Design is becoming a competitive advantage for startups

It's always been an advantage, we're just becoming aware of it.

Like, being fit has always been an advantage for organisms. But until organisms came along who developed language and became able to communicate that it was valuable (aka humans), nobody was saying "it's a competitive advantage to be healthy".

Design has always been a competitive advantage for startups doing anything with consumers.

Case in point, Apple vs. every other small PC manufacturer in the 70's and 80's ... hell, even now.

Building a product is composed of two (blurry) stages: creating something that solves a problem, and adapting that solution to suit the person who will be using it.

Arguably, without design, there is no product - by making decisions that are necessary to take something from paper into reality, you are going through a process of design.

Design is most acknowledged in consumer goods, but it is present everywhere. Imagine you are building a widget that forms part of the internal mechanism of a space probe. It will likely only be seen or touched by a few technical people, it probably doesn't need visual appeal, but you must still design it to be feasible to manufacture and convenient to handle during assembly.

You will have to make decisions above and beyond its basic function - does the form fit the assembly worker's perceived model of what it does? Can it be held in human hands safely and without risking damage? Would any damage or incorrect installation be visually evident?

There is a false dichotomy between engineering and design. Modern technology is closing the conceptual gap. Whilst we need a certain degree of specialization, I strongly believe there should be no such thing as a 'pure' engineer or designer. If we want to create usable tools, we all need to know a little of both.

It's very hard to tell when design or functionality makes or breaks a site. I think we shouldn't be asking that question at all. The whole thing is completely situational.

For Craigslist the function is most important and credit should go to the back end guys. Something like Twitter would give it to the front end guys. I'm leaving scaling out of the equation for now and assuming all sites will perform the same under any load.

A site that is ugly doesn't get used. People always judge a book by its cover especially these days. But if the pretty site doesn't work then you're also screwed. I really hate this debate over who is more important: front or back end. You need both. Period.

I also hate the whole "design is easy" / "no, programming is easy" argument. Neither one is easy. They're different animals. The way you approach the front end and back end are totally different. I'm a generalist but lean toward design. I'm in awe of the back end guys but then some are in awe of me. We have totally different goals in mind when working. The back end guys are concerned with functionality. Security, scaling. The front end is all about beauty, load times, SEO, user experience. At one point in our work we do end up in the middle. That middle is when we're both thinking about the the front end is interacting with the back end and how will we code everything so that A) we can easily connect the two and B) we can efficiently extend the front end to accommodate new back end features and vice versa.

I understand the article wasn't exactly pitting programmers against designers but there's always that subtext and people always start thinking about it. It's a shame that the designers haven't gotten as much credit until recently but at the same time, even as a designer, I must give huge props to the back end guys as I understand the pains they go through.

But can we put the whole front vs. back debate to rest already? You just can't have one without the other. Period.

Yeah, same here. If he meant that design was integral to Apple's ability to break into the market and gain a few early successes then it makes sense. But I thought along e same lines as you. Apple can be considered an example of how design didn't matter, the competition mopped the floor with them back then. I think they were only marginally successful for a few years in the 80's and didn't become really relevant again until 2001.