Things I, as a designer, wish more tech startups knew

http://the-pastry-box-project.net/stephen-anderson/2012-september-7/

by charliepark • 14 years ago

212 122 14 years ago

nvk2• 14 years ago

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.

tylermauthe2• 14 years ago

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?

rcgs• 14 years ago

A good "full stack" designer is a very rare thing.

talmand2• 14 years ago

And there are way too many people who claim such a thing as well.

nihonjon3• 14 years ago

Can you define full stack designer?

duiker101• 14 years ago

I suppose it can be definite as "someone who does what is asked for with nice(maybe not spectacular but at least nice) results, whether it's his main field or not, as long as it's related to it."

tylermauthe2• 14 years ago

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 ;)

nihonjon3• 14 years ago

Nice! Knew what a fullstack programner was so I was thinking it might be along those lines. As was mentioned before, more often than not, startups have limited funding and can't afford both a UX guy and designer. Full stack for the budget! FTB?

mortenjorck• 14 years ago

I'd prefer "relevant stack designer." Full stack implies backend and database, about which the designer really need only have a basic understanding of constraints. Relevant stack would mean a mastery of front-end technologies.

bluetidepro• 14 years ago

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.

TylerE• 14 years ago

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

nvk2• 14 years ago

Yes, it was 'definitely' a sell sheet, but most of the points were good and have merit.

bradddd2• 14 years ago

Agreed. A lot of the points seem to be stressed from the point of explaining how important what he does is.

Bring in the UX designer before you’ve attempted any UI work. I can’t tell you how many times my clients have said “I wish I’d brought you in earlier!” The UI changes are often enough to necessitate technical re-architecture. Starting with a good designer from day one will save you a lot of headaches later on...

If they nailed it on their own, they're not going to bring someone in, but still.

RossM• 14 years ago

I was quite surprised not to find a "I'm available, hire me!" tagline at the bottom, great points but I kept getting distracted from them.

JonLim2• 14 years ago

To be fair, aren't most blog posts about that? ;)

Anyway, to play the devil's advocate in this situation, I believe the gist was more along the lines of "please involve UX designers early on in the process, and know that we're not just your make-up appliers."

If that involves showering him with money, then sure.

sigkill• 14 years ago

I totally agree with your devils' advocacy. The problem occurs when the people making decisions are not able to differentiate the UI(can be changed anytime) from the UX.

Datonomics• 14 years ago

I did get that feeling, but i would not have cared as much if he would have shown some awesome before and afters or some real-world examples.

saraid2163• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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

iridium2• 14 years ago

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.

ohashi• 14 years ago

That one bothered me too. For someone so focused on the experience, it seems narrow to think of focusing on one platform that admittedly, might not even be used. Shouldn't you be focused on building the best experience on the intended platform?

icefox• 14 years ago

Around three years ago I postulated that websites will soon start to develop their mobile version first and not second. Little by little I keet seeing more examples and the last year it has really been accelerating. It is an interesting time and while many besides yourself will find offense with this "rule" I would expect more of it in the future.

JCB_K• 14 years ago

It's not dumbing down, it's simplifying. By designing mobile first, you force yourself to think about the priorities in your UX. You can still add all kind of things on top in the full web interface, but that's on top of the core experience.

dhyasama• 14 years ago

Here is a solid book about mobile first development:

http://www.abookapart.com/products/mobile-first

It's a good (and quick) read, even if you don't agree with it, as are all of the A Book Apart publications.

deveac2• 14 years ago

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.

iridium2• 14 years ago

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.

rnernento• 14 years ago

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

notimetorelax2• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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

aerique• 14 years ago

Came here to post this. For some reason a blog post about design or UX posted to HN (by a design / UX guy no less!) has at least one failing in the user interface department that can be spotted by a $0.02 programmer.

rglover• 14 years ago

It's not his design. The Pastry Box Project is a collaborative blog made by someone else. He just contributed the content.

notimetorelax2• 14 years ago

Oh, great. Thanks for the info. This is his web site:

http://poetpainter.com/

alexro• 14 years ago

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

nmcfarl• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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).

brendanobrien• 14 years ago

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.

nihonjon3• 14 years ago

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

msutherl• 14 years ago

UX designers are web designers with no sense of style.

jeremiep• 14 years ago

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.

bradddd2• 14 years ago

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

shawndrost• 14 years ago

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.

posabsolute• 14 years ago

Agreed, I think lot fo the stuff here, it's his job to educate others about it.

saraid2163• 14 years ago

Maybe he should write a blog post about it and put it on HN.

ender74• 14 years ago

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.

true_religion• 14 years ago

It depends....

in an early stage startup, you're still tossing around ideas and trying to find what fits with your target market. In that stage, you can't just contract out UX to a designer. You'll burn up all your runway doing so, as you iterate.

