> In my experience
Only a fool would pretend to be blissfully unaware of what he's talking about and then offer you advice on the very subject of his ignorance.
Visual design will not fix your broken business
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Re: Visual design will not fix your broken business
#12I agree with the author's central point, although I don't know if I would de-emphasize the importance of the visual designer to such an extent. I think a couple of the examples he links to (Google, Facebook) are outliers. They succeeded in spite of their lack of visual design because their products weren't just executed well; they were executed extremely well. Generally speaking though it takes a bit more finesse in…
You could add eBay, Amazon, Craig's List, Yahoo, etc. I don't really think they are outliers - if you offer a product with real value, lack of design may have an impact, but the value you provide to customers will vastly outweigh it.
Not that I think design should be ignored, but sadly some of the giants have ignored it and done remarkably well regardless.
Re: Visual design will not fix your broken business
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but communication problems are primarily existing pre-sales and some people are very good at that. Designing the actual interface/service/functionality/product is a different problem all together.
Maybe the term "communication problem" isn't the best. A better one might be usability, or interaction design. Good design has heaps of it. And it's not aesthetics alone. A designer should go a lot further - scope includes accesibility and (if you're unlucky enough to work with me) information architecture/design. Knowing how a colour wheel works doesn't solve problems like a custom-designed, ticked-out über-awesome…
Yeah I think we agree.
The only point I am trying to make is that there are many many great webdesigners out there that can make beautiful websites that communicate well. But it it's often the same guys that design something like an interface or a mobile app.
The creative agency world is filled with people able to do artistically stunning websites but they are approaching it from a communication/advertising point of view where you might be exposed to the site once or twice. This is very different than doing something like say hipmunk.
Re: Visual design will not fix your broken business
#14Good design is a strong component for your startup's success today. unlike some 10-15 years ago, users now have high expectations for your product design- thanks to the likes of Apple- and I see this is where inexperienced people get stuck- After it looks like Apple's, What next?
Yep. Launching something today that looks like the original Craigslist or even Google now is a waste of time. Expectations have changed.
Re: Visual design will not fix your broken business
#15A good design on a bad product or business probably won't help in the long run.
Conversely, a bad design on a good product can hinder a project in the long run.
Designers are an important part of the mix, but you'd be a fool to concentrate on design alone. In my own experience, we successfully bootstrapped a startup with no designer, winging it based on user feedback and our own intuition. But when we got funding, the first person we hired was a designer - and the popularity of the product rose accordingly.
Re: Visual design will not fix your broken business
#16One could extend this idea to all "execution" related practices: design, engineering, etc.
"Good execution will not fix your broken business".
If you are solving the wrong problem, targeting the wrong market or building the wrong product, good execution will not save your business. Both the strategy ('what') and the execution ('how') have to be right for the business to succeed.
Re: Visual design will not fix your broken business
#17Visual design might not fix your broken business, but if done right it can turn your good business into a great business. Which is the goal of almost every startup.
Re: Visual design will not fix your broken business
#18> Visual aesthetics are rarely enough. Getting a product into the hands of potential customers is important.
The problem here is that 6 or 8 years ago, building a basic product was a lot harder than it is today. I'm a designer and I used to spend a huge amount of time coding a product I wanted to build and less time designing it. Back then the differentiator was essentially launching a product.
These days you can get hold of a decent framework that does most of what you need so the rest of the time can be spent on design (or whatever else is important to you). As a result, launching a product is no longer impressive and good styling / usability are important differentiators.
Out-of-the-box software is getting so good / complete that products need to look elsewhere to stand out.
Re: Visual design will not fix your broken business
#19Love the headline, but a bit more needs to be explained.
As a designer, I get tons of requests to work with startups only to later find out that they want an aesthetic layer slapped on top. Is this possible? Certainly. But it doesn't address major problems with your experience, content structure, or the most important thing: the message you're trying to convey.
The thing missing in this article is that, for a good designer, it's quite the thinking man's game. For example, I'm working on a design now where the original menu system wasn't 100% clear and by trying a couple of different approaches, we came to something great. This is key: hire someone who thinks about the problems, not the aesthetics. A solid designer will address the problems and then devise an aesthetic strategy.
Most importantly: show respect for designers. The good ones can help you immensely.
Re: Visual design will not fix your broken business
#20I can guarantee that visual design will not fix anyone's broken business, if someone can guarantee me that:
- Nobody cares how anything looks - any two things that are functionally equivalent are guaranteed to have equivalent conversions
- Looks have no impact on usability - anything that is functionally equivalent is guaranteed to be equally usable
- Usability does not translate to users - no correlation with whether a user has a preference for some look and feel with the number of such users you will get
In short, if visual design has no correlation with any part of the business, and, notably, people are as likely to pay, and will pay the same amount, for any two things that are functionally equivalent, then I can guarantee you that visual design will not fix anyone's broken business. If any of the above are not true - well, all bets are off.