
Design is Horseshit - thesethings
http://yongfook.com/post/14295124427/design-is-horseshit
======
mortenjorck
A startup blogger writes a polemic with a blatantly baiting headline. Within
24 hours, another startup blogger will write a rebuttal with an equally
baiting headline. Both will incite winding debates on Hacker News.

Meanwhile, other people will somehow manage to create value, ostensibly the
goal of both bloggers, without writing confrontational screeds, perhaps even
writing insightful blog posts intended to inspire and challenge rather than
stir up conflict.

Maybe it's writing polemics that is horseshit.

~~~
tptacek
Do you disagree with this polemic?

It's pretty specific and clear: it argues that plenty of startups are
successful with virtually no design at all, with interfaces as clunky as
"clients call us on the phone" or "emailing spreadsheets back and forth". It
implicitly argues, "early stage startups are continuously faced with a choice
of spending energy on design† or on customer discovery", and "early stage
startups should virtually always opt for customer discovery".

I can see how a reasonable person might disagree with that.

I don't see how a reasonable person could say that the question isn't a
reasonable one to pose.

† _Admittedly a synecdoche for lots of other things, like scalability, code
quality, test coverage, &c_

~~~
mortenjorck
It seems the author might do better framing this as "don't design first"
(which would also be a significantly less baiting headline). While it's
certainly not how I would build a startup, if it works for some, I won't argue
against evidence.

But most of the post is spent venting against a perceived popular bias in
favor of visual designers over "real value creators." The problem with that is
that everyone who contributes to a product or service can create value—a
particular startup may not need design early on, or it may not need developers
early on, but it depends on the market it's tackling. The wrong omissions can
spell disaster; the right omissions can spell success.

~~~
thebrokencube
I think this makes a lot of sense. Like, if you work at a web design shop and
your website doesn't look good, you're doing it wrong IMO.

------
danilocampos
This stuff was bizarre to me:

> Design enhances value, it does not create it. Stop creating shitty startups
> that _look_ amazing.

> It is to a massive degree much, much easier to spend a week pushing _pixels_
> to create something _beautiful_

> If there’s one thing you can rely on everyone having an opinion on, it’s how
> something should _look_.

(my emphasis)

The author's conniption would appear to be around graphic design. Graphic
design is a subset of design, and covers nothing close to the full scope of
what goes into the design of a new product. Design is about _how things work_
and, often, what feelings they evoke in the process. How they look can be a
part of that, but it needn't always be.

For example: how delightful is it to work with a great API? Something
straightforward, well-documented, but nonetheless powerful? It's such a joy.
But it requires effort: planning, understanding, experimentation, adjustment,
refining, etc. In a word, design.

As a test, consider the following:

Is it first engine _design_ or is it engine making? Airframe _design_ or
airframe building? Circuit _design_ or circuit assembly? You can't _make_ the
engine until someone _designs_ it first. How it looks doesn't much matter –
how it works is non-negotiably essential.

Something that _works well_ is said to be well-designed. Something that merely
_looks_ nice can be pretty – and terribly designed.

So a startup can't have something be both shitty and well-designed at the same
time.

The notion that design is a differentiating characteristic for startups comes
from the fact that many incumbent products _simply do not work well_. By
designing a product that addresses a given workflow faster, with greater
convenience, with greater fun, you're making something that works better.

We're past the point where you can build technology that fits requirements and
stop there. Everyone else has done that already. Now success comes in making
things that are satisfying, not obnoxious, that are easily learned, that make
users excited to show their friends.

tl;dr: Someone doesn't grasp the difference between design and making nice
graphics, throws a tantrum of a non-sequitur.

~~~
joe_the_user
Your criticism seems to center around your dislike of him using "design" as a
shorthand for "graphic design". But this is hardly unique to the author to say
the least.

In any case, what you go to say hardly contradicts what the author is saying
... except if you redefine what he's saying as being about you think "design"
ought mean instead of how he's clearly using it.

~~~
danilocampos
(shrug)

Words mean things.

If I cry out, at the top of my lungs, that "Pizza is fucking bullshit!", then
go on to say that I hate how pizza kills people, tears countries apart, and
delivers atrocities, people will narrow their eyes and say "Actually, I think
you're thinking of war." And then they're going to be a little weirded out
that I said something so simultaneously bizarre and incorrect just to get
their attention.

The thing is, when someone says "design is a differentiator," they're not
really talking about how it looks, either. Because appearance is very rarely a
lasting means of differentiation.

My criticism is not that he's using the word wrong. It's that he's invested a
lot of flaming in the process of misunderstanding people who aren't.

