Discuss: An Important Time for Design

1

Good article. Inspiring.
To add to your list of organization/incubators to out there is the recent Designer’s Fund (http://designerfund.com/). I am not affiliated with it but have been fascinated with its genesis, since a couple of years ago I was noticing the “designer-based startup” here in San Francisco. Joe Gebbia of Airbnb, being a shining example and a few friends of mine as well.

posted at 02:29 am on January 18, 2012 by jtag

3 Web design - quality, responsibility

Web designer must take responsibility for the result.
But he must also have the opportunity to work in a team of professionals, creative freedom and opportunity for growth.

posted at 07:54 am on January 18, 2012 by CheapWebDesignSEO

4 Designer Rise Up

For a Startup to Succeed, you need:

1. to be solving something worth solving
2. a sustainable business model
3. a great product that’s easy to understand and delightful to use

1. to excite the right audience with the right message

Disciplines and skills needed are:

• Business
• Engineering
• Marketing

• Design

posted at 10:46 am on January 18, 2012 by GilesFarrow

5 We must embrace the new world of good design

In the link to the “misguided ideas about what design is” the author seems very proud of himself for saying that Apple didn’t start out with great design and began by building products out of wood in their garage. While this is completely true, he is missing a key point that many people forget. Apple started building products in their garage when the bar was set very low for design. People point at Apple now as the bar to hit because that is what is expected by consumers. When apple started the bar was in the basement so there was no need to invest in great design at the time. Fast forward to now and it is a totally different world. Consumers are not as wowed by solid features in the back end as much as they are by the experience of using the product on the front end.

Non-designers can argue all they want about whether there is more value in a new feature than in a slick UI, but I have seen too many developers just ignore the fact that what users want is something that is easy and pleasurable to use.

If I was a startup building PCs I just couldn’t build a machine that is amazing under the covers and nail together a wooden box in my garage to hold it. So the argument that startups should compare them selves to Apple as a startup is just plain silly in 2012.

posted at 10:58 am on January 19, 2012 by agileui

6 I agree re the designer/developer issue

I must add that, one of the happiest experiences I’ve had was working with a great developer; he’d be coding and I’d be writing the CSS for display — live, while on the phone. Excellent time, and great result.

posted at 05:00 am on January 20, 2012 by Diane Vigil

7

Diane, I regularly do skype/remote desktop sessions with clients, but while it’s certainly better than nothing I feel it can’t beat, pardon the expression, real face time.

posted at 07:04 am on January 20, 2012 by Mykola

8

I agree that capital is a big issue for the design community – we do not have the culture of re-investing, like Silicon Valley does. We are also not focused on raising (often) ridiculous sums of money with the goal of a quick, lucrative exit. Designers care more about the craft than the money, and this is a good thing, because I don’t think you need much money to get an idea off the ground these days.

The bar to getting started is so low, you only need to pair up with a good developer to get a minimum viable product going. Any team of two can bootstrap a product while continuing to do client or full-time work. But having access to small amounts of seed money would certainly accelerate the process for many of us.

More Y-Combinator-ish incubators and educational spaces like General Assembly will help designers get their ideas off the ground. And there is definitely an opportunity for more funds like The Designer Fund.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Cameron!

posted at 01:34 am on January 21, 2012 by keith_harper

9 Exiting business can grow without capitals

I completely second keith. As a designer, I find that crafting good designs is always the most important thing. Money will come by it’s own. I joined a good ios developer and a great copywriter, while I take care of design and html. What else would we need?
We already made a couple of products that made us pretty popular, and are now so buried in jobs that we can’t even find the time to promote us. Why should we need money to grow? We don’t. We just need to continue improving.

posted at 08:26 am on January 21, 2012 by fornace

10 Amen

Thanks for the inspiring article. I’ve started my professional life as a product designer moving into UX and I see how your point fits perfectly to these two domains. Two designers as start-up founders? I say amen to that.

posted at 04:00 pm on January 21, 2012 by yaniv