

Visual design will not fix your broken business - kazey
http://micrypt.com/2012/05/08/Designers-are-not-a-panacea.html

======
rglover
Love the headline, but a bit more needs to be explained.

As a designer, I get tons of requests to work with startups only to later find
out that they want an aesthetic layer slapped on top. Is this possible?
Certainly. But it doesn't address major problems with your experience, content
structure, or the most important thing: the message you're trying to convey.

The thing missing in this article is that, for a good designer, it's quite the
thinking man's game. For example, I'm working on a design now where the
original menu system wasn't 100% clear and by trying a couple of different
approaches, we came to something great. This is key: hire someone who thinks
about the problems, not the aesthetics. A solid designer will address the
problems _and then_ devise an aesthetic strategy.

Most importantly: show respect for designers. The good ones can help you
immensely.

------
squarecat
Namedropping Google, Facebook, Apple (Microsoft, Oracle, Rovio, Netgear,
OMGPOP, Path, Foursquare, Twitter, ad nauseam) as a supporting argument
for/against the right designer/developer mix in your theoretical generic
startup is lazy, and ultimately pointless.

What type of startup? Is it a native app-focused endeavor or will it be
browser-based? What if it requires NO developers and can run on some out of
the box solution or SaaS/PaaS? What if you use Twitter bootstrap and
outsource/contract your minimal design needs??

There is no secret sauce, people -- success is a highly-variable mix of hard
work and luck. Period. You could do everything right and still fail. And vice
versa. Just look around a your local brick and mortars. How many
establishments have been making a go of it for years, even decades, with
subpar products and services?

This has been, is, and will be the case for every type of business for a long
time.

Get over yourself, get out there, and fucking do it anyway.

------
benwerd
A good design on a bad product or business probably won't help in the long
run.

Conversely, a bad design on a good product can hinder a project in the long
run.

Designers are an important part of the mix, but you'd be a fool to concentrate
on design alone. In my own experience, we successfully bootstrapped a startup
with no designer, winging it based on user feedback and our own intuition. But
when we got funding, the first person we hired was a designer - and the
popularity of the product rose accordingly.

------
potatolicious
> _"Note: if you are a_ designer _and you are at the point where you wish to
> get better at_ programming _, read a book. Heck, read two. Now, you know
> more than enough to cope with most decisions you will encounter."_

See how silly that sounds when you turn it around? Author seems to think that
all it takes it a couple of books a bit of practice to become competent at
design.

Sadly typical for engineers to hand-wave everything that isn't engineering
away as a job easy enough for monkeys.

~~~
tptacek
Just to be the devil's advocate here:

A designer who reads a couple books about programming is somewhat less likely
to generate a lot of value for customers than a developer who reads a couple
books about design. Success or failure in many (maybe most?) markets is much
more sensitive to engineering talent than design talent.

~~~
tg3
"is somewhat less likely to generate a lot of value for customers" - based on
what exactly? This sounds very arbitrary and you don't cite any reasons for
this belief.

"success...is much more sensitive to engineering talent" - again, is that a
fact? what is that assertion based on?

~~~
tptacek
Part of it is common sense. Plenty of ugly working apps do fine in the market.
Apps that don't work at all don't ever do fine.

Part of it is long-term experience. My field is dominated by products that
sell to businesses; they have universally terrible UIs, many of which wouldn't
have passed muster in 1999.

Part of it is direct, current, ongoing experience: we sell security
engineering services to application providers, and so my working weeks consist
of looking at other people's applications --- in fact, of looking at
_successful_ applications, because nobody spends 5 figures on security
assessment if their app isn't doing well. _Most_ of the applications we see
look worse and are less useable than Themeforest templates.

Part of it is friends, who have launched products on templates instead of
professional designs, who have done fine and not observed any objection to
their application's lack of a vertical baseline typographic grid or the
correct noise texture in the background or the color-theoretic implications of
their button colors. Again: launched on templates, did fine.

HN overvalues design expertise. For most of the businesses started by people
on HN, from weather tracking to fraud prediction to appointment reminding to
credit card processing, a unique design tailored to the company's exact
business is not a real requirement. In many cases, custom designs are mostly
about vanity.

I'm not bagging on designers. My sense is that for the subset of designers who
are actually both talented and competent consultants, there is too much work,
not too little. I admire and can geek out about graphic design and UX. I wish
designers the best.

But: design is one of those things that keeps people from shipping their apps,
or sometimes even from starting on it. The belief that a poorly designed rev1
app will destroy the prospects of a new business has harmed more startups than
inadequate design ever will. Unrealistic and frankly pointless expectations
about bespoke design are a mental obstacle to getting shit done. So I think
it's worth pointing out how overvalued design is, repeatedly and at length.

------
ThomPete
This is an extremely important point to understand.

Visual aesthetics is about optimizing not about fundamentally solving business
problems.

Of course you need something that is not completely impossible to look at but
obviously the world is filled with less than pleasing visual solutions on very
successful businesses.

If you are dealing with designers as customers you obviously need to
prioritize the visual aspect. And visual design can be used in saturated
markets to become the preffered choice but it can also work against you.

All businesses must figure out to what extent design is important for their
success not just assume that it will help.

