Design is becoming a competitive advantage for startups
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
"Technical founders have already become prerequisites in the world of tech startups. Now get ready for the designer founder. The combination of this new duo is going to change the world of tech forever."
But this trend is not new for startups. 37 Signals has been preaching this for a long time now. I can not easily find the original blog post that I'm thinking of, but there is this:
"At 37signals, designers lead the teams. Each development team is made of up three people – two programmers and one designer. The designer also manages the project. In addition to designing the screens/elements, you’ll keep the team focused and make calls about what’s important."
http://37signals.com/svn/design?n=25
But I recall quotes on the 37 Signals blog from as early as 2004 where they were essentially saying the same thing. Since they first began talking about Basecamp, they have talked about this style of development. This is not new.
Recently I've been using a terminal to some ancient AS/400 database to look up property records at my local city hall, and it's an excellent reminder of how even the simplest task can become completely user-hostile if design is overlooked.
Like, being fit has always been an advantage for organisms. But until organisms came along who developed language and became able to communicate that it was valuable (aka humans), nobody was saying "it's a competitive advantage to be healthy".
Arguably, without design, there is no product - by making decisions that are necessary to take something from paper into reality, you are going through a process of design.
Design is most acknowledged in consumer goods, but it is present everywhere. Imagine you are building a widget that forms part of the internal mechanism of a space probe. It will likely only be seen or touched by a few technical people, it probably doesn't need visual appeal, but you must still design it to be feasible to manufacture and convenient to handle during assembly.
You will have to make decisions above and beyond its basic function - does the form fit the assembly worker's perceived model of what it does? Can it be held in human hands safely and without risking damage? Would any damage or incorrect installation be visually evident?
There is a false dichotomy between engineering and design. Modern technology is closing the conceptual gap. Whilst we need a certain degree of specialization, I strongly believe there should be no such thing as a 'pure' engineer or designer. If we want to create usable tools, we all need to know a little of both.
I used to think of myself as an engineering-type person. I engineered solutions. Indeed, my undergraduate education was in math and physics. But then I began a lengthy graduate design education in architecture and, in the process, began to design solutions. I had become a design-type person.
Yet when I reflected on these two types of tasks -- engineering and design -- I realized they were not different types of tasks at all. Rather, engineering and design are two different approaches to the singular task of creation: design is creation in which decisions are based primarily upon qualitative metrics; engineering is creation in which decisions are based primarily upon quantitative metrics. I was instead simply a creative-type person, just one with an ability to approach problems with both engineering and design eyes.
Perhaps my most important observation is that engineering and design are fundamentally more similar than different. And by improving your abilities in either, you are improving your abilities at that which is similar: the creative process itself.
Stephen Fry
But most people's preconceptions are of design being primarily concerned with aesthetics and visuals. I find it helpful to show that there is another kind of design that deals primarily with functionality. You could label the two graphic design and interaction design. And of course both are interwoven and interdependent, but they often involve different skillsets and methods..
Initially it was mostly about figuring out how to make them work. Later, it was making them work better and how to make more of them in a shorter time. These days a car needs to be able to sustain performance for many years with a tiny amount of failures or there's a lawsuit.
Design has clearly become more important. It's probably easy to say that design is the 'most important thing' since engineering is all good, but even now it would be wrong. Some marques need passable engineering and design, and focus on price. Others focus on great engineering with passable design (Volvo? IMHO). Others on great engineering and great design but passable price (Porsche, say, vs Bugatti). Toyota is much more about engineering and price, than design.
This mirrors Porter's 'generic strategies' [1] where different companies can compete in the same overall market, each embodying different principles by which they compete.
Similarly, I suspect that the design/engineering issue won't be 'answered'. Each niche and market will have different requirements. Different solution providers, each with a different design/engineering mix, will succeed based on how that mix and the resulting solution match the specific needs of the customer.
edit: just in case you need more info about this... http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/10/the_left_bra...
