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Ask HN: Technical, Business, or Designer
20 points by lachyg on Nov 14, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 35 comments
Hey HN,

So I was thinking today, why does it seem that the equation is always technical > business/marketing. Why is designer never a part of this equation for a startup founding team.

Especially looking at Apple, designers are the core of their business.

Interested in the discussion...

EDIT: To clarify, design means product and user interface design.



In my humble opinion, it's much more important to have a stellar product designer (decide how the thing works, then how it looks) than it is to have a stellar programmer.

The slight problem is that programmers generally have an easier time making a shitty-but-workable UI than designers have putting together shitty-but-workable code.

Thankfully that has been changing lately. I've talked to plenty of Rails developers who come from a design background and are teaching themselves how to program. Hell, that's how I originally met Jason Fried. He had taught himself to program and wanted some assistance.

So if I was putting my money on any startups (and I'm not!), I would much rather pick the ones with strong design talent than with strong programming talent -- unless the key element to what they were doing was uniquely technical.


Design, in the sense you mention here, is something i would expect a good programmer to be good at. It is about problem solving, as well as understanding users of the solution. Designing a solution also requires a bit of algorithmic thinking. I have seen very few non-programmer designers who were good at designing a solution/application.


You might expect that, but my sense from the real world is that it is not true. I consider myself pretty good at this stuff and I'm still humbled by the insights of our designers.


I think the issue here is that programmers, and MBA's for that matter, tend to be convergent-thinkers, whereas designers tend to be divergent-thinkers. Relying on a convergent thought process to solve a problem isn't the most effective way to tackle an issue and therefore involving designers in this process produces far more effective results.


This is a great comment, but I'm still unclear about the intended meaning of "designer". Are we only talking about graphic/artistic design, or just product design? The two are not the same (IMO). For example, I'm a programmer at the core, completely left-brained/logical, who struggles with art/graphic design. However, I am a great product designer (at least, IMO!). So, the one thing I look for to complete projects I'm working on is a graphic designer.

Also, I'm glad you qualified your last statement with this: "unless the key element to what they were doing was uniquely technical." I once had a graphic designer tell me his role was more important than the programming side to web sites, which I totally disagree with. I have a one word retort to that: craigslist. It's true that oftentimes great graphic design is a necessary ingredient to the success of a site, but that's not always the case.


I mean designing the experience. How does it work, what goes where, what's important, etc. The "how does it look" is further down the line from there but still integrally connected. I find that the best product designers are people who can follow the rabbit hole all the way. From thinking about the problem to figuring out how many pixels the border should be.


Now see, you just described me perfectly with everything you said except for that last part about how many pixels the border should be. As a programmer I'm great at all of it except border width type decisions -- which btw I don't think are the most important thing affecting user experience. It mostly just helps aesthetics. It may be that I'm rare as a programmer that's good at following the user experience rabbit hole all the way, but I don't think so.


Making the connection from "how should it work" to "how should it look" is half the magic pudding of a good designer. Relegating that to "it mostly just helps aesthetics" to me signifies someone who doesn't understand that connection.


We're experiencing some missed communication. I believe that's because "how it should look" encompasses two separate aspects -- functionality, and visual appeal. My comment about helping aesthetics was specifically regarding border width. I don't think you're suggesting a border width decision has anything to do with how something works.

Let me explain it better this way. I am fantastic at putting together wireframes for sites. A wireframe requires no programming or artistic ability, because it uses simply black and white lines, yet still effectively communicates the placement of elements, site flow, and overall intended functional user experience. I believe this is the type of design you're referring to. Again, this is something I feel I'm quite good at. Now, while I'm fully capable of cutting up and building out any wireframes I (or anyone else) come up with, and putting them online, it's probably not a good idea, because black and white lines would lack visual appeal. That's where graphic artists (what I usually call graphic designers) come in -- but in that instance they're mostly just adding in shapes, colors, and gradients etc. (and figuring out border width ;)

To me, building great wireframes and flow charts generally fits better with the thinking of programmers -- people most in tuned with thinking logically -- than creative artsy types, but that's just my thinking.


The visual representation of something is integrally linked with how it works. Thinking of that as just something graphic designers do to make it pretty is in my opinion the crux of the disagreement here. I don't think that this division should exist.

I've certainly seen it performed like this. In fact, I believe it's the norm. But I also think it's the cause of many bad experiences.

The perfect flow, in my opinion, is to have the same person responsible for how it works and how it looks because the best interfaces and applications merges those two together.

Also, I largely consider wireframes and flow charts to be poor substitutions for designers capable of jumping straight from ultra-rough paper sketch to HTML. The more layers of indirection, the worse.