~~~
vacri
Pizza is a subset of war?

~~~
einhverfr
No, as per the original post, I guess war would be a subset of pizza.

Remember the Battle of Salamis!

(One blogger took a comment I wrote out of context for humor's sake and asked
if we "needed a nice violent movie about Salamis")

------
commieneko
Design is clarity.

Design is intention.

Design is function.

Design is appeal.

And, sure, design is appearance.

It should be no surprise that, yes, if you can pump enough raw "value" into
something, however you care to define value, that you can ignore or short
shrift design. Go ahead, limit your chances by killing your first impressions.
Write poorly in your presentations while you are at it.

I mean if gold starts pouring out of your user's computer's USB ports when
they load up your web page, you're right. They won't care what the background
color is or what that blob in your logo is supposed to represent. If the
reward is high enough, they'll kill themselves finding that magic button among
all the log ins, captchas, and cryptic navigation tools.

But if you're trying to sell a new idea, one that may be unfamiliar, or if
your "value" depends on the size of your user base, you might want to spent
the time and effort to respect your user enough to make it clear what you
intend to do. And what's in it for them.

Good ideas, and value, are sometimes not enough. They require a context to be
useful and _acceptable_. Good engineers know this.

And, sometimes, a nice little shrubbery, in _just_ the right place, and a
splash of color, can make all the difference.

~~~
steele
<http://thesaurus.com/browse/design>

Invoice is in the mail.

------
Jach
Fun rant. I wish he defined what exactly he means by design. (Amusing
exercise: replace all occurrences of 'design' with 'blub'.) The core of the
post for me was:

> Stop creating shitty startups that look amazing. A product or service that
> is indispensably useful yet looks like ass is infinitely more likely to be
> successful than a product that solves zero problems but looks like a work of
> art.

I'd say sure, in general, though that does beg the question for what problems
so many "useless" but successful apps solve. (Mindless entertainment, I
guess.) More importantly, though, "design" and functionality and usefulness
are not at odds.

For some fun (probably less comprehensible) rantings in the other direction,
have a look at [http://richardkulisz.blogspot.com/2011/05/engineers-are-
infe...](http://richardkulisz.blogspot.com/2011/05/engineers-are-inferior-
form-of-life.html) and [http://richardkulisz.blogspot.com/2011/06/design-
principles-...](http://richardkulisz.blogspot.com/2011/06/design-principles-
vs-engineering.html)

------
keiferski
And yet Apple is/was the most valuable company in the world, largely due to
design.

Saying "design is horseshit" makes about as much sense as saying "engineering
is horseshit" or "writing well is horseshit". Read: it makes absolutely no
sense.

~~~
tikhonj
Apple is a not a particularly pertinent example. I'm not particularly familiar
with Apple's history, but I suspect that their products delivered value
immediately--people actually had a _use_ for their stuff that nobody else
could supply. Then, thanks to design (and marketing, and fashion, and
engineering, and...) they grew.

The whole point of the article is that the foundation of any successful
company lies in the value it provides people. Everything else--design is
singled out because of the earlier article on the matter--is built on that
foundation. Since a startup is just the foundation of a company, its primary
goal should be creating a product people use.

In short, he didn't _really_ mean that design is completely worthless--it is
merely worthless without a solid product behind it. The same could be said
about engineering and strong copy; neither is going to matter if you're making
something utterly useless. Thus, given this meaning of "design is horseshit",
"engineering/writing well is horseshit" actually makes sense.

Coincidentally, I agree with the idea behind the post: producing something
viable is the most important thing a startup can do; the younger a startup is,
the more important the product's value. However, I think the overly
sensational, antagonistic and slightly misleading title was poorly chosen to
represent his point. The post is solid but the title isn't. It does drive
clicks and readers, so in a sense it _was_ successful, but primarily from its
less desirable qualities.

~~~
armandososa

         In short, he didn't really mean that design is completely worthless
    

Seriously? Because the term _horseshit_ sounds pretty worthless to me.

~~~
fleitz
I take it you've never bought manure. Selling shit is business.

------
thesash
Design is not a pretty facade to a product, and designers aren't just
responsible for aesthetics. Design is as much about how the product works as
how it looks, and a designer worth their stock options understands that they
aren't drawing pretty pictures of websites, they're designing with a purpose:
to create an enjoyable experience and ultimately a functional, beautiful
product that adds value to users lives.

