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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

The thing that bothers me about this is what bothers me about the term "designer" in general. The role of "designer" is by definition a person who doesn't get their hands dirty. It's one that depends on other people to make things happen.

I think that's a mistake in a startup for the same reason that it's wrong to have a role involving control of quality or security or innovation or customer satisfaction. Those things are pervasive concerns, and if you have one person or group responsible for them, then it means everybody else isn't.

I intensely value design activities and design thinking. And I value products that are well designed. But I think treating "designer" as a role is dangerous.

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"Anyone who makes a decision about how the product should be is a designer. Designer is a role, not a person. Almost every developer on a team makes some decision about how the product will be, just through the act of creating the product. These decisions are design decisions, and when you make them, you're a designer. For this reason, no matter what role on a development team, an understanding of the principles of design will make you better at what you do."...While I agree with Jesse Schell, what we are highlighting, the potential for designer founders, is not mutually exclusive with your concern...there are many ways to get design done eg Jared Spool lays out some types (I am by no means advocating for one size fits all), but I am saying that having a strong design leader may help your team (the best ones don't have to control every little detail, they empower others), it's like having an editor eg http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/technology/what-apple-has-.... my major issue with design thinking and make everyone a "designer" so easily is you lose a bar of quality, craft, and professionalism that you want everyone to aspire to be...just like you'd want your CTO to inspire other developers to work with him/her, you want a designer founder to do the same...great talent attracts other great talent... It makes sense that a prerequisite for a tech company is to have a founder with technical skills. The same heuristic should hold true if you want to consistently ship well designed products like Pinterest, AirBnB and Path. Why not have a co-founder with design skills who champions the user experience?

Since I currently have a co-founder with design skills who champions user experience, I'm for that.

I'm also all for inspiring leaders. But in the startup context, I think the job of "designer" is as dangerous as its technical equivalent "architect". As Schell points out, design is a pervasive concern, just like software architecture is. A CTO who fancies himself chief architect is likely to drive off good talent, because talented people want to solve whole problems, not mechanically execute somebody else's vision.

I think the same applies for the visible sorts of design just as much as it does for the under-the-hood design: if everybody cares (which requires feeling empowered to make things happen) you'll get a better product.

Exalting designers as founders does not mean the designers are sitting in a throne ordering their minions to do the coding. I'd argue that any startup that has a "designer founder" today, that designer is getting their hands dirty with working with the code — perhaps not to the level of a true developer, but actually ideating and executing their vision. Why not encourage this? Does every startup need to just be a business/dev pair with a designer employee, or is it okay to someone who feels they're a designer first in the founder position?

My main issue here is with exalting "design" as if it were a separable activity from the rest of making something. Everybody at a startup should feel that they're a designer first. Because they are: each person's work should have a significant impact on the user experience.

Have you seen what you're describing work in a company with multiple software products and more thank 20 people?

The role of "designer" is by definition a person who doesn't get their hands dirty. It's one that depends on other people to make things happen.

Care to justify that statement with evidence?

Or do you think that only back-end code will make your hands dirty, and not research, requirements gathering, ensuring the product does what paying customers want and expect, customer support, analyzing, categorizing, prioritizing customer feedback, analyzing usage statistics to divine customer intent, creating and managing a/b tests, writing road maps, defining feature sets, managing development, html, css, wireframing, testing?

In companies I've worked with, the developers have been sheltered from most of the "real work" of turning their code into an actual business, but simultaneously believe that they are the only ones contributing value. It's cute.

Gladly.

What you're talking about goes well beyond the formal role of "designer". Consider, for example, what happens if you sign up with one of the many outsourced design firms. They won't do most of that. The good ones might do some user research. But that's not guaranteed; what they all promise to do is produce a very pretty document with a bunch photoshop mockups. Which an implementation team is expected to execute as written.

I definitely think developers should be active participants in all that work you describe. (I sure am.) Which is exactly why I encourage people not to have a formal "designer" role. If there's somebody who's officially responsible for X, then everybody else isn't. Design is a pervasive concern.

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