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And the derisive contempt against designers on HN continues.
Maybe the tone was a little off-the-cuff, but mjolk has a valid point. You can't implement the idea without some sort of coding. Design alone doesn't cut it, and I say that as someone that has a lot of respect for designers.
Designers are artists. Once a designer does more than drawing and photoshop, they become a front-end developer. Using their primary craft of drawing, where is there to really go after that?
Developers have the advantage of being able to throw together a prototype of their web application and see if it's viable. Developers can also tackle the very difficult coding problems that can give a startup a competitive advantage.
I think this is mostly bull, frankly. No matter how easy things get, most startups are meant to solve some kind of problem and they employ technical means to do so. You're never going to get rid of the need for a technical guy, no matter how things change. The second most useful person is probably going to be a hustler/salesman/guy who knows people, who can get the product attention, or investment, or customers, or a…
>And if you really want it, it can probably be contracted, in a way the first two roles never can. HN (rightly) bashes "idea guys", but there is really only one thing in a startup that cannot be contracted: what the startup is trying to do or achieve . Design for a startup can be contracted in the same way software engineering can be contracted. That is to say: you will get reasonably good results if you find a good…
Maybe they want to design instead of run a business.
I actually think it's largely because designers haven't learned how to execute their own working prototypes for the last little while due to the segmentation of roles in corporations/agencies. But it's not like they are short of great ideas. I think given another decade with more young people learning both design and code, and companies demanding people know both, we'll see more designers (with rudimentary coding kno…
This applies to a small company of HN seems to be obsessed the designers are somehow broken because they can't code, that programming is to be worshiped and other essential activities devalued. Maybe this is a problem with the industry as a whole, but lately I have noticed that hiring good designers has become harder than hiring good coders.
This was a good attempt, but I don't think this really nailed why designers don't move into founder roles. It has a lot more to do with the psychology of the type of person that goes into being a designer in the first place. It has a lot to do with the nature of art and the fear of failure. The best designers are often frustrated artists that found comfort in design, where (perhaps subconsciously) they could use thei…
This was a good attempt, but I don't think this really nailed why designers don't move into founder roles. It has a lot more to do with the psychology of the type of person that goes into being a designer in the first place. It has a lot to do with the nature of art and the fear of failure. The best designers are often frustrated artists that found comfort in design, where (perhaps subconsciously) they could use thei…
Another point I'd make is about disruptive business models. According to Clay Christensen, it's about creating a product that's cheaper and offers a better value than incumbents. In many cases, competitors are providing too much performance, and disruptive businesses offer less performance for much less money. The designer mentality tends to see problems as ugliness, and solutions as beauty, but this doesn't fit into the disruptive innovation model. To a designer, disruptive innovation looks like taking something beautiful and replacing it with an ugly knockoff–the opposite of what they want to do!
This isn't really exclusive to designers. Lots of programmers are the same way, they love elegance and beauty in their code and hate dirty hacks and kludges.
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Assuming that I made these observations by learning it in art school is "projecting hardcore" as well. The observations I make are based on an inner circle of friends and business associates I've had over the last 13 years who are predominantly made up of brilliant graphic designers. Not that it puts me in a position of absolute authority on the subject, but I think thats a fair rebuttal.
Honestly, you're armchair psychology-ing from your Cabal of Elite Designers, Lords of Silicon Valley, which is the WORST part of HN - apart from the subconscious need to upvote walls of text they haven't read, because well, whatever, it's long it must be smarter!) Your argument has absolutely no weight, and it offended me. "Yeah, the thing about designers is that they're failed artists and they're so neurotic. Always…
I was always under the impression that developers are also problem solvers, hence their ease of also coming up with an awesome enough idea to start a company. Designers are artists. Once a designer does more than drawing and photoshop, they become a front-end developer. Using their primary craft of drawing, where is there to really go after that? Developers have the advantage of being able to throw together a prototy…
In this regard a great designer is more qualified than a developer to create the vision for a startup. The developer's advantage is execution. Why programmers start companies is because they can create a product and launch it even if it looks like shit, and the problem it solves is pointless, and the marketing repels people, they can at least ship a product. A designer by contrast needs to have a technical co-founder or be well-funded.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, you're armchair psychology-ing from your Cabal of Elite Designers, Lords of Silicon Valley, which is the WORST part of HN - apart from the subconscious need to upvote walls of text they haven't read, because well, whatever, it's long it must be smarter!) Your argument has absolutely no weight, and it offended me. "Yeah, the thing about designers is that they're failed artists and they're so neurotic. Always…
Well at least it comes from a place of actual experience vs your pithy responses. Honestly, feel of a failure is a thing (to use language that won't trigger your elite-o-meter). I don't necessarily agree that this defines the designer "type" but I applaud the self-awareness to consider something like this.