~~~
abeh
The point about visual aesthetics may be true, but that's only a part of what
a graphic designer does: a good graphic designer will solve communication
problems, and that is definitely a business problem worth solving well.

~~~
ThomPete
Yes but communication problems are primarily existing pre-sales and some
people are very good at that.

Designing the actual interface/service/functionality/product is a different
problem all together.

~~~
Spearchucker
Maybe the term "communication problem" isn't the best. A better one might be
usability, or interaction design. Good design has heaps of it. And it's not
aesthetics alone. A designer should go a lot further - scope includes
accesibility and (if you're unlucky enough to work with me) information
architecture/design.

Knowing how a colour wheel works doesn't solve problems like a custom-
designed, ticked-out über-awesome CSS -based drop-down list that doesn't
respond to keypresses.

Knowing when to use search, and when to use tags, or how to group search
results in a way that makes sense to the use context is worth paying a lot
more for than just coming up with a cool UI concept.

TLDR - this blog post is bang on the bucks.

~~~
ThomPete
Yeah I think we agree.

The only point I am trying to make is that there are many many great
webdesigners out there that can make beautiful websites that communicate well.
But it it's often the same guys that design something like an interface or a
mobile app.

The creative agency world is filled with people able to do artistically
stunning websites but they are approaching it from a communication/advertising
point of view where you might be exposed to the site once or twice. This is
very different than doing something like say hipmunk.

------
ISeemToBeAVerb
This article offers little in the way of useful advice and seems to be a bit
prejudicial toward designers in general.

A more useful topic would have been that design alone will not guarantee the
success of your business.

The reality of the matter is that both design and engineering are critical
aspects of your business in different ways.

Design IS important. Like it or not, the design of your website and your
product screen-caps are the first thing any potential customer is going to
see. A well designed brand does influence buying decisions, that's a fact.

Furthermore, users don't care about how well your code is written. The only
contact they have with your code is through your UI. If the experience is not
well designed, you're not really doing your job. Everything else being equal,
a consumer is always going to choose software that is pleasant to use over
software that is merely "functional".

That being said, once you entice users to try your product, the engineering
better be solid.

So there you go, two important skills- both of which add to the value that
you're (hopefully) offering to your customers.

------
ender7
"Designer" is underspecified.

Engineers are, in general, bad at two things:

\- Designing a product that people want to use. By this I mean focusing the
idea, cutting off the extra bits, refining the workflow, making it simple
enough for people to understand, pivoting it slightly to solve a different
need, and designing the basic methods of interaction.

\- Making it look pretty.

"Designer" could mean either (or both! or neither!) of these tasks. The first
is what a co-founder should be. The second is someone you hire.

------
digitalcraft
Good design is a strong component for your startup's success today. unlike
some 10-15 years ago, users now have high expectations for your product
design- thanks to the likes of Apple- and I see this is where inexperienced
people get stuck- After it looks like Apple's, What next?