It seems that the definition of a "good designer" includes various technical skills / knowledge, while the definition of a "good developer" does not include design. I've noticed this a few times in startup culture, where people are hesitant to hire UX/designers that do not code.
I think things are improving, but the fact that design is still a strong competitive advantage (in many types of businesses, not just startups) shows how lacking it is. Companies understand the importance of their brand, but they seem to undervalue how the digital experience affects the brand.
The takeaway shouldn't be that you need to find a designer co-founder that cares about design, it should be that YOU, as a technical founder, need to care (and learn) about design.
Developers who launch their startup need to learn about running a business even though that's not their main domain of expertise. So why couldn't they learn about good design as well?
You can find something ugly. You can try to make something more aesthetically appealing for a certain group of people.
If these people have "aesthetic appeal" as a criteria, you can have a competitive advantage. Unless you are selling jewelry or other luxury products.
But most of the time, aesthetic appeal is not a key decision factor. People may not decide really rationally but they are not going to buy something without any function that solves a real problem for them.
So the difficulty of finding a co-founder would go like this: business < technical < designer.
I certainly feel a little like this. I am looking to start a startup, and I am MUCH more interested in hooking up with a really good UX/design person than a business person.
As a design/product guy I'd love to work at your startup IF the problem you're trying to solve is compelling. A good number of startups fail that litmus test for me.
If your idea is awesome, I'm in.
From the lens of a role-playing gamer (big fan of Bioware games), I think this realization can best be described by the distribution of attribute points. You can drop all your points into strength, and sure enough there will be times that you excel as you bash things with swords, but there will be times when you think, boy it would be nice to have a bit of magic or better charisma or whatever to solve this problem (usually bad guys) and then you start going all magic... usually the best builds that provide the best overall advantage are the ones that are balanced. So again, as much hype as these Design people might be getting now, don't forget about the other "attributes" as it were.
(not an ad, I just really like the service)
Case in point, Apple vs. every other small PC manufacturer in the 70's and 80's ... hell, even now.
Would the Apple ][ have been as successful without the switching power supply? Hard to say. But even at the Apple ][ stage, Jobs' design sense was making its way into Apple products.
For Craigslist the function is most important and credit should go to the back end guys. Something like Twitter would give it to the front end guys. I'm leaving scaling out of the equation for now and assuming all sites will perform the same under any load.
A site that is ugly doesn't get used. People always judge a book by its cover especially these days. But if the pretty site doesn't work then you're also screwed. I really hate this debate over who is more important: front or back end. You need both. Period.
I also hate the whole "design is easy" / "no, programming is easy" argument. Neither one is easy. They're different animals. The way you approach the front end and back end are totally different. I'm a generalist but lean toward design. I'm in awe of the back end guys but then some are in awe of me. We have totally different goals in mind when working. The back end guys are concerned with functionality. Security, scaling. The front end is all about beauty, load times, SEO, user experience. At one point in our work we do end up in the middle. That middle is when we're both thinking about the the front end is interacting with the back end and how will we code everything so that A) we can easily connect the two and B) we can efficiently extend the front end to accommodate new back end features and vice versa.
I understand the article wasn't exactly pitting programmers against designers but there's always that subtext and people always start thinking about it. It's a shame that the designers haven't gotten as much credit until recently but at the same time, even as a designer, I must give huge props to the back end guys as I understand the pains they go through.
But can we put the whole front vs. back debate to rest already? You just can't have one without the other. Period.
Are you implying Craigslist is not an ugly site? not trying to be sarcastic, genuine question.
This, right after talking about Craigslist, a site that enjoys a monthly cycle of "Craigslist sucks, it's so ugly!" ranters who are reliably and continually proven to be clueless.
It drives me crazy that Craig won't allow image previews for apartment listings. It's a poor design decision. But since they own that space of mind, it's extremely difficult for someone else to come along and dethrone them with a better product.
Both history and reality confirm for us that ugly sites other than CL do just fine.
The existence and popularity of various "Craigslist overlay" sites is plenty of evidence that design and usability is important to users.