
Things I, as a designer, wish more tech startups knew - charliepark
http://the-pastry-box-project.net/stephen-anderson/2012-september-7/
======
shawndrost
One thing I, as an entrepreneur, wish more designers knew: I can't do
everything, and I have to make tradeoffs based on cost-benefit analyses, and
you will influence me more if you speak in that language. All but one of these
29 things (in fact, there are 32) are additional things this guy thinks I
should spend my limited resources on.

~~~
ender7
All too often, UI people end up being marginalized because management doesn't
support them. Unless you just want "a new coat of paint" a good UX design will
_require_ some hard changes and product realignments. If the CEO is not
interested in taking part in that conversation then you'll never be able to
build a good product.

~~~
timr
All too often, "UX Designers" end up marginalized because they're _wankers_ \-
people who don't code and don't design, but want to get right in the middle of
things and fling around opinions. Especially dangerous are the representatives
of this breed who want to "manage process" as a way of "designing the
product". Hiring that kind of person is a great way to get a useless
bureaucrat on your team.

There are good designers who specialize in user experience, but those people
are _also_ good at marketable skills like _graphic design_ , _coding_ or
_statistics_. Everyone on the team is responsible for good user experience.
The existence of a person who does nothing more than "UX" is a process smell.

~~~
ahmadss
Clearly, you've had interactions with fakers who call themselves "UX
Designers".

Real UX Designers are not process managers - they are folks who are vital to
any product development because it's their responsibility to think about and
WORRY about user needs, user goals, and user objectives and then design a
product/site/app that meets and exceed these user objectives.

This thinking and worrying results in design documents as high-level as
application architecture or as layout specific as UI sketches and fully baked
UI mockups. Within the UI mockups, they're in charge of naming conventions,
layout, structure, content hierarchy, and so forth.

This thinking and worrying also results in clickable prototypes (usually in
the form of HTML only prototypes or InvisionApp prototypes) that brings
together the user flows, architecture, and user goals into something the
entire team can wrap their heads around.

Finally, the UX designer is instrumental in testing and validating design
decisions and product design decisions in a live app. This involves knowing
what to test, how to test it, and then iterating on the designs to make sure
the feedback from users is reflected in an updated UI or a revamped flow.

~~~
gruseom
This stuff sounds like a complete antipattern to me. Who _shouldn't_ be
thinking about users? That's not a specialty.

Prototypes and architectures divorced from working code are the kinds of thing
that bog a project down and get in the way of people doing the real work, i.e.
making the actual product.

