如何為Windows Phone開發app之構思和概念篇（譯）
譯者按：好的設計方法，不會只局限于某一平臺，一定是放之四海而皆準。另外原文太長了，因而大部分比較羅嗦的文字沒有翻。旨在讓大家理解這個方法即可。
上一篇文章（The Design Process of a Windows Phone App）中，我們討論了為你的 Windows Phone App 定義主題的重要性。構思階段幫助你提煉你的主題和產生創意。我們探討過選擇主題對用戶體驗的價值，就像吃飯、跑步、出海而不是 API、RSS 。
構思和概念階段會很好玩，尤其是和其他人一起！這個階段可分為三個步驟：1，頭腦風暴，2、探索，3、收斂。概括的講，頭腦風暴步驟產生大量的 idea，探索步驟仔細剖析并研究那些 idea 中的大部分（不是全部），在收斂步驟中你要覺得哪些 idea 會最終被設計為 App。只有極少數的 idea 最終脫穎而出。
Brainstorming 頭腦風暴
頭腦風暴通常是設計一個 Windows Phone App 的第一階段。這個階段只在于你思想的解放。在于你要產生無數的 idea，甚至有些 idea 會非常瘋狂。在于你要勇于突破條條框框，提出有創造性的解決方案。
頭腦風暴的最好工具是講故事和多色的便利貼，草圖和情緒板也有幫助。或者這篇 effective brainstorming.文章也提到了 10 個好方法。
總的來說，你將用頭腦風暴定義兩件事情，1、你 App 的大方向2、App 具體功能。
頭腦風暴幫助你提出很棒的方案，為用戶提供獨一無二的價值，與 Marketplace 中其他 App 產生差異化。
一旦你決定了總體目標，頭腦風暴會幫助你產生和歸納出具體功能。
首先，你需要提出一個主題或者一個寬泛的用戶場景。一個很典型的情況是 “為 API 或者 web 服務而開發 app”。于是我們不過是又設計了成堆的 Yelp！、推ter 又或是 foursquare。然而，試圖為那些服務設計最好的客戶端并沒有錯，真正的創新機會出現為用戶體驗而設計，而不是為 API 或者 web 服務。所以，不應該這樣說“我將基于 Yelp！API 創造一個 app”，而是說“我將為用戶用餐體驗而創造 app”。你希望你的 app 有怎樣的體驗取決于你的業務范圍，你的個人喜好，一些你發現人們真正需要的東西。
在這一階段我們看到的另一個情況是，一些人在最初的時候就限制了自己。舉個例子，他們開始構思階段就已經確信要創造一個“查看股票交易價格”的 app。所以，我們最后只能得到一個股票交易的 app，或者又一個 RSS 閱讀 app。關鍵是要想有好的點子一定著眼于用戶體驗。所以，你要想說“我要發現怎樣幫助用戶產生好的股票交易體驗”。哈，這樣就好多了，給你更大的發揮空間。
一個好的可借鑒的頭腦風暴的方法是：主語+對象+動詞。
主語+對象+動詞 Subject + Objects + Verbs
主要的方法和步驟：找三種顏色不同的便利貼，分別寫下用戶體驗相關的主語、動詞和對象，并選擇其中的一些詞匯組合成一個場景。這樣的訓練激發了 你的創造力，因為它迫使你為那些不是你自己寫下的文字提出解決方案——即使別人沒選擇你寫的那些詞，你自己也不能去選擇。如下圖所示
然后2-3人一組，讓他們各選一個詞，根據這些詞組成的場景來發散出 idea。就像這樣：
- 素食女孩+叫喊+雙層 Cheese 三明治
- 小孩+玩+食物
- 廚師+烹調+土豆
- Lady Gaga+ 遇見+菜肴
即使我們不會專門針對 Lady Gaga 開發 app，我們也可以用一個更廣泛的概念來替代比如“名人”。所以“名人遇見菜肴”，開發一個跟蹤名人去那些地方吃飯的 app？這會像一個名人餐飲地圖一樣。
下面的這個例子中的三個詞匯的組合真的讓我覺得很棒：孩子+玩+食物。我自己永遠也不會想到這個場景-因為我還沒有孩子。感謝 team 里面其他三個成員，我們得到了這個場景：孩子在餐廳里面玩兒食物——真的令人頭疼。
Gamestorming 中講到的技術會對此有幫助。這是 Impossible Senario 中的一個技術。記住先不要想的太遠，不要想如何實現架構等等，就先享受創造力帶來的樂趣，剩下的階段中，你有的是時間去評定優先級，評估技術上的可行性，挑選概念。
Impossible Scenario for Kids + Play + Food
一對父親帶著兩三個孩子可能還是個小事，但是同時帶著 100 個孩子呢？不可思議對嗎？上百位孩子，你可能不知道他們的名字，他們的喜好，他們現在和誰約會，他們中誰是素食者，幾歲了等等。一堆夫妻帶著 100 個孩子來餐館，但 100 個孩子同時出現的場景是存在的——真實生活中會有這樣的場景，比如一家餐廳或者公共場合，博物館，麥當勞等等。現在怎樣做才能讓這些孩子不玩兒食物，不把 事情變得一團糟？怎樣能把你的經驗傳授給其他人呢？假如有個社會化媒體讓有帶孩子經驗的父母 check in，把他們孩子的好習慣傳播出來，讓其他孩子來學習，這樣不是很好嗎？
另外一個技術是Alternate World（可替代的世界）。比如說在月球上的餐館？月球上假如你的孩子拋了個小肉丸怎么辦？我仿佛看到這個肉丸飛躍餐館，打在一個上年紀男人的頭上！這給了我靈感，一個讓孩子可以在上面任意破壞食物的游戲。哈，水果忍者？或者 Angry bird 遇到或者忍者？
另外還有一個叫做“Other’s Shoes”（別人的鞋）的技術。在用餐場景假扮是別人或者物品。當 然，你可以是扮演一個 waiter，然后從他的角度來看用餐體驗。這不僅會讓你開拓思路，更能讓你和你的團隊視角獨特。現在，不扮演人，假設你是一盤意大利面，你是怎么被采購 進餐廳，你是怎么做出來的，怎么被端上餐桌，怎么被吃進去…當然這不意味著我們要設計一個意大利面 app，但你可以想想這個生態圈，在柜臺、廚房背后發生的事情，我確信你能開發一個全新的 app。
作者還推薦了兩本關于 brainstorming 的書 Gamestorming 和 Thinkertoys。
Pecha Kucha
最后向你的 team 匯報你的想法。用 Pecha Kucha (Chit Chat in Japanese) 的方法。20頁 ppt，每頁 20 個字。這個方法能強制你概況你的想法。取其精華去其糟粕。
Exploration
這個階段中你要探索商業上的可能性，體驗是的需求性，技術上的可行性。當然這篇文章中我們還是 focus 在體驗上。
要細化你在頭腦風暴中產生的 idea，延伸，測試他們。下面是一些用的著的工具。
- Sketching
- Storyboarding
- Paper Prototyping
- Storytelling
Sketching & Storyboarding