~~~
tptacek
I think he gets that. I think he sees the real tradeoff, between elegant,
usable, pleasurable user experiences that in and of themselves make people
want to come back to the product, and raw value creation. And he's saying,
_for early stage startups_ , raw value creation is more important no matter
how clunky it is.

~~~
ianstormtaylor
"that solves zero problems but looks like a work of art"

"It is to a massive degree much, much easier to spend a week pushing pixels to
create something beautiful"

"Everyone’s a fucking designer now

If there’s one thing you can rely on everyone having an opinion on, it’s how
something should look."

"no shimmering design"

"They didn’t solve problems! Who fucking cares how it looks!"

I don't think he gets it at all.

~~~
tptacek
I understand why you wouldn't like the tone he's writing with, but if you
reread those carefully you're going to find that they don't refute my point.

I'm so much less interested in discussing one guy's style than I am in the
real point he's making. Nobody's going to remember this blog post in 2 weeks.
But startups are going to continue running aground on the mistake he's
pointing out.

Note carefully: by "gets it", I'm not saying he gets, like, "the universe",
the "ineffable 'it'". I'm saying, the thing you don't think he gets, that
there's a real material cost to ignoring design, he probably does get. The
fact that bad design has a cost isn't dispositive, because the cost of bad
design has to be weighed against the benefit of spending that effort somewhere
else.

~~~
momoro
I don't know why tptacek's comment is downvoted.

My take is that Enrique Allen, the guy behind the D-Fund, is not trying to say
"startups should focus more on retention and user experience," he's trying to
say "startups should think about users in an effective way."

In a recent talk Allen gave, the designer-founders he mentioned all had
significant programming experience.

Almost all of the people he mentions could code their own products. So, he's
not saying "get a bunch of photoshop designers to improve your ux," he saying
"having people who think from a design perspective can be the difference
between a product succeeding and failing."

For him, a design perspective could include something like thinking "how
should I construct this API so that people will be able to use this library?"

------
lisperforlife
Alright Captain Obvious.

Design alone is horseshit. Engineering alone is horshit. Blogging alone is
horseshit. Marketing alone is horseshit.

But put these together in the right proportion and you get a beautiful
product. The proportion depends on your product/service. It takes a lot less
selling, if the visual design of the product is impressive. It releases
dopamine in your customer's head which urges them to put their credit card
number in the checkout form. It may not be important for enterprise product as
the person signing the cheque does not use your product. But it is vital for
consumer and small business based products. But I agree with the author that
pretty design is not a substitute for good engineering, good customer support
or good marketing.

~~~
fookyong
that last sentence 100% misses my point.

you were right at the start: Engineering _is_ also horseshit. You can have the
most beautifully engineered solution to a problem that nobody has or is
willing to pay to have solved, and you'll still have a bullshit startup.
Marketing _is_ also horseshit. You can have the most amazingly viral video for
a product that nobody wants and you will still end up with 0 sales and long-
term, 0 customers.

the point here is that there isn't a startup fund or growing sentiment that
seems to champion engineering or blogging or X as a fundamental part of the
startup equation. it's all just a toolbox. but strangely, there is one for
design.

the real issue that early startups need to focus on is solving a problem and
creating value. that's actually much, much harder than you think and it should
be 100% of the focus in the early stages.

forget about engineering and design.

~~~
andrewflnr
Just because engineering and design and marketing _each alone_ are not enough
does not make them "horseshit". It just makes them overrated.

~~~
einhverfr
It doesn't even necessarily make them overrated. It just means they must be in
the service of larger, business concerns.

------
lominming
Design is not just about pixel pushing and pixel perfecting. It is more than
that. The blogger purely equates design = making things pretty, which is not
true.

Design starts from understanding and empathizing with the user. Design helps
to shape the product and connect with the users emotionally.

The Design Fund highlights the importance of designers in startups not just
because they make things look pretty. Designers are usually trained to
understand users emotionally. An engineer look at a problem and start using
equations to solve it. A designer look at a problem, start by understanding
the user, and develop a way to solve it.

Design teams in big companies have User Researchers (on the ground,
understanding users, find out needs, etc), User Experience Designers
(connecting the dots from research to product, how the product should function
and flow), Interaction Designers (that transition effect you see in iOS? not
just pretty. Helps users to orientate where they are at), Visual Designers
(make things pretty).

As you can see, in the whole field of design, only Visual Designers are the
ones who really make things pretty. Once again, The Design Fund values
designers because they look at things differently, and they can build products
with emotion. (Apple products have a lot of emotion tied to people)

*I am not part of The Design Fund.

------
ianstormtaylor
Design != making things beautiful.

