Design and what's associated with it. Stock design and everything connected with it. UX design is not just one stage of a larger process

As for the material from which the first stocks were made, the ancient gunsmiths chose exactly the one that is still loved and revered by gunsmiths all over the world. Wood takes this place of honor.

And, indeed, it is hardly possible to find another natural material in nature that would so successfully combine all those qualities and properties that are absolutely necessary for the normal functioning and, accordingly, the operation of this weapon part.

Firstly, wood is extremely common throughout the world. Its reserves are huge and, importantly, are constantly replenished naturally.

Secondly, wood traditionally has a fibrous structure, with a longitudinal arrangement of fibers and a very decent density, which ultimately, after appropriate primary processing (drying and aging), gives it more than decent strength characteristics.

Thirdly, the wood has a fairly moderate weight, which is also important for the entire design of the weapon.

Fourthly, wood lends itself perfectly to mechanical processing, which makes it possible to obtain the required parameters after it, namely: surface cleanliness and dimensional accuracy.

Fifthly, wood is an excellent heat insulator. It is this quality that allows the weapon stock to perfectly protect the shooter’s hands from burns that can be caused by a barrel heated from shooting.

Sixthly, the wood lends itself perfectly to tinting in various colors and special finishes (impregnation, varnishing), which allows the stock to safely withstand the influence and impact of various natural factors on it: temperature, precipitation during operation with virtually no consequences for the normal functioning of the entire weapon as a whole. .

Well, and finally, the wood after the finishing mentioned above is simply beautiful!

Now a few words about wood species that have long been successfully used in weapons production.

Birch.

This wood, usually light in tone, has a pronounced straight-grain structure and, alas, a completely inexpressive texture. The viscosity of birch is frankly low, and therefore it has an increased ability to crack in the direction along the fibers.

Distributed everywhere, and therefore cheap.

Before the advent of plastics, it was used in military weapons and cheap hunting weapons mass disassembly, first in solid wood, and then in the form of plywood.

In nature it is much rarer than birch, and therefore more expensive. Its wood has a pinkish tint. On tangential sections there is a scattering of light dots characteristic only of beech.

Beech is remarkable for its high hardness, which surpasses the hardness of birch, but, alas, also surpasses it in its ability to crack. If you remember the guns with a beech stock that you have seen in your lifetime, then, as a rule, a crack in the area behind the end of the upper tang is, alas, a common occurrence. The texture of beech is clearly richer than that of birch, but on an unfinished stock it is still quite faintly visible. Tinting stocks with stains allows you to significantly reveal the texture of beech and, accordingly, increase the decorative qualities of the finished stock.

Walnut.

Walnut is even rarer in nature than beech, and therefore the cost of even ordinary-textured walnut preparations is several times higher than the cost of beech ones. The tone of nut preparations varies from light brown to dark brown. The texture is pronounced, rich and varied.

By the way, I must tell you that not every nut is suitable for stock production.

For example, a walnut tree that grew on a plain and in fertile southern climate in subtropical conditions, it, alas, has a rather loose structure with a large number of rather large pores. It has very wide annual rings on the trunk cut and a straight-layered, completely inexpressive texture. By definition, such wood should not be used in stock making. For example, on the front end of the butt neck, made of such loose, and therefore not hard wood, when firing from the recoil impulse of the weapon in the contact areas of the surfaces receiver with the butt neck there will be a guaranteed accelerated crushing (compression) of its mass. The consequences for the butt will be the saddest, namely: the upper and lower shanks of the receiver on the neck will move significantly towards the butt, and their side conical surfaces will inevitably play the unsightly role of... a cleaver. Because of this, a vertical crack in the neck is, alas, guaranteed.

And, here, a walnut grown in the mountains in a sharply continental climate has simply magnificent, hard, beautiful wood in all respects. The texture of blanks made from walnut cuts at the root part of the tree looks especially beautiful. Such cuts are usually not even cut at the places where the nut is harvested, but are bought whole by gunsmiths. Typically, the sale of such cuts occurs through auctions and their cost is expressed ... in six figures (!!!) in euros.

