Startups: Quit Asking for Spec Work
followthegospel.com
followthegospel.com
I recently applied to join a YC-funded startup as their UX designer. We had a lot of discussion back and forth, and went through several (very fun) interviews. Then, after we'd all met and gotten along very well, and they liked my background, they asked for a spec design.
The spec was both the UX and design for an upcoming feature on the site. I asked as many questions as I could, although being an interview process rather than a client, I found that I wasn't able to have the kind of back and forth, collaborative discussions that I would normally. Presumably they wanted me to just show them my chops, and didn't want to invest the time in longer discussions, or felt a successful candidate wouldn't need that kind of involvement from them.
My first step was to provide a set of detailed user scenarios, laying out the rationale behind my approach, and showing how a typical user interaction would play out through a series of steps. I included some wireframes of the screens I felt would be needed for the scenario. The feedback they gave was positive, and I moved on to the design.
A couple days later, I delivered my design. I asked if I could present it to them, explain the reasons behind it, and get any feedback, maybe even make some edits if it wasn't where they wanted to go. Instead, they asked me to just email them the designs without any discussion. I sent them off, and waited.
Two or three days after that, I got an email saying simply that they had shown the designs to a creative director that was helping them out, and decided not to proceed with me. They cited as negatives several things about the UX that were clearly shown in the earlier deliverable, which surprised me, since I had kept them in the design based on the positive feedback I'd heard earlier. The startup didn't have any established look and feel or branding yet, and they told me to just do whatever I felt like doing. With nothing to go on, I had to take a shot in the dark. When the feedback came that it wasn't the kind of look they wanted, I felt frustrated because there was no opportunity to revise it to go in a direction they would like. There was no opportunity to talk about the work, try to get on the same page, or see how I actually performed in a startup environment. It just felt like I'd been participating in a "spray & pray" design competition.
I'm not upset that I didn't get the job, although they were great guys. I don't think they owed me any "do-overs" or anything like that. What I did feel was that my time and effort was taken for granted, and having my work dismissed by someone I'd never met did feel disrespectful and a bit ill-advised.
When you're running a startup with limited resources and tight schedules, you have to be very careful about the hiring decisions you make. Asking someone to demonstrate their abilities and work style by doing some work is a great idea. If you are going to do that, though, you should put that person in a real work environment, not an unpaid design competition. Treat them like a freelancer, bring them on for a test, and give them a task. Pay them something out of respect for their time. It doesn't have to be a corporate market rate, but it should be enough to show that you're serious. Work just like you would with any team member, even though it's a quick task. Large agencies do it all the time by bringing in freelancers and hiring the ones that do the best job. It's a test drive.
If you approach hiring this way as a startup, you'll have the best opportunity to see who will actually make great employees, and you'll get a great reputation to boot.
I think that while you think they're good people/company/etc., jobwise you probably dodged a bullet here. It simply displays poor ethics on their part.
Lastly, paying a prospect for their time in this context is indeed something 37Signals has talked about working well for them. Pity it wasn't these guys.
You're right -- the appropriate and respectful thing to do would've been to bring you aboard as a contract-to-hire, and if things didn't work out, let you go -- after properly paying you for your time and product. If you can afford to hire someone, you can certainly afford the fractional (and risk-free) cost of trying them out.
What startups need to understand is that by asking "how cheap can I be", they are short changing themselves the true value that a designer can bring to their team: true creativity.
Building the right design for your product requires a process of communication, of revision, of going back-and-forth, of synergetic teamwork. Because the job of a designer is to think of the things, use cases, scenarios, etc., that you haven't and wouldn't have thought of without his/her help, and then design up your product to be better than what you had imagined. That's the true value of creativity will differentiate your product. This creativity cannot be bought through an one-way-communication - spec work.
There are 6561 photography iPhone apps and only 1 Instagram. Design is not a commodity. Startups should ask themselves if they want to be like Instagram or the 6560 other photography apps in deciding whether to invest in design.
There's always going to be people that don't understand the cost and importance of good design, and as much as I am continually put off when I hear business owners praising it, these are the types of people that would rather use WordArt for their logo if such a service didn't exist anyway, so there's not much to complain about.
I've also heard horror stories from both sides in the process, particularly when these cheapskates tend to be the ones who are the most nitpicky.
That really is the key point.
For a one or two person bootstrapped startup, a designer can be cost prohibitive, especially if there's not a lot of money in the bank.
For a sustainable multi-person company that's making money, they should really spend more money on a freelance designer vs going the crowdsourced route.
The companies that could afford to hire a designer but opt for something like 99designs are usually difficult/annoying customers, so in some respects, sites like 99designs are doing the higher end designers a favor.
In general, if I'm bootstrapping a project I'll start with a $5 logo from Fiverr just to give me something to throw up on a simple MVP. If it looks like the MVP is viable, I'll then spend $300 on 99designs. If six months have gone by and things STILL look viable, then I'm happy to pay a few grand for a "real" design.
99designs is still excellent for what it is.
The two people I knew that used the site as 'designers' were doing so as a means to dip their feet into graphic design. They were using it to see if they even had a chance in the industry. I'm not saying good design can't be had, but when you're competing with people that are putting zero experience behind their work and they beat you out on subjectivism alone, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth and gives the winner a false sense of accomplishment in the field. I'm looking at their logo design page right now, and it's a mess.
Not to mention the amount of times people have made money off of plagiarized logos, iStockphoto vectors or blatantly used Illustrator (worse, Photoshop) defaults.
I can understand why designers hate it, because the industry becomes a race to the bottom, and devalues the profession by making it seem like a commodity. The same thing happened with professional photography, especially in the wedding photography segment.
But I don't have a lot of money to spend on design. I can mock a piece of crap myself, or pay what I can afford to someone willing to do the work (or in the case of a crowdsourced service, compete) for it.
A higher priced designer isn't really losing revenue from me, because I was never able to afford him/her in the first place - and at least a designer is getting some money from me.
Having said that, you do typically get what you pay for. For $300, you're typically not getting as well thought out a design as you would for $10,000.
You're likely to get a temporary logo that lasts you 6-12 months until you need a real logo. On the other end of the pricing extreme, Vancouver supposedly spent $239,000 on a logo design.
http://archive.citycaucus.com/2009/12/239000-dollars-for-gre...
Either way, they aren't my target market. My target market is the overlap of those who care and can afford to pay what I require. Outside of that, companies can do what they feel best for them.
* Annoying because it does promote cheap+fast design, which doesn't usually provide the desired results, and these companies may possibly devalue design even more.
If I was a designer and a startup wanted spec work, I'd just politely say no.
Wagging a finger and telling a startup why they shouldn't do so is time better spent on something else, because there's a big assumption that they care. If they did, they wouldn't have asked for freebies in the first place.
On an iOS project I am on now, I was exploring using illustrations for a bunch of different animals, as well as 3D models in Unity. Paid for samples of both, decided not to use the illustrations.
I did end up with a one-of-a-kind shark illustration for my wall though.
If they don't have one or if it doesn't give me enough info, then I would either A) ask them to do a small paid project, or B) have them do some small bit of work that isn't something my company can use, and therefore would be a good portfolio piece in the future. I'd prefer A, but could see doing B as an interview-ish thing.
I thought spec work which was so wildly reviled was 99designs, or giving a designer a colour palette and theme they must work from.
It's important to note: building a portfolio takes time. Building a reputation takes even more time. Taking on spec work only lowers the value of your work/reputation. Once upon a time I felt the same way, but by saying "no" now, you're saying "yes" to a lot later.