In my opinion its better to do UX internally, and coordinate with your designer for stylistic changes.

timr3• 14 years ago

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.

malachismith3• 14 years ago

Actually... most often UI people end up marginalized because they think their ideas and their needs are more important than they really are. Designers are, in general, their own worst enemies.

prodigal_erik• 14 years ago

"Never build a good product" is too strong. We as hackers have quite a few exceptionally powerful tools with terrible UIs (e.g., emacs) and it only really hinders the earliest portion of one's career before climbing the learning curve. Consumer stuff has a tendency to over-optimize for approachability, which my get you eyeballs but not dedicated power users whose lives revolve around tools.

JonLim2• 14 years ago

While I agree with you, I think you have to approach these 29 things as a helping hand for when you're deciding to use those limited resources.

After all, a solid UX from the start will make it far easier to build and find success than having to re-invent the wheel (your product) later on in the cycle just to save some time and money at the start.

My personal opinion, of course.

inkaudio• 14 years ago

I've learned not to work with entrepreneurs who do not understand the value of design and user experience. There are plenty of entrepreneurs who understand the value of ux/ui. My job is to design an a app that is not a pain to use, not explain cost-benefit of this.

On a side note, the op is wrong when he writes "Bring in the UX designer before you’ve attempted any UI work." Yes you want to do UX first, but UI and UX are inseparable, because from the user perspective, the user interface(UI) always has a bearing on the user experience (UX). The UX should dictate the UI, but a good UX designer will always design the UI.

ezl2• 14 years ago

Its not a question of understanding that those have value. the original post is just saying that there are more things that require attention than he can address.

All startups work with constraints. For some startups design & UX are less important than for others.

Products CAN succeed with crap UX (though it can severely penalize the outcome).

Products CAN NOT succeed without _product_.

So if an entrepreneur has to pick between a rails developer and a front end dev, in some cases he has to pick the backend guy.

Rock, Entrepreneur, Hard Place

malachismith3• 14 years ago

I've learned the value of not working with designers who do not understand the realities and constraints of entrepreneurship.

utopkara5• 14 years ago

You need to be convinced that a designer is needed in order to pay for it, and you may not need one: If you trust that your product is designed not according to the convenience of the underlying technology (and the computation device) but to match the goals of the [put your target audience here] #1 user Jane (age 21, last year in college, started thinking about her finances, has classes all day, needs to straighten up GPA before graduation, good at math and office software, shares apartment with 2 other people, uses to phone for IM and instagram), and #2 user Hillary (age 58, manager in a paper company, both kids graduated from college, has meetings throughout the week, 5 weeks vacation, heavily depends on her phone for calendar and email).

pumblechook• 14 years ago

As Nielsen said, the ultimate goal of usability is cash. Unfortunately, this article comes off more as a designer rant, as if startups should invest in usability just because it somehow makes the world a better place.

When, in fact, the positive ROI of usability improvement has been established for awhile: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/roi.html

A good UX guy will realize this and design to the situation, rather than preach some esoteric heuristics.

csmeder2• 14 years ago

"Designing for quality will always be more expensive. It's not about expense. It's about the return on the investment." -Jared Spool

You have to take a look at your competition. If a high quality experience doesn't matter then yes don't do the 29 things. However, remember "Design and UX is the new IP" - Ron Conway

And remember Paul Graham has said "always run uphill". He meant that when he could solve either a regular problem or a hard problem at Viaweb he'd always solve the harder problem as if he found it hard, his competitors would find it almost impossible.

So you can use UX and Design as your "barrier to entry"/"hard problem" amongst your competition. If you are solving some other non UX hard problem, then have a mediocre user experience if it makes sense.

armageddon• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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

justjimmy• 14 years ago

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?

stevenkovar• 14 years ago

To me, the spectrum ranges from Functionality to Aesthetic; each type of design can be approached from a more functional or more aesthetic approach.

There is UX that 'feels' amazing but is used in an insubstantial product (aesthetic UX) just as there is functional visual design—think of the IKEA catalog which emphasizes visual simplicity as a means to sell, in addition to the 3D rendered scenes used to save in production cost.

malachismith3• 14 years ago

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."

adrianhoward10• 14 years ago

Personally I don't like the "UX designer" job title, but would put UI Design and Visual Design under the umbrella of UX (ala JJG's classic "elements of UX" diagram http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf)

talmand2• 14 years ago

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_• 14 years ago

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...

drp4929• 14 years ago

"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.

dreamdu5t• 14 years ago

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.

cheald• 14 years ago

Jakob Nielsen would disagree with you.

erikpukinskis• 14 years ago

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.

dmak• 14 years ago

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

juddlyon• 14 years ago

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."

TeeWEE2• 14 years ago

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."

TeeWEE2• 14 years ago

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.

pixie_• 14 years ago

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

mcollinsblog• 14 years ago

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.

jamesdelaneyie• 14 years ago

Been lurking here for months but I made a profile just to say Thank God. Thank God someone else gets it.

vlad• 14 years ago

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.

evincarofautumn2• 14 years ago

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.

Silhouette2• 14 years ago

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.

evincarofautumn2• 14 years ago

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

riffic• 14 years ago

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."

novaleaf• 14 years ago

the tl;dr;

pay attention to ux!

loceng• 14 years ago

Very good writeup.

ted0• 14 years ago

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

Things I, as a designer, wish more tech startups knew

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