I know graphic artists who are extremely talented visually, but certainly couldn't beat me for putting together Web applications. They may been drawing since they could hold a pencil, and know how to use Photoshop, but simply don't have the thinking I do when it comes to UX. In the past I built a large web application for a business that went head-to-head with a top industry version, and the owner was blown away with how much better my app was, saying it cut his training time for new employees down by around 85%. I don't think this is a black and white issue. I think, like most anything, there are many things that come down to the individual doing the job.


Everybody is essential, none is sufficient... (and craigslist has a design, it's just a different kind)


(and craigslist has a design, it's just a different kind)

Yes, I agree craigslist has a design. It's a functional design, the kind I'm great at. What I'm not so good at is art/graphic design. I could have built craigslist from scratch completely by myself in a few weeks, if that long, but that's because I can lay things out and use shades of gray quite well.


I really believe you could... but the thing is - would you decide to keep it this way as they did? Really.. think about it. Wouldn't you think let's hire a "designer" to make it nicer now that we have more money (same here)? For me this is the actual kind of smart design decision and not ability to make sleek glossy buttons.

I don't want to have an argument. I'm just sharing my view on what I think good design actually is.


Well, that's a good question, but it depends on whether you mean a graphic designer or a "user experience" person. A graphic designer can make most any site look nicer, but that doesn't mean the same thing as providing them with a better usage experience. For example, does the position/availability of search boxes make sense.

I'm not trying to argue, either. This is an interesting topic for me. Where the purely technical/engineering world merges with the artistic world there is often interesting overlap. Is it better to have form over function, or function over form? I think the answer is that it depends case by case on the desired result, and both areas often compromise to accommodate the other. So, for example, "concept cars" usually have exotic form, and look great, but they are usually hypothetical only because in reality they wouldn't be that great functionally -- they're usually purely artistic.


No matter what the title is the thing that makes a world of difference is the reason someone designs. Nice looks are useless if they have no clear purpose, if there's no underlying reason for them to be nice.

The value of really good designer is in the ability to understand what kind of design and how much of it is needed in order to make something _work_ well/better as opposed to just look nice (what can be simply harmful in some cases, I call it monkey with grenade...).

So I think if when you say designer you mean someone who has ability to understand bigger picture and uses his skills as a tool to achieve something, you definitely need one (and you'll have a hard time finding him). But if it's just about looks then I'm not sure.

btw, design is not art, design is an industrial term believe it or not. Child of mass production in 19th century:)


Hmm, good thoughts. I think you and I are thinking pretty much the same.

Design is not art? Hmm... I think Leonardo da Vinci would possibly disagree with that. But maybe you're saying "design" is more mathematical in nature -- something either fits and works, or it doesn't. I could see that. Are graphic designers not usually artists? Or maybe you're saying the term should be "graphic artists" and not "graphic designers"?

btw, I lol'ed at monkey with grenade :)


I think original and real meaning of term "design" is somehow lost to many people. It was coined for a reason long long after term art existed. The reason was that it was a process of creating something with aesthetic value but for business/utilitarian purpose and within certain constrains. Things like market, engineering, mass production requirements and so on. And designer is someone who has to understand these things in order to do his job well as opposed to artist who can make a car with a huge butterfly wings on it and it can still be a masterpiece as an artwork thou he has no idea what people want, how engineers work and it's absurd as a new model...


It's so nice to hear that come from a programmer :P


It's probably helpful to distinguish between designer in the visual design or graphic design sense, and in the product maker sense.

A strong sense of design is a crucial attribute in any product maker, which would generally include every member of a startup's founding team, whether technical or business/marketing.

It's less important to have a visual/graphic designer in the founding team, and most startups outsource this type of work until they're big enough to warrant a dedicated resource.

It's worth noting that in the AirBnB founding team, Brian and Joe are both industrial designers, with Nate the only hacker.


When saying designer, I mean a really strong product design, but also someone that can make things look nice. Someone that's highly skilled, not just someone who can navigate photoshop.


Partially the problem is in the word it self. As you can see from the discussion here and in many other places, as soon as someone asks similar question people start talking about what this word (designer) actually means.

Take architecture for example. In a way it's about designing buildings, but they have a separate term for it. You say it and everyone knows what you mean.

This is whats missing here I think. Some designers think only about "visual appeal" and can be even dangerous for a startup, because they don't know or often care about what it is they are actually building. Some are letter "T" people - they know one thing very very well and are more or less familiar with related fields. For them "design is how stuff works" (from your question Apple type designers). This kind of person can add a huge value to any business but we don't have a name for them (hopefully yet).


Great question.

It does seem that the tech-world lags behind in terms of the role of the designer, when compared with that of Industrial Design for example.

Take IDEO. An Industrial Design consultancy at heart who over the last 10 years have evolved into a consultancy that focus's more broadly on innovation, design thinking, strategy and designing businesses.