In fact, the design community faces a huge problem because almost everyone
thinks design == make things beautiful and that is one of the things that has
been holding back design in startups for so long.

commieneko said it well:

"Design is clarity. Design is intention. Design is function. Design is appeal.
And, sure, design is appearance."

So yes, spending a ton of time altering the drop shadow on your button and the
RGB value of your logo might be time wasted in a startup. But spending time
clarifying what your product does, or devising a smoother way to onboard
users, or figuring out a way to highlight your more expensive plan, or any
number of other things good designers are thinking about while also "making
things beautiful" is not wasting time.

~~~
tptacek
Actually, designing a smoother on-ramping process is a huge waste of time if
you're trying to on-ramp users into a product they're not going to find
valuable. This point seems pedantic but isn't; plenty of startups create well-
oiled machines that nobody needs, and fail as a result.

~~~
evgen
Plenty more probably create valuable products that are hidden behind l33t
interfaces and web pages that look like someone vomited up four different
wordpress themes. Odds are these products are also going to die a slow death
because the value they bring is too well hidden behind poor design choices.
Arguing at the extremes provides no value here. In the vast middle there are
probably products that could provide more value (and more revenue) with a bit
of thought given to design and how the end-user will interact with the
product.

~~~
tptacek
Sure, that's a good point too. Maybe a productive response to this rant is,
"yes, but: if you're going defer design work, keep your interface minimal and
unamibitious".

------
lojack
> I love good design and I am good at design. But I’ve never called myself a
> designer.

> 1\. Designers tweet and blog

> 2\. Design is a cheap way to appear like you’re creating value

...

> I’ve created products / services in the past that have garnered praise for
> their design.

> 3\. Everyone’s a fucking designer now

Face it, you're a designer.

> Design enhances value, it does not create it. Stop creating shitty startups
> that look amazing.

I don't understand how enhancing value doesn't create value. Value is value,
there isn't good value and bad value, there's only more or less of it. If
pushing pixels does a better job enhancing value than creating features then I
am absolutely going to (have someone else) design the shit out of that
product.

I see design much like I see testing. Both of these are meant to build
integrity in your product. Design is perceived integrity, while testing is
conceptual. If you don't proactively maintain the integrity then the lack of
quality compounds. Treating them like a second class citizen will do nothing
but cause troubles.

~~~
HeyImAlex
>I don't understand how enhancing value doesn't create value. Value is value,
there isn't good value and bad value

He was saying that design is multiplicative, not additive. You could have an
extremely beautiful and well designed app but, if the idea doesn't first
provide value to your customers, you're just polishing the brass on the
Titanic.

------
6ren
"The Design of Everyday Things" talks primarily about functionality, and
frames _design_ so broadly as to be almost indistinguishable from "solving a
user problem".

As an example, Roy Fielding describes the URLs that a RESTful webservice
includes in its representation of a resource (for what transitions are
available to other states) as "affordances". It could even be argued that
Codd's relational model was a better "design" for thinking about databases,
which he presented in terms of the problem of data models being too closely
coupled with storage representation.

Of course, even this broad sense of design doesn't address whether there's a
market for a solution; but it does address whether you can make a solution
that's _better_. I can see the sense in seeking a problem that needs to be
solved - in being "market-driven"... but personally, I'm much more excited
about creating something better (which is only possible when you already know
the problem and some existing solution, because "better than" takes two
operands). And that seems to be the history of all the products I admire.

------
alexwolfe
The author makes some interesting points but should be more specific that he
is referring to Aesthetic Design.

Design is everywhere not just in the shiny stuff. Design is a workflow,
response, messaging, interaction... These are all areas of design you might
not be able to see immediately but are often the key components of making a
great product.

My guess is that every one of the companies he considers successful had good
design baked into their products somewhere (even if they had terrible
aesthetics).

To categorize all design in this way is very misleading to those starting a
company.

------
fookyong
Updated:

 _Some final words on this. Some people have interpreted this as me not
understanding the value of good design. I assure you I do from experience,
tweet at me if you want specifics.

However - create value before exploring how design can enhance the experience.
Solve a real customer problem. If you’re an early stage startup with no
revenue, don’t even think about design! Think hard about what problem you can
solve that a customer will give you $10 for and work your ass off at
delivering that $10 of value as fast and as cheaply as possible. It doesn’t
even matter if you’re not aiming to make a paid service. If people won’t give
you money to solve their problems, it’s not a real fucking problem. It’s just
another novelty echo-chamber startup that you might get a chance to flip to a
bigger fish if you win the startup lottery. Don’t be an idiot and buy into
that. Solve a problem, live forever. The idea that design is what early stage
startups should be busying their time with is a notion I find utterly wrong._

<http://yongfook.com/post/14295124427/design-is-horseshit>

~~~
limedaring
"If you’re an early stage startup with no revenue, don’t even think about
design!"

One would thinking that making your credit card form easy to use and find for
customers is fairly integral to making revenue. You can have the most awesome
service in the world but if you make it hard for people to pay you money,
you're not going to make money.