I know what programmers do and I know (more or less) what visual designers do
and I know what the decision-maker for a product does. I don't know what a "UX
Designer" does, other than claim to do all the product thinking. In my
experience, they mostly talk vaguely about how important they are.

~~~
adrianhoward
_This stuff sounds like a complete antipattern to me. Who shouldn't be
thinking about users? That's not a specialty._

I agree that everybody should be doing it. However - there are elements of it
that are skilled and tricky to pick up. Having experts around is handy. They
can do stuff better, help facilitate and teach the rest of the team, and get
things moving more quickly.

I'm about half dev and half UX in my skill set. I can train anybody to do some
basic usability testing in an afternoon. But that person is going to miss some
stuff that I see because I've been doing it for fifteen odd years and am
bloody good at it. Ditto for user interviewing. Ditto for interaction design.

You get exactly the same thing on the dev side. Everybody should have some
basics about operations, database design, system architecture, etc. But in any
team more than two or three people you'll usually find some folk who are
experts. They'll be the DBA gal or the devops guy.

That's doesn't mean having a DBA or a devops person requires the rest of the
team suddenly forget about all their database/operations knowledge, or that
the rest of the team shouldn't be involved in DBA/operations work. But having
an expert around is useful. They can help you solve problems that you may not
have come across before. They can help teach you new and better ways of doing
things.

The great DBA and devops folk get the rest of the team up to speed with
database/operations work as much as possible so they can focus on the _really_
hard problems that are going to get in the way of the rest of the team's work.

That's what good UX folk do too (in my experience). They help get the whole
team focused on thinking about users, and focus on helping solve the hard UX
issues that are going to get in the team's way.

 _Prototypes and architectures divorced from working code are the kinds of
thing that bog a project down and get in the way of people doing the real
work, i.e. making the actual product._

No argument from me. No argument from most UX folk I know either :-)

 _I don't know what a "UX Designer" does, other than claim to do all the
product thinking. In my experience, they mostly talk vaguely about how
important they are._

Yup. Those people suck. As do some developers with "software architecture"
type titles :-)

------
talmand
3\. So a designer who uses lorem ipsum is not a designer? What? So if he's
hired to work on a project he sits around waiting for copy before comping
design ideas? As someone who's been in this position it is quite wonderful to
start with finished or semi-finished copy but that doesn't always happen.

4\. A designer who sweats every detail is a designer that never finishes.
Sometimes the designer just has to let loose those details that only that
designer realizes are a potential issue in the design, not functionality. If
during review enough comment on it then fix it, otherwise let it go.

10\. I cannot agree with this more. Although I'm a front-end developer so I
may be biased just a tad bit.

14\. I don't necessarily agree with this. It depends on the project and
established goals. As someone else pointed out, if you do this you may give
the desktop user a less than ideal experience. If you're willing to put some
of that cut stuff back in for the desktop people at some point then sure. But
to give a mobile experience to desktop people cannot be a good thing.

15\. Almost contradicts rule #4. Some people would say sweating the details is
close to over design.

26\. This is excellent advice. The hard part is knowing the difference between
an app with a good design versus bad. This is a hugely subjective thing.
Popular apps don't necessarily have good UI. Also, be careful, because in
today's environment if you get an idea from an app you may get sued for it.

29\. Not necessarily true. Depends on the people. Your best bud may refuse to
document his code in a useful way (or he may just suck at it) and the best
coder in your group may be a total jerk outside the professional environment.

I'm a glass half empty kind of guy so that's the focus of my comments. The
rest can be assumed I agree with or neutral on.

Also, I kept getting confused over which designer he means as he explains his
points. There are three examples in the article; Visual, UX, and UI. But then
he just uses "designer" too often for all three.

~~~
seltzered_
totally annoyed with his #3 as well. Been working with a folks who want
everything to be decided by the "designer" first and make copy-perfect
photoshop templates first - even if they're not that happy with the design.

This introduces an annoying 'waterfall' process where I can't test whether the
designer's ideas actually work in-browser and practice until they're
officially 'done'.

CN to managers: don't make a designer your product todo list. use a system for
that and accept some quirks and broken-ness at first.

Read quora's photoshop-less design process for an alternative (and arguably
better) approach: [http://www.quora.com/Joel-Lewenstein/Joels-Posts/Life-
Withou...](http://www.quora.com/Joel-Lewenstein/Joels-Posts/Life-Without-
Photoshop)

------
TylerE
While I think a lot of this is good, did anyone else get the feeling the
_real_ gist of it was: "shower me with $$$"?

~~~
saraid216
I finished reading it and I still don't know his name. If it was an attempt to
get hired, it was a bad UX.

~~~
NickFitz
Have you tried looking at the top of the page? It even has a photo of him.

~~~
saraid216
Well, the point was that I wasn't _interested_ in who he was.

------
nvk
Some great points here.

>> "29. Please, please, please spend time hanging out in the latest and
greatest apps, regardless of their personal relevance or interest to you. If
you do, your expectations of a “good experience” will be raised. Archaic team
communication tools are often a good indication of what the decision makers
believe qualifies as “good.” (Hint: it’s often a very low bar relative to
what’s possible!)"

I can't emphasize enough how important it is to use well designed tools, they
_will_ influence your product.

------
iridium
Good points, but I dont agree with this:

>> 14\. Design for mobile first (even if a mobile app is not in your roadmap).
The constraints of a mobile context will force you to focus on what’s
essential, and help you cut what’s not needed. The question “How would I
design this as a mobile app?” always clears my head and helps me find the
simpler, elegant solution.

Unless you are primarily designing a mobile app, this ends up shortchanging
the web user. A full web interface can always do more and the challenge should
be converting those features to mobile as opposed to dumbing down the design
for the lowest denominator.

