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Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup
- mikx 15y agoThe skills are critical for any front-end designer, not just the ones in startups. Companies that embrace skilled designers as their culture compete much better than others.
- niekmaas 15y agoThe word "startup" has almost reached the status of buzzword. "Cloud based startup" would have been even better..
- ssharp 15y agoThe use of "startup" along Amazon Associate links with very little value-add makes this page seem spammy.
- stylejam 15y agoHi, there are no Amazon Associate links: the only one Amazon Associate link I can think about is with Flanagan's book, and Mr. Flanagan is the associate, not me. I just thought removing it wouldn't have been polite. When I could link the book's website, I did it.
- stylejam 15y agoOne of the topics I cover the most there is the difference between startups and agencies/freelancing. While startups tend to look at results (the ones that survive), agencies tend to look at the customer, at least most of them. I actually believe that most designers coming from an agency would be eaten alive in a startup, along with their "photoshop skills". This people don't even know what UX means, never conducted a usability test (usability = I look at the website and say what I think), and definitely don't read HN.
- stylejam 15y agoShould be critical, yes. But if you know the market, you know that things like usability or ux are used 90% of times as buzzwords from sellers. I'm afraid I can't disclose some of my experiences with top design agencies in both the US and Italy, but trust me, I've got a truckload of horror stories :)
- rvavruch 15y agoI found "Designing Interfaces" disappointing. It is a list of interface widgets - for example an accordion menu - and some information about how to use it. A far better book on usability is "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug.
- DavidChouinard 15y ago+1 for Don't Make Me Think. Old, but highly recommended.
- alabut 15y agoCompletely leaves out visual design. Maybe because polish is harder to encapsulate with a single book or because it's so easy to pick up by cruising Dribbble for inspiration, but it's still worth mentioning. Otherwise you get the average startup designer that's more of a developer in disguise.
- blankenship 15y ago"because [visual design is] so easy to pick up by cruising Dribbble for inspiration" It is?
- rglover 15y agoI think what's being said here is that it's easy to pick up the ideas of visual design, not the actual skill (I hope). As a budding designer, Dribbble is definitely helpful in allowing you to see "the bar" and improve how you approach certain projects. However, it is most definitely NOT easy to "pick up [visual design] by cruising Dribbble."
- dylanrw 15y agoYou are both referring to style.
- antidaily 15y agoI hate this list. Want to be good? Look at sites/apps you admire and learn to emulate them. Don't read a 300 page book on User Experience or ugh, UX... unless you're doing for enjoyment.
- rimantas 15y agoSounds like a good plan for cargo-cult web design. A good book on UX (which stands for the same User Experience, btw) will teach you why you admire particular web sites.
- antidaily 15y agoThat has nothing to do with producing a good design, fast - which is the #1 qualification I'm looking for in a designer at a startup.
- nonrecursive 15y agoYou really don't care if someone has a conceptual understanding of UI/UX? I guess that's fine if you're not doing anything unique. But if you are, how is your designer going to be able to think through the unique design problems posed by your product? I mean - take Mint, which has been widely praised for its design. Would a designer have been able to produce it by cobbling together half-understood components from other sites? I'd really like to hear more about why you don't think a designer needs to be able to understand what design is. I'm curious about how you think he'd even be able to successfully emulate other sites if he doesn't understand what to emulate and why.
- antidaily 15y agoFair points. I just don't think studying these concepts makes you better. Designing makes you better. Practice and good feedback. To me, UI and UX can read like buzzwords on a resume. I'm not saying they're not important components. I'm just disagreeing with how one should learn them. Perhaps I could have been more clear in my original comment.
- BradGutting 15y agoEver notice how a lot of start-up websites look pretty similar? Lots of the same typefaces, same visual approach, same graphic techniques and colors--you see Helvetica/Arial, the same set of textures, quasi-3D effects, and so on. The cumulative effect is generic. It says, "we're roughly imitating what everyone else is doing because everyone else is doing it." Bad message. Good design won't compensate for flawed business models, but it will maximize the potential of a strong one. Independent thought and ingenuity trumps everything on this list, I'm afraid. The stuff there is price of admission; you're not even a designer without it in your toolbox.
- dylanrw 15y agoI bet if I made a list like this highlighting what a programmer must have when working for a startup there'd be some serious hating going on. While this may be a good list if you want to read up for a month, this does not cover years of art theory, learning how to choose your battles, developing a refined sense of taste, pure objectivity, and a myriad of other skills that are subtly nuanced into almost every project. I'm sorry, a good designer's "Must Haves" cannot be encapsulated in a list.
- alabut 15y agoEveryone has to start somewhere. And unfortunately a lot of design lists end up making the topic more unapproachable than it has to be, considering there are some fundamental skills that everyone can build on.