Last Friday, I attended this year's IxDC Internet Product Conference and was also invited to give the opening speech in the morning. I shared with everyone some of my personal insights and ideas about design management at Xiaomi.
The atmosphere on-site was even more enthusiastic than I had imagined. By 9 a.m., the venue was already packed. Hu Xiao (Secretary-General of the Interaction Design Professional Committee of IxDC) told me that the circle of Internet product designers is becoming increasingly active, with a growing atmosphere of exchange and learning. The maturation of mobile Internet and the rise of Internet hardware startups have added much heat to this field.
I feel very excited because I am originally a designer myself. I am particularly concerned about the topic of design management. Throughout my time as a frontline product manager, designer, and marketer, I have always been considering one question: how can we simply, directly, and effectively achieve what we want: a product plan, an interface, or a marketing plan?
When facing this proposition, we must mention one word - management. Especially today, management has somehow become a term with negative connotations over time. Many entrepreneurs and industry elites avoid saying they are doing management when packaging themselves, preferring titles like Chief Product Experience Officer or Chief Architect, which seem more fashionable.
Being grounded and staying on the front line is certainly a good thing, but we don't need to go from one extreme to another. Moreover, in daily management, we encounter many pitfalls and traps. Sometimes after reading books on management, we think we deeply understand the principles of management and then spend a lot of time on one-on-one interviews, communication, and meetings.
So, what can provide us with the "one-stroke kill" power? This is the core content I want to share.
Therefore, I clearly stated at the beginning that the three key points of the design management I understand are: sticking to strategy, persisting until the end, and liberating the team.
Sticking to Strategy
In the opening, the first page of my PPT was a picture of Mi Tu, Xiaomi's mascot, a rabbit full of revolutionary romanticism.
I specially introduced this rabbit to the audience because it itself is a product of Xiaomi's commitment to its brand design strategy.
Many people ask me, what constitutes a good strategy, and my answer is: a strategy that can be adhered to is a good strategy.
This is the premise for all product, design, and marketing decisions, especially for new startups. This is the top priority.
Designing an entirely new brand requires thinking about the overall definition of the company as the first step - the "who am I" question - and then conducting a lot of foundational work around "who am I."
The development process of a brand generally involves three steps: recognition, reputation, and loyalty. Recognition means making people know who you are and appearing within the user's field of vision; reputation means making people feel you're good and reaching the user's side; while loyalty means making users truly love you and entering the user's heart.
Then, how should a good brand recognition begin? From the start, seriously consider whether it's the product name, the product's appearance, or the company's slogan. These fundamental works must be carefully pondered repeatedly.
With these elements, you can systematically think about your market, your product, and based on your unique DNA, come up with distinctive designs.
A good brand speaks for itself. For example, Muji, whose design philosophy I admire, gives a direct perception of minimalist and appropriate design and commendable good taste; Apple represents technology and fashion. Often when we get Apple's products, we feel like we've touched the future.
For instance, Coca-Cola's classic red design makes people perceive youth, progressiveness, and joy; Xiaomi is orange, aiming for a sense of feverishness, youth, and enthusiasm.
Xiaomi's brand slogan is "Born for Fevers." Establishing this phrase was a complex task, but fortunately, from the day the company was founded, we were determined to stick to this design positioning. It's now the fourth year since our first product, MIUI, adopted such a product slogan.
Before making phones, we ourselves were enthusiasts. Initially, we wondered if we could create a product we would enjoy using, suitable for ourselves. Thus, the entire product's starting point was designing for enthusiasts, essentially designing for ourselves.
It is this group of people that defines the genes, mindset, and temperament of this company, which is indeed very fortunate.
Defining a strategy is hard, but unwaveringly executing it without deviation is even harder. During this period, you will face many tests and make numerous decisions, but I believe a good strategy should be something that can last unchanged for at least ten years.
For example, Nike's "Just Do It" has remained steadfast for over a decade; Nongfu Spring's "a little sweet" has been used in advertising slogans for at least ten years. KFC's "We do chicken right," with various interesting Chinese interpretations, has been used for more than ten years.
What about Xiaomi? Let me give a very subtle example.
In Xiaomi's packaging boxes, from the earliest 1st generation to the 2nd and 3rd generations, including the Redmi phone, we used eco-friendly materials and processes, insisting on recyclability, biodegradability, and reusability.
We also tried other options for the Redmi phone packaging box, including black and red schemes, but we rejected them because we wanted Redmi to inherit Xiaomi's overall brand image.
A bigger challenge was that when we made the Redmi, we had to consider cost more. Adhering to existing quality standards meant the packaging box cost nearly 10 yuan. For a 799-yuan phone, 10 yuan was exorbitant. Some colleagues suggested using cheaper two- or three-yuan packaging. Even if others used two-yuan packaging, we could use three-yuan ones. But Mr. Lei said no; we couldn't lose sight of the big picture due to small savings.
You see, when making decisions, we often face pressure from various departments: "Hey, this costs us too much; can we not stick to previous things?"
Therefore, during the process of defining a strategy, we must mentally prepare ourselves: sticking to a strategy will be extremely difficult, but—never compromise, never waver. A good strategy must be adhered to for ten years without wavering.
Persist Until the End
After having a firm strategy, it comes down to how to persist until the end during execution.
Take Xiaomi's event PPTs as an example. I believe good design is achieved through persistence.
Everyone knows that Xiaomi's events are actually very simple. The entire event has no celebrities or models. This PPT is the most important part of the entire event, and the only focus.