Whereas once upon a time an Industrial Designer's job would be to 'skin' a product and bridge the gap between marketing and engineering. The Industrial Designers role at leading design focused now companies now play a more prominent part in the development of business. Providing a divergent-thought design led process to tackle problems surrounding the product and service.

Web designers are yet to take take this step. And for the most part focus on the designing of pixels as opposed to the designing of businesses.

Andrew Chen breaks down IDEO's philosophy of human led design in which they argue that there's 3 perspectives when developing a service, which for me really sums up the true value a design-founder can hold. That of Viability, Feasibility and Desirability. In which:

Viability = Business focus (marketing, finance) Feasibility = Engineering focus (technologies, agile etc.) Desirability = Design focus (customers, aesthetics, etc.)

IDEO design from a desirability focus which means that the user comes first, everything is done from their eyes with a keen focus on usability and aesthetics in result creating a product that is highly revelvant and desirable to the user.

It's a great article, read more here: http://andrewchenblog.com/2009/12/04/does-every-startup-need...

I think more and more in the tech-world are starting to realise this, both designers and non-designers. Just look at the current opportunities for UX guys.

But in my opinion what we really need is more design founders and encourage more designers to spend less time on dribbble.com and more time studying the in's and out's of business.


I don't think design can be decoupled from "technical" part. All great software companies have designers and programmers working closely in a tightly knit team.


Bit of a tangent here...

As a UI designer I find comments to these types of questions always a bit interesting. Don't get me wrong, I am happy to see folks thinking about the inclusion of design input initially. But what I find kinda amusing is that there is this tendency to quickly begin classifying designers (rightly so into visual & workflow), but the same discussion never happens for the term technical.

Your question simply says technical, and the community just accepts the term. I have work with many "technicals" who could code a front end but their work failed because they knew nothing about latency, back end architecture or scaling. And I have worked with many back end technical folks who felt the display layer was the work of junior people as it is not "the hard stuff". Like designers, technical folks fall into two camps as well - and very few excel at both.

Not looking to start a discussion war. Just want to state that the more legs you can put under your idea, the more balanced it will be. Apple succeeds for many reasons, but one thing is true - they have the culture and more importantly the infrastructure to assemble a large team of highly talented and focused individuals.


I don't know that I agree with your assessment that "designers are the core" of Apple's business, but even so, Apple's current state seems to be rather irrelevant to a discussion about a combination of founders for a startup. Wouldn't looking at Apple's structure when they were a startup be more useful?

Aside from that, there are a lot of founders who have some level of design skills -- they just also happen to do other things, since that's how startups work. When you have limited resources, having a dedicated designer is generally going to be inefficient (unless design/UX are crucial to your particular startup in the early stages).

Also, non-designer founders have a lot of options regarding design -- they can outsource it, find/use a template, hack together some html/css, etc.


I disagree.

A designer is an individual that solves problems by the use of a divergent-thought led process (A process very different to that of an engineer or MBA). They find problems, and solve them. Since solving a problem is the very pinnacle of building a business, I disagree with you that your claim that a designer is going to be useless.

It seems within the Tech-World the role of the designer is skewed, to the point even designers believe that their only role is to deal with the pixels on the screen. Take a look at leading design consultancies, such as IDEO, frog and Continuum and then try and tell me that a designer's role within a start-up is 'inefficient'.


As a designer and a newcomer to the bay and valley I find this thread incredibly refreshing. I came to the bay to do exactly the kind of design described here: larger picture problem solving, going beyond what something looks like to connect aesthetics and communications more meaningfully with core functionality and belief.

But so far I've found that virtually no part of process of starting and running a company currently allows for this ki d of design thinking. There is only ever a design budget for what amounts to a fresh coat of paint, way after all the meaningful design decisions have been made.

How can design become a more meaningful part of the process?


Design sense is definitely a must for everyone. Every programmer needs to spend atleast some time figuring out the cleanest interface (UI/API) for their code. Once a usable product is created, only then professional designer is need to make the product sell.


because "technical" encloses both "programming" and "design" (which by the way I don't think is as strategic as "Interaction Design") in the same way that "business" encloses "organization", "marketing" and "sales" (and possibly much more)


Technical encloses design? I always thought it was just the programming. By design, I mean product and user interface design.


> Technical encloses design?

By "design" at Apple, they mean "how the product work" — I think Jonathan Ive is to credit for that sentence. And Jonathan Ive is an industrial designer: he's not just here to make things look cute, he's there to make sure a product works well and is enjoyable to use.

In a start-up, especially a software one, "how the product work" is responsibility of the developer(s).


But to the best of my knowledge, he doesn't engineer the insides of the products. He doesn't work out how the scroll wheel will actually make song skip, or pause, or play.

He works out how it will look, how we will interact with it, how it will be presented, and why. [I'm generalising and condensing though


Designers, for apple, are part of technical team.


Please excuse the terminology I used, I'm referring to programmers as the technical people.




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