That is why gunsmiths around the world rightfully consider it the king of stock materials, remarkable, along with other qualities, for its high viscosity. This minimizes the ability of finished stocks to crack during use. I assure you, the service life of a CORRECTLY made weapon stock from CORRECTLY prepared walnut can be quite comparable to the service life of the “iron” of the weapon.

Under CORRECT wood harvesting walnut First of all, it means the use of only extremely healthy trees, that is, in full sap, completely devoid of any kind of defects, such as: defects, interturn rot, wood-boring beetles, knots. Everything seems to be clear with bugs and knots, but as for the sweetness of the nut, then the song is completely special. The fact is that in the areas where the walnut grows, local residents treat it quite reverently and even with reverence, especially for old trees. Of course, there are reasons for such an attitude. The fact is that every autumn, under the crown of each mature nut-tree, there is a thick layer of nut-fruits on the ground. Yes, yes, those same walnuts that we love so much, despite their decent price. That is why all large MONEY trees are distributed between local residents and are protected from the encroachments of those who like to profit at the expense of others not only strictly, but also extremely cruelly!

Alas, inexorable time passes, nut trees grow old. They bear fruit worse and worse. In their massif, significant areas begin to die off, through which the sap ceases to rise upward. It is in them that the process of debate (rotting) begins. When there are very few nuts and fruits, the tree is cut down and cut up. The output is quite a lot of blanks with an excellent texture, but, alas, loose, and therefore completely unsuitable for stock making. Gunsmiths all over the world contemptuously call such a rotted nut... FURNITURE. Although this definition, I will tell you, is very true in its essence. Furniture made from solid walnut is simply amazingly beautiful, costs absolutely crazy money, and nothing will ever happen to it, since fortunately it does not experience weapon loads.

Secondly, of course, you need to remember about CORRECT storage of nuts. After all, even the highest quality and impeccable raw materials in all respects, freshly harvested in the forest, can be hopelessly spoiled by improper storage during aging. Its enemies are moisture and sun, but drafts and temperature changes have the most positive effect on the strength characteristics. That is why, stacked in pyramids on thin slats with tarred ends, they lie for years in special storage facilities, where instead of windows there are inclined blinds that guarantee drafts, but protect the stored nut from the sun and rain. Once every six months, the workpieces are turned 180 degrees to maintain their straightness during curing.

The longer a nut is aged, the denser and, accordingly, more expensive it becomes. The fact is that with each subsequent hour, day, week, month, year, like the famous “shagreen skin”, the nut decreases in its overall dimensions in all directions. The decrease in the length of the workpiece (in the direction of the grain) is several times greater than the decrease in the width direction (across the grain). It is precisely this circumstance that provides for the elevation of the “wood” surfaces above the “iron” surfaces in the designs of the boxes. It also explains such a problem with old guns as a significant, and completely uniform in width, gap between the seating surfaces of the receiver and the surfaces of the end of the neck of guns, the designs of which do not have a coupling screw, but have a wedge coupler.

As an example, I will tell you that I personally once came across a completely unique walnut preparation, the age of which, according to the certificate, was 160 years. So, the hacksaw simply slid across it as if it were glass, but alas, it didn’t cut the solid!
And finally, the workpieces on their side surfaces at least on one end (this is usually the narrower side) should not have a cross-layer. In other words, a standard weapon blank can only be considered a blank that allows you to cut out a butt or forend with an indispensable arrangement of wood fibers in the neck of the butt and along the entire length of the forend PARALLEL to the side surfaces of these parts on all sides four sides: top, bottom, right and left. Everything else, alas, must be mercilessly rejected.

Namely, due to all of the above, the yield of each nut tree suitable for cutting is not so great. Therefore, one should not be surprised at the relatively high cost of this wonderful stock material on the arms market.

Laminates.