~~~
deveac
If you agree with point 27 (questing for Minimum Viable Product/Experience),
then rule 14 makes a lot of sense to me. He isn't saying not to design a full
web interface (which as you point out, can do more). He is merely saying by
doing mobile dev first, you are essentially _forced_ into discovering your MVP
more lucidly. You can then add features to the full web interface from there.

 _> A full web interface can always do more and the challenge should be
converting those features to mobile as opposed to dumbing down the design for
the lowest denominator._

I think that this sentence gets to the crux of his point. Terms like 'dumbing
down' and 'lowest common denominator' to describe the mobile experience seem a
little loaded to me, and imho, this is exactly the type of situation where
deving movile first could provide surprising insight into your MVP. I'm
talking honest to goodness slap in the face reveals.

I think it's safe to say we have different opinions on this point, but man...I
simply can't count the number of "Hey check out my startup" websites that I've
clicked on and just kind of had my jaw drop at what was going on. I'd honestly
say the majority of the ones I've seen could have benefited from this
approach. That's completely anecdotal, I know, but it's the impression I have.

~~~
iridium
I agree with MVP and your anecdotes - less bloat, all the better, but from a
UI/UX perspective, let me give you a few examples of what usually gets thrown
out in a mobile first design:

Dropdown menus - Mobile first almost always means multiple clicks to get to
the same place, which is more annoying on a slower browser.

Commenting system - still yet to see a decent one that I would one on a mobile
interface

Flash/animations - like it or not, moving images grabs attention but does not
translate well to mobile.

Page width - 1440 pixels on my shiny screen, but text is stuck in a 200px box
that forces me to scroll down. Flexible width usually gets thrown out when you
add sidebars and ads.

Large Buttons - Great for mobile but I'd rather see context that a sign up
button taking half the page

Related content links - Especially for blogs/news websites.

Inline images - My primary annoyance with this article which is ALL TEXT.
Mobile design says dont take up an entire screen view with an image. Web first
design says even if the current text is boring, people will scroll down if
they see an interesting image.

I honestly believe that having separate approaches will allow for better UX,
time and cost permitting.

~~~
deveac
_> let me give you a few examples of what usually gets thrown out in a mobile
first design:_

Ah, but you aren't throwing them out. You're using a constrained UI to
identify your MVP, then _adding those very features in_ to the full web site
where it makes sense. We're looking at the exact same behavior and using
almost opposite language to describe it :)

 _> I honestly believe that having separate approaches will allow for better
UX, time and cost permitting._

Fair enough.

 _> Commenting system - still yet to see a decent one that I would one on a
mobile interface_

On a side note, I passionately agree with this. I think there is a tremendous
opportunity out there for anybody that can solve this problem elegantly. Group
communication is a fundamental human behavior, and so much of it is happening
via our mobile devices. There's a much better mousetrap to be built here.

------
bluetidepro
One of the best UX/UI designer articles I've seen!

>> "15. Don’t over design. Less is better in the early stages. Launch with too
much going on and you won’t know which pieces are broken and which are
working."

That's my favorite. I feel like I always see new products trying to hard on
their first few product design rounds. In my experience, it's a great thing if
you start small (with fast iterations) and fail X times rather than spending 5
years on a single attempt, that still fails miserable. Testing product design
at a quantum level goes such a long way in the long haul. That goes with A/B
testing as well.

------
mcollinsblog
This is absolutely ridiculous.

What, there's a "UX designer" AND a "visual designer?"

I do both. They're completely connected. How could you do "design" and not
include the user experience?

Sounds like another one of those things where people "specialize" in certain
areas but really don't have a clue what they're doing, and charge a hefty
price tag for a whole lot of nothin'.