~~~
fookyong
what's the point of having a beautiful credit card form for something nobody
actually wants?

that's what early stage startups are supposed to be figuring out, not
optimizing their credit card forms.

~~~
limedaring
What's the post of having something people want but they can't actually use
it?

------
andrewfelix
While that's a ridiculously trolling headline, I agree with the argument. I'm
a designer(check my profile) and my job is to communicate ideas and products
not create them.

~~~
fookyong
Thanks. I think the vast majority of people who take issue with the post are
those people who only read the title.

------
ugh
It sounds like he is attacking a straw man. It doesn’t seem like anyone is
making the arguments he is attacking, especially not on the page he is linking
to and saying he is responding to. Specifically (for example) no one seems to
claim that designers are “the new kings of startups”.

~~~
cicatriz
Not only that, but his countering suggestion is a single word, "value", that
he doesn't define or substantiate. Beyond any simple idea of what people want,
you almost always need to build a product that they _can_ use and _like to_
use, and that needs good design. Not graphic design -- interaction design.

Why so many of these content-less posts on HN front page lately?

~~~
fookyong
value = solve a real problem

there is always value in that

~~~
sbuk
Design _is_ about solving problems. That's the point that you have missed
entirely. While I'm on it; engineers are designers too. Pick up any book about
software engineering that you care to choose and the word "design" will be
used extensively, especially in reference to solving problems. With regards to
aesthetics, this is simple: the more elegant the solution, the easier and
arguably more desirable it is to use.

------
wasd
Although I may agree with the premise in the article, I'm sick of this meme
like quality of HN headlines. Must we parrot popular, sensationalist headlines
to get a point across? The purpose of these articles is to stir up enough
controversy to get to the front page of HN.

------
billions
This article hits a note with the startup community. It actually redefines
design from "look & feel" to "practicality". IMO this is a much needed
awakening, given all the media hoopla around path's new button. Nobody buys
buttons.

------
cateye
Every reductive reasoning is horseshit. Someone needs to write an article
about: "Start ups are frequently so complex that their behavior is emergent:
it cannot be deduced from the properties of the elements alone."

------
sbuk
Another individual conflating design with aesthetic styling. The article has
plenty of merit but it is lost in the continuing abuse of what the practice of
design is.

------
ehutch79
I think people are missing the whole point.

The author is not suggesting not having quality design. He isn't even saying
design isn't an itegral part of product development.

he's saying everyone is skipping step one, namely figure out what problem
you're going to solve. No one asks the proverbial question 'How is my product
going to get them laid' (to paraphrase jwz) They just skip straight to having
a great way of doing the same exact thing everyone else does just as well.

~~~
fookyong
yes. thank you.

I am a huge fan of the "how will it get my users laid" way of thinking. If
your product/service can provide that kind of value even in some protracted
form (i.e. I'm not just talking about dating sites) you're on the way to
nailing it.

------
SeoxyS
The author of this post is so misguided it boggles the mind… I'm a developer,
but I chose to study design in college rather than computer science, because
in my opinion design is much harder to master than programming is, and can be
a much greater catalyst to success than pure engineering alone can be.

I see design as an enabler. Engineering is where the heavy lifting is done,
but design is what makes that possible. I hate to bring up Apple as an
example, but when you look at, for example, Siri: voice recognition,
understanding grammar and meaning within human sentences and the all
technology behind it is fantastic engineering. But what differentiates Siri
from anything else out there is the design. The fact that the AI has a
personality, that it jokes around and does not _feel_ like a machine, that's
what makes it accessible to humans and what makes it so insanely great. And
that's design.

