Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup | Hacker News Reader

Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup

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64 pointsstylejam33 comments

Completely leaves out visual design. Maybe because polish is harder to encapsulate with a single book or because it's so easy to pick up by cruising Dribbble for inspiration, but it's still worth mentioning.

Otherwise you get the average startup designer that's more of a developer in disguise.

"because [visual design is] so easy to pick up by cruising Dribbble for inspiration"

It is?

I think what's being said here is that it's easy to pick up the ideas of visual design, not the actual skill (I hope). As a budding designer, Dribbble is definitely helpful in allowing you to see "the bar" and improve how you approach certain projects. However, it is most definitely NOT easy to "pick up [visual design] by cruising Dribbble."

You are both referring to style.

Yeah, and?

Design is a solution to a problem. It doesn't matter what the medium is. Sometimes you see these solutions on Dribbble but more often than not what you see are examples of style. They are two separate things.

Your definition of design includes style, since style can (and often is) a solution to a problem as well. Not everything is wireframes and usability, and this is coming from someone who's first book on the job was Jakob Nielsen's.

Ever read Blink? Or those studies about how people make an unconscious decision about a website in less than a second?

Style and polish expresses a level of quality (at the very least) and can also communicate the type of site. Is this a kid-friendly Disney site? Is it a serious financial tool? Is it a mysterious stealth mode startup?

I'll concede as much. I was drawn by the fact that the discussion was about design, and you two went off into style land. It'd be about the same as us starting a talk on Rock and Roll and we really just dive into guitar solos while swearing it's rock we are on about. Make sense?

“Not everything is design, but design is about everything.” - Michael Bierut

I think that sums us both up nicely ;)

Haha, quoting my own about page against me, love it :)

Yeah, design includes style but isn't just style, that's what we're both saying I think.

Yeah, it is. See my response to rglover below and feel free to ping me offline if you need more tips.

I leave out visual design because lots of startups that meet every goal you can eventually imagine (ginzametrics, bingocardcreator) don't even go close at having a decent visual design (no offence intended).

I believe visuals are also a very subjective matter, and belong much more to the "talent" side of things, than to the "knowledge" one.

Just saw this (Google Alerts could use some work).

I'm genuinely curious to get your feedback / more explanation of what you mean when you say we (Ginzametrics) "don't even go close to having decent visual design."

We're always working to improve our design so if you are willing to share specific feedback, I'd love to hear it. Drop me a line at hello@ginzametrics.com. Thanks!

Ever notice how a lot of start-up websites look pretty similar? Lots of the same typefaces, same visual approach, same graphic techniques and colors--you see Helvetica/Arial, the same set of textures, quasi-3D effects, and so on. The cumulative effect is generic. It says, "we're roughly imitating what everyone else is doing because everyone else is doing it." Bad message. Good design won't compensate for flawed business models, but it will maximize the potential of a strong one.

Independent thought and ingenuity trumps everything on this list, I'm afraid. The stuff there is price of admission; you're not even a designer without it in your toolbox.

I found "Designing Interfaces" disappointing. It is a list of interface widgets - for example an accordion menu - and some information about how to use it.

A far better book on usability is "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug.

+1 for Don't Make Me Think. Old, but highly recommended.

I bet if I made a list like this highlighting what a programmer must have when working for a startup there'd be some serious hating going on.

While this may be a good list if you want to read up for a month, this does not cover years of art theory, learning how to choose your battles, developing a refined sense of taste, pure objectivity, and a myriad of other skills that are subtly nuanced into almost every project.

I'm sorry, a good designer's "Must Haves" cannot be encapsulated in a list.

Everyone has to start somewhere. And unfortunately a lot of design lists end up making the topic more unapproachable than it has to be, considering there are some fundamental skills that everyone can build on.

The skills are critical for any front-end designer, not just the ones in startups. Companies that embrace skilled designers as their culture compete much better than others.

The word "startup" has almost reached the status of buzzword. "Cloud based startup" would have been even better..

The use of "startup" along Amazon Associate links with very little value-add makes this page seem spammy.

Hi, there are no Amazon Associate links: the only one Amazon Associate link I can think about is with Flanagan's book, and Mr. Flanagan is the associate, not me. I just thought removing it wouldn't have been polite.

When I could link the book's website, I did it.

My apologies, then. I probably moused-over the one link that did have the code.

No problem at all, it happens.

One of the topics I cover the most there is the difference between startups and agencies/freelancing.

While startups tend to look at results (the ones that survive), agencies tend to look at the customer, at least most of them.

I actually believe that most designers coming from an agency would be eaten alive in a startup, along with their "photoshop skills". This people don't even know what UX means, never conducted a usability test (usability = I look at the website and say what I think), and definitely don't read HN.

Should be critical, yes. But if you know the market, you know that things like usability or ux are used 90% of times as buzzwords from sellers. I'm afraid I can't disclose some of my experiences with top design agencies in both the US and Italy, but trust me, I've got a truckload of horror stories :)

I hate this list. Want to be good? Look at sites/apps you admire and learn to emulate them. Don't read a 300 page book on User Experience or ugh, UX... unless you're doing for enjoyment.

Sounds like a good plan for cargo-cult web design. A good book on UX (which stands for the same User Experience, btw) will teach you why you admire particular web sites.

That has nothing to do with producing a good design, fast - which is the #1 qualification I'm looking for in a designer at a startup.

You really don't care if someone has a conceptual understanding of UI/UX? I guess that's fine if you're not doing anything unique. But if you are, how is your designer going to be able to think through the unique design problems posed by your product?

I mean - take Mint, which has been widely praised for its design. Would a designer have been able to produce it by cobbling together half-understood components from other sites?

I'd really like to hear more about why you don't think a designer needs to be able to understand what design is. I'm curious about how you think he'd even be able to successfully emulate other sites if he doesn't understand what to emulate and why.

Fair points.

I just don't think studying these concepts makes you better. Designing makes you better. Practice and good feedback. To me, UI and UX can read like buzzwords on a resume. I'm not saying they're not important components. I'm just disagreeing with how one should learn them. Perhaps I could have been more clear in my original comment.

False dichotomy - good designers would read these books and put the concepts into practice by examining existing well-designed sites.

That's true.

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