What does it mean to be a designer in a technology (?) startup
The history of the relationship
Historically, startups (companies that grow at exponential scales) have been created by engineers be it Hewlett and Packard and Gordon Moore of Intel to the more recent Bill Gates of Microsoft, Larry and Sergey of Google and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. The major reason has been the role of technology in powering exponential growth, which you can read more about here. The conspicuous absentee from the list is Apple, the company that truly redefined the relationship between engineering design and startups.
The other Steve, Mr. Wozniack was a true engineering man, who lived and breathed electronics. However, the most iconic technology man of our generation has been Steve Jobs. Engineers will argue that he had very little to do with Apple’s initial growth, their days of being called a startup, he was just a salesman, a damn good one. However he was a lot more than that. He was the engineer who never fit the engineers’ mould. He was a designer, a perfectionist, an anomaly if you will.
The Modern Design Founder
A startup co-founder is now required to write code and partake in engineering when there are limited resources (which Jobs did at Atari and later at Apple). She is now required to be an exemplary sales and marketing guru. She also needs to be an expert product manager who can prophecies features before users need them. She also needs to be a colossal design force in building a meticulously crafted product that users know how to use without the manual. A perfectionist, if you will.
The likes of Brian Chesky of Airbnb, Gentry Underwood of Mailbox, Ben Silberman of Pinterest, Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square and Kevin Systrom of Instagram are entrepreneurs who fit this new mould. They are multi talented people who are designers at heart. They have designed products that have truly shaped a decade of technology and startups. Products we use today have to be usable, functional and beautiful.
Startup Designers (Unicorns)
This is also the mould that has been created for the modern designer in a startup. A product guy, who can dabble in technology, who understands business, sales and marketing. She understands the needs of every user and is perfection exemplified. Aesthetics, typography, color, style, usability, interaction design, information architecture and user research are all just implements that he would use to bring his vision to life. Most of these are words dreamed up to explain what a visionary driven by an idea would take for granted as natural instincts.
Startups are always on the lookout for the “unicorn”. Somebody obsessed enough to bring amazement on the faces of users. Somebody who can champion features, give specifications that engineering understands, build experiences that are as simple as pizza and as beautiful as art.
Design Thinking
The relationship between technology and design has always been complex. Engineers want to build the most innovative, the most technologically superior solution. Designers want to build things that make users happy. In a world where patents are king, engineers win. When the end customer is a large organisation, when products need to clear check-marks not user studies, engineers outperform. However, in the democratic world of the app store where the best experience wins, well designed products eat the products with the most features for breakfast. Google historically has been an engineering led company, which is why Google was never able to compete on mobile apps, however it dominated the mobile operating system because it could sell directly to manufacturers.
The flip side is that today, engineers at startups need to mould themselves to something different. They need to engineer great experiences. They are now as much designer as they are engineer. They come with a mathematical approach to solving problems but, at each step, empathize with users.
Good Design?
The caveat to most of this is that well designed products that have the best usability, but don’t let the user do very much (examples that come to mind are Facebook’s Paper, the social network Path or Carousel by Dropbox), don’t do well either.
What works?
The great designers separate themselves from the ordinary ones in 3 aspects:
1) Great designers understand the 10x rule, they know that incremental changes in products don’t win. Users want significant improvements to be able to make a switch.
2) Great designers know how to use technology, the iPhone or the Nest are great examples of a designer understanding what is the state of the art in technology and how it can drive value to users. The best designers spend a great deal of time understanding how technology can elicit the wow.
3) Great designers know how to prioritise features and ship on time. Great designers obsess about design but not on the first iteration. The first version of Airbnb looks abysmal, which today is a beautiful website. If Brian Chesky did not ship his product on time, there would never have been an Airbnb.
Today, designers can be great assets because they are uniquely suited to solve problems at different dimensions without losing sight of the big opportunity to deliver a feeling of wow to the user. Never in history have we been at cross roads, when it was possible to compete on experience and not just features.
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I am co founder and CEO of Cubeit, where we are building a mobile app that will change the way you interact with your content. Now looking for beta testers. Get early access here.
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