boxing glove technique 是你在 sketching 中要掌握的全部技巧。當然不是說你真的要帶著拳擊手套去 sketch。我們推薦的方法是，用一支粗馬克筆來代替拳擊手套。便利貼的大小和馬克筆的粗度立馬限制了你在在 sketch 中增加細節的可能性。
Paper Prototyping
紙原型從字面理解是用紙來做“交互”。我個人很喜歡用3″x 5″ 的便利貼來繪制 Panoramas,Pivots 和 Pages。這是一種快速測試的廉價方法。另外還可把你的原型拍下來放在手機里面去模擬。只要增加一些可點擊區域，這些原型就可以動起來了。15分鐘用 blend 就可以做一個這樣的原型。
作者還推薦了以下五篇關于紙原型的文章：
Paper Prototypes: Still Our Favorite
Looking Back on 16 Years of Paper Prototyping
Using Paper Prototypes to Manage Risk
Storytelling
Some people (including myself) would argue this is the most important of the tools for ideation. Storytelling is indeed fundamental for the whole UX design process. Storytelling allows you to convey scenarios and describe users, problems and solutions in a way that makes sense, that engages people and helps them immerse into a future world where you app exists. Not only it helps you and your teammates and clients understand your vision for an app but it helps in digging deeper into the app and making it more interesting. Good storytelling is also what makes your app sell… selling it investors, to teammates, clients and users. Flat story telling will yield flat apps. Structured and engaging storytelling usually renders in apps that are unique.
A good way to explain the value of storytelling in user experience design is with words:
“Storytelling traditionally begins with a “Once upon a time…” opening, and then a storyteller’s silent pause to gather his thoughts. The traditional openings, of which there are many (often with responses from the audience)， were “rituals” that served as a signal that the teller was suspending “time and space” as we know it and transporting the audience to a world of imagination and play.” – Barry McWilliams
“As experiences now span multiple media, channels & formats, we need to look to narrative, interaction, emotional elements to sustain transitions across channels and formats” – Joe Lamantia, Beyond Findability Workshop at IA Summit 09
“To create a truly memorable and satisfying experience, a UX designer needs to understand how to create a logical and viable structure for the experiences and needs to understand the elements that are important to creating an emotional connection with the product users.” – Cindy Chastain
“If emotion and meaning can emerge from the harmonizing of elements that make up a story， then to design for optimal experiences we need a story by which to harmonize the elements of a product, service or system.“ – Cindy Chastain
Storytelling is the foundation for every other way of communicating User Experience and User Interface ideas. Stories can be told with your voice, sketches, storyboards, moodboards and/or videos.
Telling User Experience stories is not too different from writing movie scripts or novels. Similar elements of storytelling exist for developers and designers to craft engaging and revealing details about user experiences. Common elements of storytelling are: Theme, World ， Character (s) ， Props (Objects)， Story (ies)(Plot).