~~~
brudgers
It took Apple a couple of decades to really get serious about design
aesthetics - e.g. the first iMacs. Earlier designs were primarily driven by
function - nobody would describe an Apple II as "just gorgeous" or the first
Macs as expressing much other than functional considerations.

Industrial design always matters, but your startup doesn't need a Dreyfuss or
a Loewy.

~~~
ams6110
Even the first Mac was pretty gorgeous compared to something like an IBM PC or
clone.

A period where they did lose their elegance was when Jobs was in exile, they
started looking like pretty ordinary (though still decent) PC systems.

~~~
zachrose
Indeed:

>> Esslinger convinced Jobs that zero-draft tooling was essential. As well as
gaining a subtle but powerful precision to the shape of Apple's cases, it
decreased their actual size. A zero-draft enclosure could fit more tightly
around the components within, and, despite the tooling expense, the resulting
decrease in plastic could eventually decrease costs. Moreover, zero-draft
molding, being an unusual, complex and expensive technology, helped prevent a
growing problem for Apple: unauthorized clones.

<http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/design/design2.html>

~~~
brudgers
That's not aesthetics.

------
tylerschuett
I think that design is just as important as how it functions. The two aren't
mutually exclusive. In a day and age where there are so many options which can
do similar things, the better looking one often gets chosen. So to say that if
you read a book or two about design that magically you'll know what you need
to in order to be an effective designer lacks any and all logic in thinking.
That would be like me saying, well I finished my ruby course at codeacademy,
now I'm an engineer with the ability to build apps.

Design, like coding, takes absolute determination and vigilance in perfecting.
It not something you just 'learn to do' over a night or even a few months. The
quote by Dieter (a design hero of mine) was also taken out of context.
Everyone in the company needs to be adept in their role, and have a bit of say
as to how the product should be. He didn't say you only need engineers who can
read design books.

So how about you focus on doing what you do best, and let the designers
continue focusing on what they do best. Perhaps start a company with 3 instead
of two. A designer, an engineer, and a business minded individual. Imagine
that.

------
cateye
A product needs the right balance between visual appeal and technical
elegance. There is no single recipe to get that. It can be achieved in several
ways.

These articles are written in a situation where the balance is not right and
depending on the situation, the author recommends the other side.

I am in a situation where the design is too much in lead and technical aspects
are forgotten. The psd's are often all worked out in detail without
considering if it is technically possible or there are far more better
approaches to solve the problems then in the visual designs. Also the visual
designs are inconsistent and cause confusion because there is not a idea how
it really should work.

But this doesn't mean I'll have to preach that development is more important.
The right balance needs to be found. But this advice is to nuanced to get any
attention.

------
ed209
> _Visual aesthetics are rarely enough. Getting a product into the hands of
> potential customers is important._

The problem here is that 6 or 8 years ago, building a basic product was a lot
harder than it is today. I'm a designer and I used to spend a huge amount of
time coding a product I wanted to build and less time designing it. Back then
the differentiator was essentially launching a product.

These days you can get hold of a decent framework that does most of what you
need so the rest of the time can be spent on design (or whatever else is
important to you). As a result, launching a product is no longer impressive
and good styling / usability are important differentiators.

Out-of-the-box software is getting so good / complete that products need to
look elsewhere to stand out.

------
harrylove
> If a reader is aware of a study that quantifies the influence of “good”
> design (however that is defined) on startup success, I would be interested
> in having a read.

This is not exactly what you're looking for, but here are two studies
concerned with the aesthetic-usability effect. The summary is that
aesthetically-pleasing interfaces are judged by users to be easier to use,
regardless of their actual usability.

"Apparent Usability vs. Inherent Usability Experimental analysis on the
determinants of the apparent usability" - CHI '95 Proceedings -
<http://www.sigchi.org/chi95/proceedings/shortppr/mk_bdy.htm>

"Aesthetics and Apparent Usability: Empirically Assessing Cultural and
Methodological Issues" - CHI '97 Proceedings -
<http://www.sigchi.org/chi97/proceedings/paper/nt.htm>

You could also test this yourself on your own software with an A/B test. Use
two designs with the same feature set. Use a plain interface for one and a
nice interface on the other. Whichever one brings better results according to
your business needs is the one you should use.

Personally, I believe context is just as important as beauty in design. If an
interface is plain but helps me get the job done faster because my brain is
able to concentrate better, I would consider that better design.

But in general, given two designs of equal features, I prefer the one that
looks better, however that is defined. I'm not a social psychologist, but one
would probably tell you most people have the same preference.

In the second study listed above, the reference section lists this 1980 study:
"Defendant's Attractiveness as a Factor in the Outcome of Criminal Trials".
Search the web for an abstract. As you might guess from the title, the study
found "the more attractive the defendant, the less severe the sentence
imposed."