I believe that compared to peers, Xiaomi takes the most serious approach to PPTs, with each page being poster-level quality.
How do we do it? No shortcuts—just continuous modifications, again and again. And as long as there's still time, keep modifying. And then? Modify some more!
On September 5th this year, Xiaomi's annual event PPT was 219 pages, but we prepared over 1000 pages of material for it. Mr. Lei himself participated in the month-long modification process, continuously compressing and screening, preserving only the essence, with over 100 versions modified.
This picture shows Mr. Lei and the leader of the design team working late into the night refining the PPT just a week before the event.
Persisting is crucial, but the direction mustn't be wrong.
Previously, I heard a joke about Chinese football, saying that after so many years of effort, we finally managed to make the entire nation love basketball...
If the direction of effort is wrong, it will have the opposite effect. How to find the right direction? The key is to place the design in context: where will your design be used? Who will use it? This needs to be clarified, otherwise, there might be embarrassing situations.
When making PPTs, finding these few pictures made me laugh uncontrollably:
They remind us that context is important, context determines design.
Let's look at Xiaomi's own example. In May this year, at the GMIC conference, a high-end, grand event with participants from 32 countries, we naturally took it very seriously, letting our most experienced and skilled designer revise it five times.
Okay, here’s the result. We were serious, even though at first glance it looks like something designed by a roadside print shop, or even free designs they offer when you print.
However, the actual effect depends on the specific context. This is a 15-meter long advertisement banner in front of the National Convention Center.
From the on-site effect, Xiaomi's phone advertisement performed the best, with excessive designs from others acting as distractions.
Considering contextualized design also reinforces brand strategy. The steps are: first set the scene, then pour in emotion, and thirdly, mark the sentiment.
The goal of this series of methods is to allow users to perceive and accept deeper immersion, then convert it into participation. Xiaomi believes that participation is the core of internet product design. It transforms brand communication from unidirectional pushing towards users into something more personalized, more vivid, able to connect with users emotionally. A good brand becomes the child of users, encouraging their willingness to accompany, help, and achieve it.
Liberate the Team
We have clarified the design strategic goals and firmly decided to persist until the end. Next, a crucial step is to learn how to liberate the team, activate greater productivity, and provide organizational guarantees for design management.
The core is to make your employees love your product.
As decision-makers and managers, we need to learn to empathize and put ourselves in others' shoes.
Xiaomi was built by a group of enthusiasts, so there's no doubt about their innate love for the product, and what the company needs to do is protect and further stimulate their passion.
In this topic, we cannot avoid learning from Hai Di Lao. We hope employees' service enthusiasm towards customers comes from the heart, and Hai Di Lao has first achieved highly caring for its own employees.
After that, what we need to do is establish a more reasonable mechanism to efficiently channel the energy of loving the product into design work.
We can identify problems and find solutions from complaints.
The most common complaint is "our collaboration efficiency between product managers and designers is low." I think behind this lies the fact that many companies haven't truly realized that the development rhythm of many Internet projects has undergone a change from "years to days." In response to the accelerated iteration of development, establishing a supporting project team structure is essential, and the most effective method is complete fragmentation, breaking everything down.
Xiaomi currently has around 100 designers, but instead of maintaining a large centralized design center, they have been divided into several projects. And within the comprehensive project-based structure, there are no complicated appointments. Everyone doesn't need to worry about when they'll be promoted to supervisor or manager... none of that exists. They directly form teams with product managers and designers, leveraging the flexibility of small teams.
The underlying industry trend behind this practice has already been recognized by many. Under the same overall design brand strategy, different products and different design application scenarios naturally have different requirements for design styles, expression methods, and communication channels, which is the "element concentration, expression dispersion" trend everyone sees. Meanwhile, the identities of designers and product managers are also showing more fusion trends, and the small team model obviously adapts better to these changes.
Additionally, a relatively common complaint is that sometimes during project formation, a designer's level is high, but the things they design on time always miss the point, being overly flashy and impractical.
The key issue here is that without understanding users, there is no design. Therefore, inside Xiaomi, we require employees to fully engage in forums and post on Weibo. Continuously interacting with users, listening to their voices, and allowing users to participate in product and marketing design is the underlying foundation of Xiaomi's business model.
Mr. Lei emphasized internally that we should forget KPIs; we don't have KPIs. Behind this is a development management method driven by user feedback and a rapid-response development mechanism.
For example, in our MIUI development, all MIUI designers and engineers are active forum users, and we quickly iterate weekly based on user opinions, which has continued for over 150 weeks today.
Even our internal rewards aren't based on the boss's mood improving and saying you did well. Instead, they are entirely selected by users voting on whether the design is reasonable.
Moreover, this force is a cyclical interaction; when you seriously treat users, users will also treat you sincerely.
We have received many gifts from Mi fans. The most touching one was a fan who used real grains of rice to glue together a model of a Xiaomi phone, and we are extremely grateful for such dedication. Mr. Lei and all Xiaomi staff have their own Mi fan friends, and we frequently interact and communicate with Mi fans, listen to their suggestions, and help solve various problems for them.
Only in this way can we always have deep affection when facing users, treating our products like our own children. You can understand why, when the first Xiaomi engineering machine connected its first call, Mr. Lei instinctively bent down and leaned close to the table to hear the first ring.
A team with a playful spirit will genuinely love their products and users, and this is the true core of liberating the team.