I agree with the author to the extend that glossy buttons and a textured
background does not a good product make. Indeed, there's a lot of good-looking
crap out there—but that's not design, and the author's argument that that's
what design is makes him look like an ignorant fool.

~~~
tluyben2
Not sure if you got his point. But design much harder than programming is;
that's highly debatable. Sure, a lot of people can write code which kind of
'works', that's not really what I would call programming (and I don't think
anyone here). As it takes about 10 years to really master writing great code
and then get a lot of experience in the trenches, I believe this process is
hard and takes a lot of time. Less than learning design. And you can do IA
design even though you cannot make things pretty; a lot of people have a
feeling for it.

If I (programmer, no design education or talent whatsoever) sit down with a
pen and paper and draw a user interface (1 page) 100 times, the 100th time,
it'll be quite optimal, consistent and nice. After that it goes through the
pretty machine, an artist who cannot do IA, but can do pretty. It's a great
combi. With programming, you cannot really do the same trick; you'll end up
with crap.

I do agree that it an be a greater catalyst than pure engineering. I don't
think it can be much of anything without engineering and value and that was
the author his point. Of course when you made a product you want to make it
look good and work well ergonomically, but you want the value and the
engineering in place first. After reading the article I felt like his real
beef is actually with nonsensical vaporware looking pretty to attract
investors and morons signing up anyway.

------
quique
Wrote a brief response here:
[http://enriqueallen.tumblr.com/post/14480645124/design-
both-...](http://enriqueallen.tumblr.com/post/14480645124/design-both-creates-
and-enhances-value) Here's a couple excerpts: “Focus on value creation. Design
enhances value, it does not create it.” This statement represents the core
contradiction and flaw in his argument which barely makes this discussion
worth having. Let’s look at the word “creation” which is a fascinating word
generally associated with “the action or process of bringing something into
existence.” So if you re-write the sentence with this definition, it becomes,
“focus on the action or process of bringing value into existence.” But what
comes before an action or process whether conscious or subconscious in your
DNA? Design. Borrowing from a Google definition, design means, “purpose,
planning, or intention that exists or is thought to exist behind an action,
fact, or material object.” Therefore to create value one must design how to do
it, thus making the rest his post null.

If you agree with the flawed logic of Jon then you must substitute the word
“Design” with any discipline concerning the action or behavior of creating
value. Thus making a series of useless posts like “Engineering is Horseshit”
and so on. You don’t see the design community getting mad at engineers who
spend weeks designing an optimal database sharding strategy for building
things like a daily-deal aggregator which has 0 users and a growth rate of
“Divide by Zero Error” and no viable user acquisition strategy. Of course
entrepreneurs should focus on value creation and finding product market fit
before spending an inappropriate amount of energy on other activities whether
that be visual design or backend infrastructure. Any entrepreneur I invest in
should know that elementary lesson from experience or reading the Lean Startup
etc.

------
tbod
There may well be many startups which have a great design and no substance -
but then there is also the situation where multiple startups exist in a
similar space competing for traction - and in that situation having the design
'edge' is never a bad thing..

Personally I find myself in that situation, early stage startup where whilst I
have the tech background, design has never come easily to me (and my co-
founders are even worst). As we have bootstrapped we didnt have the money for
great design and did the best we could! That said it hasnt been the make or
break as we have executed well, however first impressions always count... and
when looking for investment we have more than once had potential investors
misjudge how far we have come or compare us negatively to others in our space
as we did not have the design 'edge'. Its a shame, but its a fact of life
appearances mean a lot..

Perhaps off topic but be interesting to know how others have managed to
overcome gaps in skillsets when bootstrapping? we dont seem to have any
contacts with good design skills and available time..

------
yonasb
Great post. The only thing I disagree with is your distaste for the designer
fund. I think helping designers build startups is a good thing. And it's also
important to note the difference between visual design (UI) and UX. You can't
create value without good UX. And good designers do both UI and UX. So design
is important, the visual aspect not so much, before you have something ppl
want

~~~
fookyong
_You can't create value without good UX_

Entirely incorrect. Read the Lean Startup. Value creation is 100% possible
without any UX or anything tangible that the customer "sees" at all. A
delivery pizza place provides value. I call them, they deliver pizza. There's
no "UX" there beyond what already existed (my phone, a working phone line).

Too many people think the first thing that needs to be solved is how something
looks or feels. It's not. You can solve a problem without any UX.

~~~
danilocampos
> I call them, they deliver pizza. There's no "UX" there beyond what already
> existed (my phone, a working phone line).

Give me a moment to finish making my Picard face, here.

The _entirety_ of pizza delivery is user experience.

\- Answering the phone with clarity and promptness

\- Taking an order with accuracy and clarity

\- Creating a pizza that tastes good while matching the customer's order
parameters

\- Not giving people diarrhea

\- Estimating a delivery timeframe

\- Delivering the pizza within that timeframe

Botch any one of those things and the _experience_ of ordering the pizza
sucks. Botch several and people will stop ordering from that restaurant. Food,
in particular, is possibly the largest user experience challenge outside of
software. Maybe toolmaking is bigger. But food and restaurants are way up
there.

------
freyrs3
Design is a buzzword these days. And as a result I have no idea what this guy
is railing against.

