Ask HN: When doing everything yourself, design or code first? Together? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: When doing everything yourself, design or code first? Together?

8 pointssamelawrence14 comments

I'm working on a side product in my free time while I still work full-time. I am the only team member, and I will be building the initial prototype and MVP alone. I am neither an expert developer nor designer, but can handle both well enough to get something built.

Should I build a functional "ugly" prototype and then go back and redesign everything, or start with a shiny "we're not ready yet but give us your email" page like a LaunchRock or something, and get my logo and jazz together so I have eager users once the product is ready to launch?

I'm tempted to just do both at the same time and progress each day as I choose, but I wondered if any other solo founders had found success starting with one hand stronger than the other.

Thanks.

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balance this:

"If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late." - Reid Hoffman

with this:

"Make something customers actually want." - pg

i once designed 20 screenshots of an iOS app before spending serious time with potential users. don't do that.

after that mistake, i'm currently demoing the world's ugliest MVP to potential customers. my MVP = a google form and a graph based on the data. i got my first verbal commitment from a customer after demoing this and mocking up the final product on a sheet of paper. (we agreed on price and initial functionality, despite the fact that 0 lines of code had been written.)

simply put: i'm building something his team can use. he gave me valuable feedback, threw in a few future feature requests and gave me a short list of other CEOs he wanted to refer me to. i also asked him to tweet about using my product. he agreed (and did).

just build something that does one thing very well, and get that in front of people. they'll tell you everything you need to know from that point on.

Oh I know my MVP is going to be hideous, and I'll probably have to throw it away quickly. I guess I was curious about whether or not marketing spice mattered on the front end of the product lifecycle as well... I feel like it's a balance, but given my target audience, it may be more important in this case than in most.

it's a good question to ponder but the 10 mins you spend pondering it are 10 mins you could be demoing and getting feedback.

i'm serious. wow them with ugly. (tm)

I just started to promote my side project[0] and I guess I am in a more or less comparable situation. I work alone and my time for this is limited.

First I focused on getting the product usable and that the documentation is somehow understandable with some code examples. My design skills are very limited, and since I build something for a technical audience, I though that the look of my website would not matter that much.

That was until Zach from headlinr[1] made me change the layout. Since I have a more or less decent looking website I get significantly more sign-ups and the logs show that visitors take more time to explore the content.

So with this new knowledge, I would vote for nice and shiny with minimal functionality first. Get something online as soon as possible. Just to get indexed etc. but do not underestimate the rejection caused by bad design.

[0] http://template2pdf.com/

[1] http://headlinr.com/

The prevailing wisdom [1][2] is to sell/market the product first, so that you avoid wasting time building/designing a product that nobody wants.

[1] "Yes, but who said they'd actually buy the thing?" http://blog.asmartbear.com/customer-validation.html

[2] "Validating product ideas before building them" https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/validatin...

[3] "Do things that don't scale" http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

I know my idea solves a real problem, and it's one that I've witnessed myself over and over. Whether or not people would actually use my product I think depends on which avenue I take it down, and that will be an experiment over time, to see which precise solution is the one.

Over time, I will develop two sets of customers hopefully, but the initial set is anyone who cooks at home and is frustrated by sharing and viewing recipes split across Pinterest / cookbooks / work docs / sticky notes / etc.

you're targeting ppl who view recipes online? Most advice about customer validation won't apply to you then. Your best bet is to cross your fingers and pray you're the next Pinterest. Because even if ppl say they think it's a great idea, most won't have the cash to pay for it.

It is about striking a balance. You don't want to spend too long on something but at the same time, you don't want an ugly MVP that will turn off potential users.

I spent a few hours doing a decent website front with the essential details, with a working newsletter form, so that I can have that front up and running while working on an MVP. I wouldn't spend a few days or weeks on it. Same with the product - maybe allocate a certain amount of time where you would work on the design and then focus on the actual product itself.

I also agree in getting customer validation before spending too long (ie more than a year) on a certain product iteration

I think it somewhat depends on the market you're going after.

If you're doing b2b with a product that is clearly a differentiator, you can probably build an mvp and talk directly to customers and get them to try it out and get feedback. For this you may be able to get by with 'good enough' design.

If you're doing a consumer product, where you won't get to speak to most of the customers until after you get them interested or even using the product, then you may need to focus more on design.

Keep in mind, the less features you have, in theory the less design you need, so keeping it bare-bones at first is always a good start.

The product is B2C, and focused on women (mostly). It's in the home cooking space, so they will probably be the early adopters.

Methinks you are building a recipe-sharing website.

I thought Pinterest had that niche on lockdown.

Goodluck!

In my opinion, the early adopters are going to give it a shot anyways whether it has a good user interface or not, so you should just let it be a ugly prototype and focus on the functionality in the initial stages. Try and keep a simple interface, but don't try and make it attractive, just build in the minimalistic of it. Go put it out and take feedback and if the response on functionality is good, re iterate and make the interface better.

People (in my experience, anyways) would prefer a product that is fast and gets the job done without fault or error over a product that looks really awesome but performs poorly and is buggy.

In other words you can put as much makeup on the pig as you like, but in the end it's still a pig.

Try telling that to one of my former bosses though ;)

Thanks. That's my thought as well, and my priority right now is to get a working proof-of-concept and see if anyone actually uses it.

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