This is a type of plywood in which, instead of casein glue, traditional for ordinary plywood, a special adhesive composition is used, which polymerizes when high temperature under pressure. In the USSR it was bakelite varnish, and laminate was popularly called “delta wood.” Other materials are used abroad. As a stock material, laminates are very good for rifled target weapons for several reasons, namely:

Inability to deform in conditions of high humidity,

Considerable weight

Very high hardness.

It is impossible not to mention the beauty of laminates after final finishing (grinding and polishing). The imported stock laminate looks especially good, which is made from walnut veneer, which has previously been color-etched to produce a wide variety of colors. Sets of multi-colored veneer plates provide high decorative properties of such laminate blanks.

In purely rifle production, laminates have not taken root solely because of their high specific gravity.

Exotic wood.

Species such as, for example, wild pear and apple are extremely beautiful, dense, and perfectly processed, but they are not widely used as stock material. And the whole point is that their solid wood is so replete with defects that the yield of good wood is simply scanty.

That is why our Russian exotics most often go to... boxes.

Abroad, in countries located in the tropics and with a developed arms industry (for example, Brazil), in the stock direction, gunsmiths widely use wood from several tree species, for which a general name is often used, namely “mahogany”.

In the tropics, trees of these species are as common as, say, birches in Ivanovo region. By the way, they even make... power line poles from mahogany.

Plastics.

Technological progress, fierce competition in the arms market, simplicity and low cost of production of stocks from plastics of various qualities in Lately makes them permanent and permanent leaders among stock materials, especially on military weapons and low-quality mass hunting weapons.

Such qualities of plastics as strength, lightness, low cost, amazing simplicity and high productivity of production using injection molding machines naturally put them beyond competition.

In conclusion, I can only say that all stock materials, without exception, of course, have their own advantages and disadvantages. This was, is and will be the skill of gunsmiths, to choose the RIGHT stock material for each specific type of weapon.

In design, as in many fields of activity, important role has a desire for self-development. There are no limits to perfection, but you can get closer to the ideal if you constantly become better. It is extremely important to get first-hand information from a person who has achieved a lot in this area, because the advice of professionals is based on practical experience.
We have selected the most useful sites, channels, blogs and communities that will help the designer gain invaluable experience and become better professionally.

Design blogs

Many designers write blogs in their spare time to share their views, which can be useful for both beginners and professionals. The best of them are included in our top.

Here you will find a video about web design, about the life and work of Marina herself. The videos will be of interest to designers and freelancers.

Video tutorials on web design and website creation. Very interesting and informative.

Channel about graphic design and vector graphics. Video lessons and tutorial on CorelDraw, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop programs. Lessons on illustration, creating characters, icons and logos. HTML, CSS and JavaScript training.

What does the user see in the product? Interface. It doesn’t matter to him how many nights you stayed up building the application architecture, or how beautiful the code you wrote is. The main thing is that everything is intuitive and works. In one of our previous publications, we talked about what we are doing to create a unified user experience. This interesting topic, we are now preparing new cases for publication, but in the meantime, the material is being edited, we suggest reading and pontificating on the topic of popular myths and misconceptions about UX design. Thanks for the material Miklos Philips.

It seems that even now, “UX” is still a buzzword in many companies – “We don’t just need a designer,” says the vice president of new products. “We need a UX designer!” Everyone in the meeting gasps, nods in agreement, and secretly Googles “What is UX design?” and “What does a UX designer do?”

Of course, today most people already know that UX stands for “user experience”, i.e. "user experience" But this does not mean that everyone really understands what it consists of and how it works. Moreover, it is often very difficult to explain what user experience design is or what a UX designer actually does.

In short, UX is the user experience of all aspects of a system (site, application, product, service, community, etc.). Companies strive to achieve positive, consistent, predictable and desirable results through user experience, which can include interface, industrial design, physical interaction and more.

UX design is a special discipline, which is about what UX designers do, and user-centered design (UCD) is process UX design. Another commonly used term is design thinking. Typically, such practices include user behavior research, sketching, wireframing, interaction design, visual design, prototyping, user testing, and iterative design approaches.