~~~
jayfuerstenberg
Indeed.

I'd like to think that design = caring.

As in: If you care for your users you spend time thinking about how the
product should work for them.

------
jt2190
[Edit: I wrote this while thinking that we're debating "design" without a
common defintion. I've made an attempt to express two different sides of
"design".]

Those who aren't building the product often can't express ideas about what
they don't see or know about. To them, the design is the surface, the user
interface. So naturally they assume that if they want to create a product with
"good" design, they should hire someone who does the visual part, and make
their product look just like other products that they think are well designed.

If you want a good counter-example, about good design that is very subtle and
runs very deep, read "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance" by
Henry Petroski.

------
steele
Horseshit has been getting a pretty bad rap lately.

------
shalmanese
Lean Startup has been, for the most part, a trojan horse to get design
thinking into engineering driven organizations. Everything the lean startup
movement talks about with getting out of the building and customer validation
is essentially principles of good user research that the design community has
been advocating for since forever.

It's unfortunate that designers still have to battle ignorant misconceptions
that their work is about pushing pixels and making things look pretty. At it's
heart, design is exactly what this article is advocating for; understanding a
deep user need and developing an elegant experience that fulfills that need.

------
zdw
Design is how it works, not just how it looks.

~~~
sporkologist
That sounds more like the definition of 'function'.

~~~
seltzered_
nobody's ever heralds a well-functioning program as "functions well" though,
they say it's designed well or has good usability.

~~~
sporkologist
I'm not even sure how to respond to this. I'm going to go herald my well-
functioning website now.

------
mbrzuzy
_If you’re an early stage startup with no revenue, don’t even think about
design! Think hard about what problem you can solve that a customer will give
you $10 for and work your ass off at delivering that $10 of value as fast and
as cheaply as possible._

I don't understand what the author is so riled up about. Why not just delegate
responsibilities? Let a designer focus on design, while the engineers focus on
the actual product. Does it hurt to have a designer? I don't see why it would.

Good luck trying to sell something to the general public that looks horrid. No
matter how well it works.

~~~
fookyong
you're an early stage startup. you're not selling to the general public yet.

you're selling directly to people you find who have the problem that you're
solving.

it's exactly that mentality of getting way ahead of yourself before you've
even validated and honed your value proposition that I take issue with.

fuck the general public. go solve a _real_ problem for 10 people - it's 1000x
more difficult than creating something that looks and feels awesome.

------
dbkbali
An obvious conclusion if your definition of design is "how something looks". I
would suggest that your attitude would doom any startup relying on a human to
machine interface to failure. Without a focus on designing for useability or
user experience I would argue that your startup will not solve any users
problem, as they will give up on even trying to use it. So I think anyone
giving credence to you views with respect to their startup will quickly find
themselves with a lot of wasted effort and a pile of horseshit.

------
pascal07
This is a silly article. It once makes the fatal mistake of equating design
with "pushing pixels". Solving the problem is part of the design process.
Silly linkbait is silly.

Did I mention it's silly?

------
martindale
"I’ve created products / services in the past that have garnered praise for
their design."

...you've also [wisely?] abandoned projects that had great promise without to
due diligence necessary to hand them off to a willing steward (Sweetcron).