~~~
chlee
Also, design of emotion things by has don norman has affirmed what you said.
People will prefer find visual/aesthetically beautiful things to be more
"usable" than its non visual/aesthetically pleasing counterpart.

Universal Principle Design calls this "aesthetic-usability" effect.

------
darengb
A startup founder is a designer.

The entire purpose of a startup is to redesign some aspect of the user's life.
A startup takes some experience in the world that has low usability, and makes
that aspect of your life more usable. Having a founder with a design
background, meaning someone who actually understands usability and how to
simplify experiences CAN fix your broken business, assuming that the purpose
of your business is to simplify some experience and make it more usable, which
is what pretty much all businesses are. Additionally, the UI is not "just
pixels" any more than a song is just "a C and a D chord" or a table is "just
wood". The interface is the means through which the user problem is solved.
From the user's perspective, the interface is the app -- the entirety of the
app -- nothing other than the interface exists. And the user's perspective is
the only one that matters.

Now, does this mean you can have a founding team without a developer? No, of
course not. You need a technical founder. You should have a designer, a
developer, and a hustler/biz person, but those don't need to be three separate
people; one person can embody several of those qualities.

------
dasil003
> _I am concerned that “I am looking for a design co-founder” will become the
> new “I am looking for a technical co-founder.”_

This is essentially what the article boils down to and I think the fear is
unfounded. Even the greenest wantrepreneur realizes that you need an engineer
to build their awesome idea. The fact that some might focus on designer as
well is just one of a million suboptimal decisions a founder might make.

At the end of the day, it's just like everything else in early-stage life: you
need to make the most of the resources you have. If you can get an amazing
designer on board then by all means go for it, if not grab a copy of
bootstrap, try to develop a modicum of taste and take a look at archive.org to
remind yourself that successful startups that had bangin visuals off the gate
are the exception not the rule.

~~~
ThomPete
I think it really depends on what you are doing. Making it look good is the
easy part, making it work is something completely different.

There are plenty of designer who can design beautifully illustrated landing
pages but that can't design a product to save their lives.

If treated without some sort of caution all you will increase the risk of
producing beautiful products that don't work.

------
sgdesign
As long as we're shooting down strawmen, why don't I write a similar article
entitled "technology will not fix your broken business", where I explain why
upgrading your app to the latest version of Rails is not enough to make it an
overnight viral sensation?

~~~
ams6110
That might make a good post. I can think of several folks _I_ wish would read
something like that.

Updating for security or real bug fixes is one thing. Running the treadmill of
always trying to have the "latest and greatest" of everything wastes a lot of
time.

------
epenn
I agree with the author's central point, although I don't know if I would de-
emphasize the importance of the visual designer to such an extent. I think a
couple of the examples he links to (Google, Facebook) are outliers. They
succeeded in spite of their lack of visual design because their products
weren't just executed well; they were executed _extremely_ well. Generally
speaking though it takes a bit more finesse in order to make your users feel
at home using your product.

With that said, I agree that if the core product isn't well engineered then no
amount of lipstick on the pig is going to make it usable. You can paint rust
any color you like but it's still rust.

~~~
rrreese
You could add eBay, Amazon, Craig's List, Yahoo, etc. I don't really think
they are outliers - if you offer a product with real value, lack of design may
have an impact, but the value you provide to customers will vastly outweigh
it.

Not that I think design should be ignored, but sadly some of the giants have
ignored it and done remarkably well regardless.

