user can use the promotional code. Then I discuss with the developers how it will work on the back; what will happen at the front; what will happen on the server side; what will be on the part of the mobile application; what users think when they press the buttons on the phone … When everything is clear with this, the drawing starts: dice, fonts, buttons … This is the UI.

THE MAIN DIFFERENCE OF A UX / UI DESIGNER FROM GRAPHIC DESIGNERS IS JUST A LOGIC PART. I HAVE A VERY MUCH “THINKING” WORK FOR THE CUSTOMER’S WAY TO BE AS EASY AS EASY

By the way, we are unifying the whole UI design now: we are making a style library so that everything is clearly structured, the same way. The result is a library with all the elements of our application. It will be possible to take them from it and assemble a new screen layout, as in the constructor. We can work faster, plus it can be transferred to external designers so that they immediately understand what is possible and what is not. It will also be easier to change the color of the theme. If you want to make it dark, you don’t have to manually repaint each element, you just change the color of the button in the library, and it will apply to all documents where this button was used. Buzz.

About work and pride in it

At Gazprom Neft I am engaged in product design. I do not spray on other projects, I sit and work on one for almost two years. It’s not boring at all, because there is much more that can be improved and done cool.

Work on the application consists of many interesting and varied tasks. This is the addition of new functionality (now they’ve done a new feature – “Bonus Transfer”), and the drawing of marketing campaigns (also recently launched new “Tariffs”), there are also tasks to make illustrations, for example, on training screens when the new functionality was released.

I am not the only one involved in the creation of design. Everything I draw goes through two filters: the team and users. Usually at breakfast I watch a chat room with user reviews. I look through about 50-100 reviews per day.

THE AUDIENCE QUICKLY RESPONDS: IF YOU HAVE DOED SOMETHING WRONG, THEN YOU WILL EXPLAIN IMMEDIATELY WHERE YOU ARE NOT RIGHT. AND IF IT HAS FUN, THEN ALSO QUICKLY RESPOND

The reviews are very useful, because when you work with applications for a long time, there is a look. If you feel during the design process that there is a moment where it seems to you that the user is dumb, he will be 100% dull at this point. Because real users interact with the application very quickly. Plus, our application has a rather conservative audience, for which we need to try to make it simpler, more understandable. It’s better to add an extra step somewhere with an explanation or, on the contrary, clear the screen of secondary information. Over the years, I realized the obvious, but important: any screen has a function. He must be needed for something. You can’t just take and draw a screen. It is necessary to keep in mind why he is, for what, what will need to be shown here, what is important on him, what is the thought.

The most difficult task for all the time at Gazprom Neft is issuing a virtual co-brand card. We have a loyalty program. To get into it, you need to purchase a plastic bonus card, activate it and add it to your account. But adding a card to your personal account before gave only an informational character: you could watch the number of bonuses, operations, transactions, and that’s all.

It’s nice when you see that people use what you took part in. With Gazprom Neft – especially because the audience of the application is millions of users. When you think about it, interest manifests itself, excitement. I want to do better, try constantly and analyze, bummed / not bummed.

About daily work

We have two-week sprints. There is a certain pool of tasks, in the morning I turned on the computer, looked at the mail, opened the gira with tasks and began to do it slowly. At 12 o’clock – the call: we say what we did yesterday and what we plan to do today. If you have any questions, we remain after the general phoning and discuss. Not to say that this is directly a routine, because you can switch from UX to thinking out interfaces or client paths, you can switch to the task of “drawing a banner” about the sixth coffee as a gift, that is, to something a little more creative.

The main buzz in the work – when something happens. This is a confirmation that you are doing everything right. You can compare it with the way you assemble the puzzle: I tried it this way, I tried it, then I thought – cheek, she got together. At this moment you are cool.

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