This is super useful to me as someone who works for a company about to hire our first marketer - I guess a Super IC! We are also about to hire our first UI/UX person (people?) and I'm wondering if anyone here knows of similar quality resources about that
Honestly, my best advice on hiring a UX/UI person at the sort of stage you sound to be at is “don’t”. Get a frontend developer with an eye for design instead - hiring someone in a UX specialism too early will just result in a lot of unactionable reports being generated because the people actually able to implement anything are already busy building other things.
The only exception I’d make here is if your UX person is able to implement their suggestions themselves, without dragging people away from other work.
This advice depends on what you’re actually building and where you’re needing design help.
If it’s a Saas product and you aren’t able to close leads due to a lack of product features, then sure, don’t hire someone to design what you already don’t have the resources to build.
However, I doubt this is OP’s problem. I’m guessing they already have some traction, and are having customer complaints about the general usability or are losing to more polished competitors. In this case, it’s stupid not to bring in specialist design help.
Hiring more construction workers to work on a poorly architected building won’t suddenly make it more appealing to tenants. If the architecture is the problem, hire an architect!
we are indeed the latter case! We are B2B and have a good amount of clients for one of our services but for others we just have to deliver reports with screenshots of our tool since it's a pain in the ass to work with. 12 engineers but no one with any training on how to make things intuitive and delightful. Probably planning to contract with a UX person but flying blind on what skills to look for
Hiring designers is tough (everybody claims they know UX just how everybody claims they can be a PM) and most startups underestimate how valuable (or detrimental) design can be to your business.
Good design can change the trajectory of your product and make it a lasting success, bad design can waste your resources working on the wrong thing and sink your business entirely.
Chances are, at this stage you don’t have the money to hire a good designer, and if you don’t know much about design (which it sounds like you don’t), you’re likely going to hire an inexperienced/bad designer—-and it might even make your product worse.
I’d hire a more expensive (in the short term) freelancer or agency that can show multiple portfolio case studies directly relating to what you do. Save the full time salary for after the more expensive (and more experienced) freelancer/agency has set the direction. Then bring in the just-out-of-school kid (which is all you’ll probably get at startup salaries and with no brand recognition) to follow the direction you’ve already set.