~~~
dredmorbius
Yahoo IMO survived based on sheer inertia and likely based on its one-time
command of at least a large portion of the online advertising market, and
email. Certain site segments were pretty innovative (Yahoo Finance was a great
resource for a while).

In 1997, Yahoo offered real value (it made sense of the Web). Even in the
early 2000s, ditto. The problem with the real value proposition is that if
someone succeeds in providing realer value, so to speak, you're sunk.

CL is a very interesting exceptional case. I'll note that they've had a
designer position open recently.

------
b1daly
What I think many programmers miss with "visual design" is that the mere
"pixels" are the user interface. They are one the most important parts of an
app. Done right they should make an app both easier to learn and more
efficient to use. Conversely, it is true that design that over focuses on form
at the expense of function can make for a bad user experience indeed. I'm
neither a designer or programmer, but I rely on software to make my living,
and the difference in quality between apps that have apparent feature parity
is vast base on their UI.

~~~
jeromeparadis
I agree. The problem with some design these days is when it focuses too much
on form and not enough on function. Great design by definition is form meets
function. For apps, a great design means that the visuals don't come in the
way of intuitive interactions. The visuals need to support and enhance the
user interaction with inputs and outputs. Then you have great design.

------
kelsokennedy
I do agree to an extent, I believe that the biggest boost a start-up will see
is from a first reaction/visual experience. If you can nail that on day one, I
believe it will do more benefit than using a second rate/typical UI with
brilliant code.

However it really depends on WHAT your product is, before you decide on how
important the designers role will be.

Is this article focused on in-house/high end designer partner VS hiring a
designer? Or is the other option sourcing to a design firm/agency?

------
jlft
One could extend this idea to all "execution" related practices: design,
engineering, etc.

"Good execution will not fix your broken business".

If you are solving the wrong problem, targeting the wrong market or building
the wrong product, good execution will not save your business. Both the
strategy ('what') and the execution ('how') have to be right for the business
to succeed.

------
jes5199
A certain app I'm familiar with launched with a pixel-perfect UI and a
steaming pile of code that did its best to hide errors (which were numerous).

People loved it. Today, the design is unchanged, but the engineering has been
entirely redone.

Good design can buy you time.

------
Mumbles
Visual design might not fix your broken business, but if done right it can
turn your good business into a great business. Which is the goal of almost
every startup.

------
its_so_on
I can guarantee that visual design will not fix anyone's broken business, if
someone can guarantee me that:

\- Nobody cares how anything looks - any two things that are functionally
equivalent are guaranteed to have equivalent conversions

\- Looks have no impact on usability - anything that is functionally
equivalent is guaranteed to be equally usable

\- Usability does not translate to users - no correlation with whether a user
has a preference for some look and feel with the number of such users you will
get

In short, if visual design has no correlation with any part of the business,
and, notably, people are as likely to pay, and will pay the same amount, for
any two things that are functionally equivalent, then I can guarantee you that
visual design will not fix anyone's broken business. If any of the above are
_not_ true - well, all bets are off.

~~~
ams6110
I didn't read the piece as arguing that design is irrelevant, or that good
design doesn't add to things like conversion, usability, or usage.

~~~
its_so_on
Fair enough. If you can guarantee that adding to conversion, usability, usage,
etc, can't fix a broken business, then I'll accept that visual design can't
fix your broken business.

Basically, I'm saying "it just might."

------
jsavimbi
> In my experience

Only a fool would pretend to be blissfully unaware of what he's talking about
and then offer you advice on the very subject of his ignorance.

~~~
geoffw8
I'm not sure "In my experience" suggests the OP is unaware of what he's
talking about, in fact, quite the opposite.

~~~
jsavimbi
The mere fact that OP is still wasting time debating the merits of investing
in engineering over design is a dead giveaway that he has not a clue. The
debate has been dead for quite some time now.

Let me clarify this for those not in the know:

Unless you're in the business of selling design services, under no
circumstances should you ever hire a full-time staff designer, never mind
considering them for an equity-sharing position at the outset of your
enterprise.

If one doesn't know what should and shouldn't be hired for in the early stage
startup, one shouldn't be wasting their time pontificating about it. OP is a
moron.

