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Design is becoming a competitive advantage for startups

venturebeat.com

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Re: Design is becoming a competitive advantage for startups

#41

Post by anigbrowl »

lkrubner wrote: post #28

This article seems ahistorical. It suffers from a lack of awareness regarding how far back some of these trends go. The inaccurate emphasis here is on something unheard of and new: "Technical founders have already become prerequisites in the world of tech startups. Now get ready for the designer founder. The combination of this new duo is going to change the world of tech forever." But this trend is not new for start…

Back in the 90s I switched from Yahoo to Google because of the clean uncluttered look as much as the quality of the search results. And while UI guidelines have always been enforced fairly rigidly on Apple's platform, the quality and consistency of icons, toolbars, etc. on windows applications have always been a good proxy for the reliability and utility of the underlying code. ANSI or command-line software has a strong design element; Norton Utilities, Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect were winners in their respective markets because they had robust visual grammars, and even a batch file or shell script needs some design to the extent that it's user-facing.

Recently I've been using a terminal to some ancient AS/400 database to look up property records at my local city hall, and it's an excellent reminder of how even the simplest task can become completely user-hostile if design is overlooked.

Re: Design is becoming a competitive advantage for startups

#42

Post by mannicken »

pbregman wrote: post #29

This is why there needs to be an easily accessible hub for designers and coders alike to present ideas and find people to work with. The idea of bumping into the ideal business partner while in school, at work, or out socially is somewhat arcane.

deviantArt seems to be a place like that.. Altough it's a lot more art-oriented.

Re: Design is becoming a competitive advantage for startups

#43

Post by richardw »

I think it's useful to look at a different industry - cars - to see how this could play out.

Initially it was mostly about figuring out how to make them work. Later, it was making them work better and how to make more of them in a shorter time. These days a car needs to be able to sustain performance for many years with a tiny amount of failures or there's a lawsuit.

Design has clearly become more important. It's probably easy to say that design is the 'most important thing' since engineering is all good, but even now it would be wrong. Some marques need passable engineering and design, and focus on price. Others focus on great engineering with passable design (Volvo? IMHO). Others on great engineering and great design but passable price (Porsche, say, vs Bugatti). Toyota is much more about engineering and price, than design.

This mirrors Porter's 'generic strategies' [1] where different companies can compete in the same overall market, each embodying different principles by which they compete.

Similarly, I suspect that the design/engineering issue won't be 'answered'. Each niche and market will have different requirements. Different solution providers, each with a different design/engineering mix, will succeed based on how that mix and the resulting solution match the specific needs of the customer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_generic_strategies

Re: Design is becoming a competitive advantage for startups

#44

Post by cateye »

You can not make something "without" design.

You can find something ugly. You can try to make something more aesthetically appealing for a certain group of people.

If these people have "aesthetic appeal" as a criteria, you can have a competitive advantage. Unless you are selling jewelry or other luxury products.

But most of the time, aesthetic appeal is not a key decision factor. People may not decide really rationally but they are not going to buy something without any function that solves a real problem for them.

Re: Design is becoming a competitive advantage for startups

#45

Post by itmag »

Is the design co-founder becoming the new technical co-founder? (In terms of perceived difficulty of acquiring them).

So the difficulty of finding a co-founder would go like this: business I certainly feel a little like this. I am looking to start a startup, and I am MUCH more interested in hooking up with a really good UX/design person than a business person.

Re: Design is becoming a competitive advantage for startups

#46

Post by marquis »

defen wrote: post #40
marquis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that wasn't design related. They had desirable technology and software for the time and they marketed aggressively.

Well, Jobs' desire for a small, quiet (fanless) machine drove them to hire Rod Holt, who designed the switching power supply for the Apple ][. Jobs quote from the bio (it's unclear when he said this): "That switching power supply was as revolutionary as the Apple ][ logic board was. Rod doesn't get a lot of credit for this in the history books, but he should. Every computer now uses switching power supplies, and they…

We may be at conflict with what we mean by design. I would consider the switching power supply to be an example of desirable technology, not design.

Re: Design is becoming a competitive advantage for startups

#47

Post by rhizome »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #33
imjk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As mtgentry replied, Craigslist had a huge advantage in being first to market. But now as Craigslist is being supplanted by more niche focused sites, you better believe that good design will be an integral part of those new sites. Refer to http://thegongshow.tumblr.com/post/345941486/the-spawn-of-cr...

Yeah. I knew someone would call me out for saying the thing about ugly sites right after mentioning Craigslist but I think my point still stands. The only reason I felt I could safely say that was because of your point exactly, imjk. Thanks for saying it better than I could.

No, your point doesn't stand when it's predicated on imjk's skills at predicting the future and a rhetorical interpretation of Craigslist's life so far.

Both history and reality confirm for us that ugly sites other than CL do just fine.

Re: Design is becoming a competitive advantage for startups

#48

Post by defen »

marquis wrote: post #46
defen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Jobs' desire for a small, quiet (fanless) machine drove them to hire Rod Holt, who designed the switching power supply for the Apple ][. Jobs quote from the bio (it's unclear when he said this): "That switching power supply was as revolutionary as the Apple ][ logic board was. Rod doesn't get a lot of credit for this in the history books, but he should. Every computer now uses switching power supplies, and they…

We may be at conflict with what we mean by design. I would consider the switching power supply to be an example of desirable technology, not design.

My contention is that they wouldn't have had the switching power supply if not for Jobs' design aesthetic. They would have just used whatever was standard at the time, making the machine bigger and noisier.

Re: Design is becoming a competitive advantage for startups

#49

Post by herval »

lkrubner wrote: post #28

This article seems ahistorical. It suffers from a lack of awareness regarding how far back some of these trends go. The inaccurate emphasis here is on something unheard of and new: "Technical founders have already become prerequisites in the world of tech startups. Now get ready for the designer founder. The combination of this new duo is going to change the world of tech forever." But this trend is not new for start…

the fact that a specific company did it in the past doesn't make it a trend back then... plus, trends are not necessarily "new things"
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