How do designers write a good mid-year summary? I have sorted out this basic framework!

“Why in the world does there exist such a thing as a mid-year summary?” “Have you all prepared your PPT?” “I am so busy at work every day and still have to write a summary. It is really tiring!”

I've been hearing a lot of wailing around me lately!!! Because 2021 is already halfway through, it's time for the mid-year review!

I am the same. Whenever I am about to summarize, I am filled with sorrow! I don’t know where to start! But no matter how sorrowful I am, I have to write it down!

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When I wrote this article, my mid-year summary had just been completed. I also listened to many other friends’ summaries, gained some insights, and summarized some tips. I want to share them with you here! I also hope that we can communicate with each other!

Is the mid-year review important?

Calm down and think carefully, is the mid-year summary important? I think it is very important for designers! Because through the mid-year summary, you can better understand the output of the first half of the year, what are the highlights. Whether your skills have grown, what are the shortcomings, you can review them at this stage. Analyze the problems encountered, solve the problems and summarize them.

How can we make the content more outstanding?

Before we summarize, don't rush to write. We should first list a basic framework, analyze, and sort out the logic.

First, you need to list out how many projects you have completed in the first half of the year. If you can’t remember, you can look through the previous weekly reports and classify the projects. They can be divided into three categories: key projects, regular projects, and other participating projects.

Then you can list a basic summary framework. It will be much more convenient if you combine this framework with your actual situation! The following is a basic framework I have listed, which can be deleted according to your own situation.

1. Introduce yourself

This will be mentioned before the lecture, especially in large companies. When reporting to the leaders, you should first introduce who you are, which business line you are mainly responsible for, and what content you are mainly responsible for. However, if it is a small company or reporting within a group, this step can be omitted! Because the leaders and everyone are more familiar with you.

2. Introduction

You can use a few key sentences to summarize your work in the first half of the year, which can leave a deep impression on people. You should focus on the core value of your work. For example, I have summarized the significant improvement of my business capabilities in the past six months into three key points:

• Improvement of quality
• Improvement of problem-solving skills
• Good at thinking

Simple and clear, after the theme is determined, the following content will revolve around the theme to explain the argument.

3. Explanation of key points

Many people have a misunderstanding that the more content in the summary, the better. If there is a lack of focus, it will only make people feel that you work hard but have no results. Take this red envelope rain game project that I picked out in the mid-year summary as an example:

(1) First, I would like to introduce the background of this project to everyone so that everyone can understand what this project is about and how to play it.

(2) Introduce the highlights of the design in this project: impact, rich layers, and light and shadow texture

There doesn’t need to be too many words on the PPT. Just extract the key points, make it simple and clear so that everyone can read it easily. When you are speaking, expand on the details and fully introduce your design ideas.

(3) Complete interface display

After introducing the design ideas and highlights of the project, all the pages of the project should be displayed. And they should be presented with numbers in the PPT and quantified.

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(4) How to solve problems encountered

This part is very important because it can demonstrate your problem-solving ability. Designers should not only make the interface beautiful and practical, but also be able to come up with a good solution when encountering a problem. This is also one of the abilities that designers must possess.

At that time, because every interface of the red envelope rain involved animation, it was difficult to describe the details when communicating with the developer. If the final output effect was not ideal, it would be very troublesome to modify it. So we simply made a demo to directly show the desired effect, so that all problems were solved!

Self-reflection

This is an evaluation of myself in the past six months. This part can be divided into two categories: strengths and weaknesses. Strengths can be said to be design satisfaction, whether skills have improved, whether design ability has improved, and which aspects have improved; weaknesses can be said to be where there are deficiencies that need to be strengthened.

Next year's plan

After reflection, you will understand your own shortcomings, and you can make plans for the second half of the year based on these shortcomings. At least you can avoid taking detours in the same place next year, overtake quickly, and finally reach your destination.

Conclusion

It is said that good work is not as good as good PPT writing. In fact, whether it is a big summary at the mid-year or end of the year or a small daily summary, if you want to be outstanding, you must work diligently at ordinary times. But hard work alone is far from enough. Summarization is also a kind of daily accumulation. I hope that each of us will do more than just a big summary like the mid-year summary, but a monthly summary, a weekly summary, and even a daily summary. Zengzi's great virtue is attributed to his "I examine myself three times a day". If you can sort out your past work every once in a while and make a summary after completing a major project, you will definitely be able to submit a decent answer sheet when you report.