M-end software product design considerations - Zhihu

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Unionfab The team stay 3D The field of printing and industrial interconnection has been deeply cultivated for many years , Hope to provide the industry with , Depending on the 3D Print general technology 、 Integrated digital production 、 And smart factory solutions . Our vision includes ：SDM Software defined manufacturing 、 Data driven , Industrial interconnection 、MaaS,3D Manufacturing is service . This paper is about the author coming in software product design 、 Description of some ideas in the development process .

For more thoughts on products and industries, see 《 Product-Series》;

Manufacturing end （M End ） The scene is different from Pan B End , It also incorporates a lot of C The design concept and principle of the end . So-called M End , It is characterized by ：

• things ： Not off-line , Any business process 、 Software system design needs to consider the integration with offline scenes , Consider the friendliness of human-computer interaction ;ToM Products , Especially for products with collaborative side , The whole process needs to be solved （ That is, a closed loop process ） Problems in , It often involves, for example CAD/CAM/CAE And so on , It will also involve the difficulties of ecological interaction such as digital connection of different devices ;
• people ： Many users on the manufacturing side often lack software related background and cognition , After getting used to the inherent working mode, they are often resistant to change , There will be a big rebound to the pains brought by the process of system reform ; It's not easy for a business model with high turnover and pure soft sales , It's not suitable to invest a lot of training cost ;
• different ： Different industries 、 There are differences in the process between different factories , Different positions 、 People in the background need the system 、 There's a huge difference in expectations ;

The price black hole of China's manufacturing industry

No product design can be separated from the business model behind it , Many times the experience of entrepreneurial failure also let the author realize that from the product , Even the most basic function , At the beginning of design, we should constantly think about the future operational 、 Business models that generate positive cash flow . China is the factory of the world , Manufacturing capacity ranks first in the world , It's a great blessing to be a consumer , But as an entrepreneur, it is inevitable to experience the cruel price competition ; This means that we want to use the profits of the manufacturing industry to drive the high investment in software research and development , There are certain risks . On the other hand , At present in China ToM The habit of paying for Software , Especially like 3D Print this subdivision within the domain , Not yet formed , It is also very difficult for software to complete a certain positive cycle in the early stage .

Many businesses serve Entrepreneurs , Both are faced with a trade-off between technology and business paths ; Customers don't care about technology , Only about solutions , Just care if you can show real value , Not you PPT How cool . After more than ten years of digital baptism , Many manufacturing plants have passed QQ、Word、Excel Some digital transformation has been completed , This cannot be ignored ; Now is not the age when you can fool the boss into paying with a kanban .ToM At the beginning of product design, we need to abandon pure technical thinking 、 Product thinking , You can't pursue pure technology superiority or pure product experience optimization without your industry background or current stage ; And we can't repeat the wheel building with technical cleanliness , It's about being able to quickly combine and match the right solutions . But new technology can be a stepping stone , The new technology must produce better results than the original solution ; Once an enterprise can realize the efficiency of the new technology early , It may become a source of excess profits .

At the beginning of this venture, I also had a lot of self doubt , Especially in the pure soft way after the market has been hit many times ; I believe that many entrepreneurs will have such a long night . At this time, we really need to think more about bottom line thinking and final thinking , The so-called bottom line thinking , It's about the value of what we're doing now , Is the industry developing , Have you improved yourself ; If you are willing to bet, you are not afraid to lose , You can get something . Final thinking is whether the goal we want to achieve is recognized as the future direction of development , It's like cloud computing , It's like a new energy car , If you see the direction of the future , Then the difficulties encountered in the process as long as we adhere to , There will always be reports .

Some points for attention in product design

• Take the initiative 、 In depth demand mining ： As mentioned earlier ,ToM Users of software products tend to have less knowledge of software , Unlike big tech companies , Business will actively throw out demand ; In the manufacturing industry, we need to wear our eyes and ears 、 The way to dig out the demand . Development cannot be separated from the factory , Out of the line , We should take the initiative to participate in the manufacturing process with awe , To sort out and recreate those great experiences .

• Point face combination , Left to right ： Startups often have a direction to consider when designing products , Is it first to break through the popular single point or directly launch large and comprehensive platform products . I have some feelings about , If you're just proposing something like MES、CRM、ERP This partial collaborative information system （ For example, the industrial interconnection system of pure information collection ）, Then it must float on the surface , It's hard to solve the real pain point of the factory ; And if you take a lot of effort to solve one or two key nodes , But it lacks the whole process system support , Then you can't get the customer to pay for it . In the entrepreneurial stage, with limited resources , The trade-off can only be between the cold and the warm .

• Change numerous for brief , Lower the cognitive threshold ： Software designers 、 Developers often find it hard to imagine a few features that seem simple to them , How complex and hard to understand for users .ToM Because of its inherent logic, products inevitably contain many processes 、 modular , What we need to do is how to lower the user's cognitive threshold , Especially for those who may not even wechat users . The author is here to help users establish role awareness , Let them connect the function of the system with the behavior in their daily work at the front line , Complete the migration step by step .

• Strong message notification and active guidance ： This is quite important , Its core is to let Users don't have to think about what I'm going to do , It can be guided by the system 、 Instructions , Know what you're going to do . It's very liquid 、 In manufacturing factories with short training cycles , The transformation of software system from passive to active , Play a real central mobilization role , Is its core value . however , It's important to note that , We can't just build castles in the air , The realization of this point is based on the perfection of each atomic module of the existing system , Allow users to intervene at any time .

• Flexible interaction , Convenience is the best ： The so-called trouble is left to oneself , Convenience is left to users . This requires us to work on the actual user scenarios , For example, whether there is a computer 、 Can I use a mobile phone 、 Is there a big screen 、 Whether to input aspect, etc , On the basis of clear cognition , Flexible choice of interaction mode . For example, if you need to enter a long text, you can choose the code scanning gun , For example, it is not convenient to operate the keyboard and mouse, and so on .