Understanding UX design—what it is and what it isn’t — will help everyone involved in it create great products with great user experiences. To this end, I would like to consider some common misconceptions and myths about UX design:

User experience (UX) is not the user interface (UI)

UX design is a multi-stage strategic design process, which aims to create a product or website that consumers/users find attractive, easy to use and understandable. And using UX design, we ultimately get the user interface that is optimal for us.

In a comprehensive UX design process, there are at least 10 steps required to create a finished user interface.

1. Analysis of commercial objectives and technical characteristics
2. Reports on the results of analysis of the competitive environment
3. Character development and user experience research
4. Sitemap and information architecture
5. User experience maps, user paths and flows
6. Sketches and wireframes
7. Layouts and interaction design
8. Interactive prototypes
9. Usability testing
10. Visual design

Illustration: Shane Rounce

UX design is not just about aesthetics

A great user experience is an essential requirement for creating successful digital product design. Of course, visual appeal and overall aesthetics are very important, but they are only the final touch in creating a product that is easy to use and a pleasure to use. Some compare them to paint that is applied to an already constructed building. Striving for aesthetic perfection without paying attention to usability will ultimately lead to failure.

If the user experience was only about aesthetics, then the usability of the product would have to take a back seat. But usability is a decisive indicator of quality, determining how easy the product is to use. A consumer is unlikely to care much about what a product looks like unless he can use.

Whether a product is useful is determined in terms of functionality, as well as ease of use (usability). The first of these elements ensures the presence people need functions, and the second determines how easy and pleasant these functions are to use. A design that is based solely on aesthetics and ignores basic principles of usability ends up, by definition, useless.

UX design is not just one stage of a larger process

“Most clients believe that UX design is a separate activity that can solve all problems by defining functional requirements or conducting some kind of research. In fact, this is a constant work, a continuous process of obtaining new information about users, responding to their behavior and developing a product or service,” – Dan Brown, co-founder and director of EightShapes.

A quality product must satisfy users on many levels. It should be:

Helpful

Why should I use it? Does it serve any purpose? Does it satisfy any needs?

Convenient to use

Is it intuitive? Is it easy to use? Is it available?

Attractive

Is it aesthetically pleasing? Is he different from others? Is it memorable?

Social

Does it make communication easier? Does it support sharing? Does it encourage community building?

“While usability is very important, the focus on efficiency seems to cloud other important factors in the user experience - for example, ease of learning, as well as unconscious and behavioral emotional reactions to the products and services we use." - David Maloof, Professor of Interaction Design, Savannah College of Art and Design

UX design is not only about the user

If a UX designer only focuses on creating an optimal user experience, forgetting about business goals, he will fail. This mistake is made by many newbies to the UX profession, who often give completely unrealistic recommendations. The existence of companies is ensured by their profitability.

Business needs can be taken into account, for example, by using the S.M.A.R.T framework when defining business goals for a UX project. :

Specific (specific),

Measurable (measurable),

Actionable

Realistic (realistic),

Time-Based (time-controlled).

Designers must view their work from a business perspective, think strategically, keep priorities in mind, and work not only for users, but also to achieve business goals.

“We just can't always do what's best for users. On top of that, we also have to achieve certain business goals - and our design work is aimed at this too,” - Russ Unger, Director of User Experience Planning, DraftFCB

UX design does not require large expenses

In reality, the best UX designers have a specific set of techniques that can be used to achieve the most different projects and a variety of budgets. For example, at very little cost, you can discover very broad design opportunities and gain a lot of important analytical information from a study involving just five users. Likewise, completely inexpensive testing of a simple prototype by the same five users reveals most usability issues and shows product developers what works and what doesn't.

UX design is required

UX design is primarily concerned with increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing a positive experience at all points of interaction with a brand or company.

Recent research from Forrester Research shows that a well-designed interface can potentially improve website performance by 200% and even 400% (with further improvements). You can’t argue with the numbers – they speak for themselves.

Once these myths are dispelled and misconceptions about UX design are debunked, it becomes clear that it can have a huge impact on a company's overall development, provide benefits, and UX should be integrated into everything it does. What other misconceptions and myths have you encountered?