And it's worth nothing the design of that blog makes me sick to my stomach.

~~~
vlad
If the visual design is like Google or many other web apps, then it's possible
that a UX designer can set you on the right path. If you want a very pretty,
original look, that could require the services of a visual (graphic) designer.

------
justjimmy
Question for other designers:

Do you feel that while UX is at one end of the spectrum, visual designers at
the other - UI Designers sit squarely in between them?

I ask cause I love visual design, making elements pleasant to look at,
enticing user to push buttons or guide their eye to areas I want them to look
at. But I also spend huge amounts of time time thinking about user flows,
scenarios and tasks, how one page flows to another, how it all connects and
constantly going around asking/testing with people if the flow is confusing or
interfaces aren't clear on what they should do.

I guess UI Designers are half UX and half Visual?

~~~
malachismith
To paraphrase from Yves Behar, "there are two kinds of designers. Good ones
and bad ones. Good ones can do all kinds of designs. Bad ones invent new
subsets of design to excuse their failings."

------
TeeWEE
After this section below I stopped reading. He probably is a good UXer. But
also an arrogant one. The best ones understand that they always need to learn.

"You get what you pay for. I charge a lot. But, I guarantee you’ll save money
in the long run. Most visual designers at 1/4 my rate will take much longer
and still not get you where a seasoned veteran will. Note: veteran doesn’t
necessarily mean years experience—2 years at a dot com startup taught me more
than most people learn in 5–7 years at a big company."

------
evincarofautumn
This really stood out to me:

“good designers start with the data“

Only when you deeply understand the structure of information can you present
that information in a meaningful way. In other words, a good designer turns
data into knowledge. And to my mind, the key point of good _software_ design
is starting with good data structures. In general, the model shouldn’t need to
change—a changing model is an ill-defined domain. Once you understand the
domain well enough, features are just algorithms.

~~~
Silhouette
_In other words, a good designer turns data into knowledge._

I think I agree with you, but I'd probably phrase it rather differently. To
me, data is already knowledge, but often we are limited by having too much
raw, low-level knowedge and not knowing what to do with it.

A good UX can help us to _understand_ the data and/or to _make actionable
decisions_ based on it, and so to me, a good designer (in the sense we're
talking about) is someone who helps to build such a UX.

~~~
evincarofautumn
How about this: good design lets you see the forest in spite of the trees.

------
nmcfarl
The first bit seems very much "Hire a UX guy, not a graphic designer" but it
does got better. Still, the "sell, sell, sell" feeling of the piece leaves me
cold.

~~~
mattmanser
Yes, and it's still fairly revolutionary for a designer to even think of UX or
usability, contrary to what the article claims.

This feels a bit like if a programmer went round and said 'everybody uses
node.js these days, are you getting a programmer who uses PHP or Node.js'
completely ignoring the fact that the proportion of php to node code written
is like 99.999 : 0.001.

Most of the designs I see still give little thought to the UX of the entire
experience.

He even mentions it himself without realising the irony:

 _I spend a lot of my time just getting everyone on the team—designers
included—to see the problem in a different way, not the way it has been
implemented)._

------
rnernento
I guess effectively using contrast isn't one of them...

~~~
notimetorelax
Yeah, he embraced the idea to never use black:

<http://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black/>

EDIT

It looks awful in Chrome(Windows) but in Explorer it's OK...

<http://imgur.com/a/CA7Ow>

~~~
StavrosK
Looks like he embraced and extended it. Not using #000 is one thing, having
almost no contrast is another.

~~~
alexduloz
Hello. Just to make things clear. I made the design. I run the Pastry Box
Project. Stephen Anderson is a guest.

:)

~~~
bryne
In the vein of constructive criticism: there is a set of W3C-suggested
accessibility guidelines that include tests for things like the contrast
between text and its background (<http://www.w3.org/TR/AERT#color-contrast>).

This page fails that contrast guideline algorithm (258 out of a minimum
suggested 500) and is a little annoying to read even for someone without a
sight/color deficit.

~~~
alexduloz
Thanks a lot. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. A redesign is on
its way. This issue will definitely be taken into account.

------
dreamdu5t
I am so sick of job titles like "UX designer," "UI designer," and "visual
designer." All visual design on the web is related to UI/UX. You can't do UI
design without affecting UX and vice-versa.