Theme is the one sentence that describes everything. Your foundation. Your mantra. The phrase you and your team will live by. Every scenario, feature, decision, you take about your app needs to pass the Theme filter – the Theme validation. World is the setting, the landscape, the room, the street or in the case of digital experiences it’s also screens (of different sizes)， or platforms like phones, tablets or even 非死book, where these digital experiences occur. Characters are the Subjects or (personas) or other beings that participate in the experience.
Props (Objects) are physical or digital assets that complement the user (s) in their experience. Stories define Actions are the relations between Subjects and Objects.
In addition to the elements of a story， the structure is also important. You will find different story formats have somewhat different structures. A basic story structure consists of: Setup, Confrontation and Resolution. So, when defining and telling a user experience story， begin by laying out the users and their context. You can then establish their problem or goal and finally explain how this scenario is solved with the use of your app. The biggest risk of stories is for them to be flat – instead, tell stories that have spikes of revelations and aha moments, perhaps everything seems lost and then your feature solves it all.
You can express user experience stories by writing them down and by using some sort of visual media like sketches in storyboards and/or moodboards. Also note that storytelling in User Experience design is multidimensional meaning there are different levels of the experience for which you can write a story. First you might want to write the top level app end-to-end story. Then you might want to write a story to describe the top feature buckets. Finally you could write stories for specific features.
A really valuable technique I learned while doing marketing is to write mini-stories called elevator pitches which is basically being able to convey a story in 30 seconds or less. If you cannot describe your app, your core feature area or a specific feature in less than 30 seconds then chances are you have not yet got a hold of the scenario or feature and you need more time to explore it.
“If you can’t tell your app or specific feature story in 140 characters, chances are you need to do more exploration before continuing with the process.”
An even more effective technique I’ve been using lately is to describe your app, your core feature area or specific feature in today’s world elevator pitch standards: 非死book status and Tweet. So try writing a mini story (really nano-story J) for the 420 character limit for 非死book status and then a 140 character mini story for 推ter. If you cannot express your app or feature with these limited set of characters then just as previously mentioned, chances are you might not have yet nailed down the user experience thus more exploration is required. When teams have a conflict agreeing on a Tweet long story that describes their app or features of their app then it’s good to go back and talk more about the app or feature looking for the key elements it is contributing to the user experience.
Here are some good descriptions I’ve found in the Windows Phone Marketplace:
CocktailFlow
Tweet Browse, find and discover cocktails with a continuously growing collection of drinks.
非死book Browse, find and discover cocktails with a continuously growing collection of drinks. The application features beautifully presented recipes and identifies cocktails that can be made from ingredients in your bar. It also gives suggestions on what ingredients to buy next to make additional delicious cocktails.
Seesmic
Tweet Seesmic lets you update and view multiple social networks in an efficient and powerful application.
非死book Seesmic lets you update and view multiple social networks in an efficient and powerful application. Manage multiple 推ter accounts, your 非死book account, your Salesforce Chatter account and organize all your accounts, searches, trending topics and lists in your customizable “spaces” dashboard.
Experience Themes: An Element of Story Applied to Design was a terrific session presented by Cyndi Chastain at the IA Summit 2009 in Memphis. She talks about storytelling for user experience designers and developers. Better Writing Through Design by Brownwyn Jones is a good post that provide practical tips to better write user experience stories. Using Stories for a Better User Experience by Whitney Quesenbery explains the use of personas for writing stories as well as ideas to capture stories directly from users during testing sessions. Here is the Whitney’s presentation with notes and slides. Not directly related to user experience design but I thought this article on Conflict and Character within Story Structure was very helpful for me to understand the basic structure of stories – structure which can easily be translated to user experience storytelling.
A Note of Caution with… Babies
During the Exploration stage you will unavoidably face conflicts of interest and people will fall in love with ideas. Ideas are like babies, and babies can be so cute that you don’t want to let them go even when they turn out to be evil. So learn how to cut the cord and let ideas go if they prove (and that’s a key word here… prove) that they are not worth pursuing. At the same time, embracing some ideas and defending them whatever it takes is just as important. Without a strong sponsor in the team, a great idea might fall off the tracks and get lost forever. What we want to find throughout our Exploration is “evidence that proves” that this idea is worth pursuing or that it is not. In the process, the idea will mature and by the end you will have learned a lot about it. Notice it’s not the time to make this idea mature 100% but to get a feel for how feasible it is. I just read a tweet from a quote from Ed Catmull, President of Pixar: “The culture of Pixar is to protect an unformed idea“.
Consolidation
如果說頭腦風暴是關于自由的想象，收斂就是關于如何做決策，在 team 里面把不同的視角和想法進行評估。一個有效的技術是在用紅點和綠點來強制排序。以此來定義出優先級。強制評級可能會給大家每個人 100 美元，讓他們根據對 concept 的喜愛程度來分配這筆錢。可能這個概念我想投資 20，另外一個我會投 45。
最終，根據結果，產生一個基準點，會有一些想法被砍掉。剩下的安裝優先級把他們變成功能。done！
