Does your startup have a designer on the founding team?
1) It's hard to find truly insightful designers who also have an entrepreneurial instinct. The most famous examples who do are legendary. (The Real Steve Jobs)
2) Hiring out for design work usually means superficial work like graphics, layout, etc. The reason to include a designer as a founder is to go deep on user experience and other psychology of the user, in a way that no one can or will do for hire.
This is a good article on hiring developers over programmers.
http://www.ericsink.com/bos/Hazards_of_Hiring.html
So on that same note, if you're going to put a "designer" on your founding team then I feel he/she should be able to do more than just design pretty pictures... their roll should be moreorless a hands-on product manager who works with the founders/team to act as the voice of the customer and manage the experience.
2) Exactly. It is like Steve Jobs quote "We don't have good language to talk about this kind of thing. In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the colour or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together."
Someone with no technical or design skills can have a very strong vision, and a good designer can work with that person to bring out a superb product even if the designer has no personal vision or even an investment in the final product.
In that way, visionary is to designer as designer is to engineer.
That on its own is a great one-liner.
Would have a designer on the founding team
Would not have a designer on the founding team
You bring up an interesting point. How do you weigh Aesthetics/UX Flow/Front End Implementation? I think most folks look for the latter at the detriment of the former. BTW, If you are looking for designers shoot me an email. I have a lot of talented folks in my network who would love to talk to you!
It's a pretty common evolution for a designer to branch out into UX, so if one is looking for a designer it would be natural to look for a designer + UX engineer.
Personally I'd take designer+sales or designer+sysop pretty happily, but those are fairly rare skill blends!
Great call, will be far more interesting this way. I think designers are a great way to humanize a service. For all the lip service Apple gets re: design it is a bit surprising that fewer startups use it as a competitive advantage. The AirBNB guys from YCW09 are a great example of a team with 2 designers on the founding team who have gone on to great success.
And there is always something to actually design as every new feature should be carefully integrated into the the most intuitive way. So, our designer was actually the one who had to work the most hours, because once the design was done implementation was fairly straightforward - but it took always a lot of creative work to get there.
sometimes i get frustrated that my plate is almost always overflowing, while my partners, who is no slacker, essentially works part-time.
the important thing is that together we nail the right tasks in the right order. having a designer on the team is critical for that, both in web design and other paraphernalia relating to outreach, presentations and mailings.
the ideal team has all the necessary skills and 100% commitment. i think some people are saying no because they're considering money and hiring options...or something...
the "do you have a designer on your team" could mean an existing team member acquires that skill, in which case, win, right?
Disclaimer: I'm in a niche enterprise market, so design is less important for me than startups developing for consumers.
I think of something like World of Warcraft that wouldn't work as a tech only company with no design/narrative. Same thing with a lot of iPhone apps
Yeah, that reminds of client who once told me "people want their beer with foam" as a metaphore: no matter where you go, people are still people, and they like to be pampered.