Let's just go back "web designer." Please.

~~~
erikpukinskis
You can put Graphic, UI, and UX all under the umbrella of "Design" if you
like. They are specialties in the way that front-end, back-end, or database
engineering are all specialties.

You can also have one person doing all of them, the same way you can have a
single engineer at your company, but very very very few people can do all
three well, and on many projects there is too much work for any one person to
do.

Also, much of UX design doesn't necessariy fall under the category of web
design. A UX designer is looking at the entire product experience, which would
potentially include things advertising, customer service, advertising, etc.

You can use the shorthand "designer"... that's fine. But you can't just wish
away entire professions. There are pairs of Graphic and Experience Designers
who have almost nothing in common in terms of responsibilities and skills.

------
juddlyon
Starting with the data is sage advice. Reminds me of a Robert Bringhurst quote
that smacked me in the face when I read it:

"Typography exists to honor content."

------
drp4929
"1. Learn the difference between a UX Designer and a Visual Designer. They are
not the same. And while there is (and should be) a lot of overlap in
skills—it’s good to know what the designer you’re hiring thinks is priority."

This is very important. On the flip side, I have seen too many designer
profiles online where they don't clearly identify whether they are UX designer
or visual designer.

------
alexro
Minimal Viable Experience is what I took away. I think it serves better than
MVP in the early days of the product.

------
brendanobrien
I really like the general theme of pointing the designer into the core of the
startup, and think a lot of this is very good, accurate advice.

As a long time designer turned developer, supported. I would have made the
tone a little less preachy (and added a dash of "relatively speaking"), but
hey, I didn't write it.

------
armageddon
The color scheme on that page is so washed out that my eyes did a double take.
That's one thing I wish a designer knew about users - not everyone is using a
crisp iMac to view a website. I'm on my already washed out PC and their color
scheme makes it even worse.

~~~
geoka9
Yeah, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that modern design == hard to
read websites. Incidentally, they are also usually slow.

------
dmak
Nevermind 20pxs, I think 1px makes a huge difference.

------
nihonjon
I'm going to work on a post in response, "29 things I wish designers knew
about fashion."

~~~
msutherl
UX designers are web designers with no sense of style.

------
TeeWEE
I agree that UX design is important. But it is basically applying common
sense. See common solutions to UI problems and apply them. Actually its the
fun part of creating an application.

Also i hate it when they say: Programmers cannot do UX. They are too
technical. Well i do it all myself. I dont call myself an UXer. Because its
just a small part of creating a product.

------
riffic
Design isn't just "Front End" or "Interface"; Design is everything -- most
importantly functionality, process, and model.

"What works is better than what looks good. The looks good can change, but
what works, works."

------
jeremiep
The first thing I noticed is that you cant scroll horizontally or zoom from an
iPhone. The text overflows on the right and theres no way to display it. oh
the irony.

~~~
bradddd
As others said. That's not from his own site.

------
tylermauthe
I'm no expert, but wouldn't a startup want a designer who wasn't so picky?
Instead wanting a "full stack" designer; who could solve all their visual
worries?

~~~
nihonjon
Can you define full stack designer?

~~~
tylermauthe
I just made it up, but I guess it would be a designer that can do the whole
song and dance. In the article he specifically mentioned that UX and Visual
Design is not the same thing; fair enough but startups want to do more with
less...

Again, I'm no expert and I'm just a technical nerd who "doesn't get"
designers. Probably should keep my mouth shut, in retrospect ;)

~~~
adrianhoward
In the design world these are known as "unicorn designers" - since you're
about as likely to find one :-)

It's the design equivalent of asking for a developer who is an _expert_ in
front-end, back-end, databases, operations, scaling, etc. etc.

------
pixie_
This is some really great advice, 'The best UIs often start as written
conversations between the user and the system.'

------
ted0
30\. pick a domain that people actually remember. 3 hyphens on a .net wtf,
bro?

------
loceng
Very good writeup.

------
novaleaf
the tl;dr;

pay attention to ux!

