+1 for the use of the word "Horseshit." That's all...
Design is Horseshit
31–40 of 148 posts
Re: Design is Horseshit
#32A startup blogger writes a polemic with a blatantly baiting headline. Within 24 hours, another startup blogger will write a rebuttal with an equally baiting headline. Both will incite winding debates on Hacker News. Meanwhile, other people will somehow manage to create value, ostensibly the goal of both bloggers, without writing confrontational screeds, perhaps even writing insightful blog posts intended to inspire a…
Heaven forfend that people converse!
Re: Design is Horseshit
#33Design != making things beautiful. In fact, the design community faces a huge problem because almost everyone thinks design == make things beautiful and that is one of the things that has been holding back design in startups for so long. commieneko said it well: "Design is clarity. Design is intention. Design is function. Design is appeal. And, sure, design is appearance." So yes, spending a ton of time altering the…
Actually, designing a smoother on-ramping process is a huge waste of time if you're trying to on-ramp users into a product they're not going to find valuable. This point seems pedantic but isn't; plenty of startups create well-oiled machines that nobody needs, and fail as a result.
Plenty more probably create valuable products that are hidden behind l33t interfaces and web pages that look like someone vomited up four different wordpress themes. Odds are these products are also going to die a slow death because the value they bring is too well hidden behind poor design choices. Arguing at the extremes provides no value here. In the vast middle there are probably products that could provide more value (and more revenue) with a bit of thought given to design and how the end-user will interact with the product.
Re: Design is Horseshit
#34A startup blogger writes a polemic with a blatantly baiting headline. Within 24 hours, another startup blogger will write a rebuttal with an equally baiting headline. Both will incite winding debates on Hacker News. Meanwhile, other people will somehow manage to create value, ostensibly the goal of both bloggers, without writing confrontational screeds, perhaps even writing insightful blog posts intended to inspire a…
Do you disagree with this polemic? It's pretty specific and clear: it argues that plenty of startups are successful with virtually no design at all, with interfaces as clunky as "clients call us on the phone" or "emailing spreadsheets back and forth". It implicitly argues, "early stage startups are continuously faced with a choice of spending energy on design† or on customer discovery", and "early stage startups shou…
It seems the author might do better framing this as "don't design first" (which would also be a significantly less baiting headline). While it's certainly not how I would build a startup, if it works for some, I won't argue against evidence.
But most of the post is spent venting against a perceived popular bias in favor of visual designers over "real value creators." The problem with that is that everyone who contributes to a product or service can create value—a particular startup may not need design early on, or it may not need developers early on, but it depends on the market it's tackling. The wrong omissions can spell disaster; the right omissions can spell success.
Re: Design is Horseshit
#35Fun rant. I wish he defined what exactly he means by design. (Amusing exercise: replace all occurrences of 'design' with 'blub'.) The core of the post for me was: > Stop creating shitty startups that look amazing. A product or service that is indispensably useful yet looks like ass is infinitely more likely to be successful than a product that solves zero problems but looks like a work of art. I'd say sure, in genera…
I think he clearly understands design to be something that "looks amazing." Humorous post.
Re: Design is Horseshit
#36An obvious conclusion if your definition of design is "how something looks". I would suggest that your attitude would doom any startup relying on a human to machine interface to failure. Without a focus on designing for useability or user experience I would argue that your startup will not solve any users problem, as they will give up on even trying to use it. So I think anyone giving credence to you views with respect to their startup will quickly find themselves with a lot of wasted effort and a pile of horseshit.
Re: Design is Horseshit
#37And yet Apple is/was the most valuable company in the world, largely due to design. Saying "design is horseshit" makes about as much sense as saying "engineering is horseshit" or "writing well is horseshit". Read: it makes absolutely no sense.
Apple wasn't a "design startup". Sure, Jobs valued design, but none of Apple's founders were designers.
Re: Design is Horseshit
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, designing a smoother on-ramping process is a huge waste of time if you're trying to on-ramp users into a product they're not going to find valuable. This point seems pedantic but isn't; plenty of startups create well-oiled machines that nobody needs, and fail as a result.
Plenty more probably create valuable products that are hidden behind l33t interfaces and web pages that look like someone vomited up four different wordpress themes. Odds are these products are also going to die a slow death because the value they bring is too well hidden behind poor design choices. Arguing at the extremes provides no value here. In the vast middle there are probably products that could provide more…
Sure, that's a good point too. Maybe a productive response to this rant is, "yes, but: if you're going defer design work, keep your interface minimal and unamibitious".
Re: Design is Horseshit
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
"that solves zero problems but looks like a work of art" "It is to a massive degree much, much easier to spend a week pushing pixels to create something beautiful" "Everyone’s a fucking designer now If there’s one thing you can rely on everyone having an opinion on, it’s how something should look." "no shimmering design" "They didn’t solve problems! Who fucking cares how it looks!" I don't think he gets it at all.
I understand why you wouldn't like the tone he's writing with, but if you reread those carefully you're going to find that they don't refute my point. I'm so much less interested in discussing one guy's style than I am in the real point he's making. Nobody's going to remember this blog post in 2 weeks. But startups are going to continue running aground on the mistake he's pointing out. Note carefully: by "gets it", I…
I don't know why tptacek's comment is downvoted.
My take is that Enrique Allen, the guy behind the D-Fund, is not trying to say "startups should focus more on retention and user experience," he's trying to say "startups should think about users in an effective way."
In a recent talk Allen gave, the designer-founders he mentioned all had significant programming experience.
Almost all of the people he mentions could code their own products. So, he's not saying "get a bunch of photoshop designers to improve your ux," he saying "having people who think from a design perspective can be the difference between a product succeeding and failing."
For him, a design perspective could include something like thinking "how should I construct this API so that people will be able to use this library?"
Re: Design is Horseshit
#40And yet Apple is/was the most valuable company in the world, largely due to design. Saying "design is horseshit" makes about as much sense as saying "engineering is horseshit" or "writing well is horseshit". Read: it makes absolutely no sense.
Apple is a not a particularly pertinent example. I'm not particularly familiar with Apple's history, but I suspect that their products delivered value immediately--people actually had a use for their stuff that nobody else could supply. Then, thanks to design (and marketing, and fashion, and engineering, and...) they grew.
The whole point of the article is that the foundation of any successful company lies in the value it provides people. Everything else--design is singled out because of the earlier article on the matter--is built on that foundation. Since a startup is just the foundation of a company, its primary goal should be creating a product people use.
In short, he didn't really mean that design is completely worthless--it is merely worthless without a solid product behind it. The same could be said about engineering and strong copy; neither is going to matter if you're making something utterly useless. Thus, given this meaning of "design is horseshit", "engineering/writing well is horseshit" actually makes sense.
Coincidentally, I agree with the idea behind the post: producing something viable is the most important thing a startup can do; the younger a startup is, the more important the product's value. However, I think the overly sensational, antagonistic and slightly misleading title was poorly chosen to represent his point. The post is solid but the title isn't. It does drive clicks and readers, so in a sense it was successful, but primarily from its less desirable qualities.