I was pleased to see your domain here on HN, but I still have a bitter taste
after being forced to abandon Sweetcron in favor of Chyrp. Regardless, I've
been quite impressed by what you've delivered thus far and am pleased to see
your weight provided in the direction of reason.

~~~
fookyong
huh? it's open source - fork it, rename it, relaunch it. a dying project
shouldn't be passed on like a baton, it should be evolved and improved by an
enthusiastic developer who wants to make the project their own.

Can't blame me for no one wanting to fork Sweetcron.

------
lwhi
It's an interesting rant - and quite amusing, but it sounds like the author is
debating against aesthetically pleasing visual design, rather than design in
general.

Graphic design is visual engineering.

Sometimes the value proposition put forward by a company is 'a way to [do x]
_better_ '; if better is equivalent to 'more efficiently', 'more cheaply' or
'more easily' - chances are design is going to be factor that allows the
change to happen.

------
myspy
I like his article. He's right. You should first solve the problem, then
enhance it with great look and feel. Making it accessible.

The update is worthy to read too.

------
cwilson
I am continually baffled, on almost a daily basis, that people continue to
argue extremes. The secret to most things in life is balance. A balance
between having a great product that solves problems, and good design, is the
key. Sure, you can have success on both ends, but to truly shine you need a
good balance of both.

Why is such a simple concept so hard for people to understand in practice?

------
scottmcleod
I call my self a designer, and i bet i assist in every other business process
more valuable. I think you're mixing up the college kid who messes in
photoshop and the evolved interaction designer/ui/all print media etc.

There is huge value in being able to communicate problems visually that comes
with the experience provided by being a designer early career.

------
TorbjornLunde
“Solve a real customer problem.”

This is exactly what design is.

------
radley
Design is the saddle, the ride, and the journey.

Articles like this are the real droppings. The submitter merely the bowels.

------
b1daly
Holy cow what an ill-informed article. Many on this thread have illuminated
it's weaknesses, here's my two cents.

To single out design from any other process involved in creating value makes
zero sense. In fact in many products design, including visual design is a key
differentiator that actually gives the product value (think iPod vs all other
mp3 players).

Only programmers or engineers creating extemely cutting edge products that
have no competitors could take this attitude than design issues can be set
aside till later. What serious person would consider starting a business
without incorporating design from the beginning?

Whatever meme out there about design being an edge in a startup is responding
to what I see is an incorrect undervaluing of design in the tech community.

Another subtext in the discussion is many tech start ups are making software,
web based or otherwise. On a typical program huge amounts of value are
delivered as pixels. The user interface is also pixels. A lot of software are
tools. Graphic design is mandatory for the thing to exist! Widgets are make or
break whether a software tool even works at all.

I use audio software in my job (all day) and many competing applications in
this space are at feature parity. UI and Ux is what separate apps that work
really well from apps that are painfully slow and frustrating to use. Just
consider how color is used in a complex app. It communicates feedback, breaks
up function grouping, it helps you find and remember features, it provides a
hopefully not unpleasant visual experience since one is staring at for
extended periods. I think we are in the Dark Ages of human computer
interaction and that bad visual design is a huge contributor to the problem.

BTW, anyone have examples of web services with great design don't offer value?

------
rooshdi
Linkbait is Horseshit. See the irony? If it wasn't for the manner in which you
communicated I and many others probably would've never seen your article on
top of HN, let alone read it, even if it did have "value". Design isn't
everything, but it's definitely not horseshit.

------
azharcs
Some Startups with bad Design have managed to do very well (Craigslist, Ebay
etc), but doesn't mean all the startups with bad design will do well. Good
Design is necessary, it is what makes you subconsciously love something and
use it more often.

------
tzm
It's not what design looks like, rather it's how you use it that helps to
determine value. Otherwise it's a work of art.

Design with utility has inherent value that can be quantified. It's silly to
categorically say design is horseshit.

------
godDLL
You keep using that word. I don't think this word means what you think it
means.

------
dustingetz
+1, but lets not confuse "how it looks" with the people crafting groupon's
experience to maximize conversions. world-class designers are more than pixel-
pushers, and pixel-pushers aren't world-class designers.

------
tomelders
You could write the exact same rant about engineers in response to an info
graphic titled "Did you know about billions worth of value created by tech
startups with _technical_ co-founders?"

------
skbohra123
Can anyone care to explain, what do you consider design? It's pretty amazing
to see how a word can have different meaning for everyone and being debated.

~~~
TorbjornLunde
I think you could say that designers are responsible for the psychological
side of a product and developers are responsible for the technical side.

Developers might respond that they created a great product that solves a
problem without any designers. To that my reply is that you then you have
designed as well.

------
bokardo
I wrote a response to this:

<http://bokardo.com/archives/design-is-not-horsepoop/>

------
verroq
The whole thing is a strawman. The blogger defined design as a "nice looking
user interface" and then proceeded to knock it over.

------
nvk
This is such a short-minded and troll post, surprised it didn't get deleted.

------
gavanwoolery
+1 for the use of the word "Horseshit." That's all...

------
antidaily
_everything_ is horseshit.

~~~
sporkologist
The definitions of everything in this thread keep shifting, it's making me
dizzy (design -- are we talking about visual design, functional design??)....
it devolved into philosophical arguments where people actually probably agree
once the definitions are agreed upon.

------
jsavimbi
1\. Step into a public place almost anywhere in the world.

2\. Count the number of Apple devices in use. White earbuds are a dead
giveaway.

3\. Go hire a designer that knows what they're doing and try and accomodate
their ideas into those of engineering without making a capon out of anyone.

4\. Keep iterating.

