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Things I, as a designer, wish more tech startups knew

212 points by charliepark 14y ago

nvk 14y ago
Some great points here. >> "29. Please, please, please spend time hanging out in the latest and greatest apps, regardless of their personal relevance or interest to you. If you do, your expectations of a “good experience” will be raised. Archaic team communication tools are often a good indication of what the decision makers believe qualifies as “good.” (Hint: it’s often a very low bar relative to what’s possible!)" I can't emphasize enough how important it is to use well designed tools, they will influence your product.
tylermauthe 14y ago
I'm no expert, but wouldn't a startup want a designer who wasn't so picky? Instead wanting a "full stack" designer; who could solve all their visual worries?
- rcgs 14y ago
  A good "full stack" designer is a very rare thing.
  - talmand 14y ago
    And there are way too many people who claim such a thing as well.
- nihonjon 14y ago
  Can you define full stack designer?
  - duiker101 14y ago
    I suppose it can be definite as "someone who does what is asked for with nice(maybe not spectacular but at least nice) results, whether it's his main field or not, as long as it's related to it."
  - tylermauthe 14y ago
    I just made it up, but I guess it would be a designer that can do the whole song and dance. In the article he specifically mentioned that UX and Visual Design is not the same thing; fair enough but startups want to do more with less... Again, I'm no expert and I'm just a technical nerd who "doesn't get" designers. Probably should keep my mouth shut, in retrospect ;)
    - adrianhoward 14y ago
      In the design world these are known as "unicorn designers" - since you're about as likely to find one :-) It's the design equivalent of asking for a developer who is an expert in front-end, back-end, databases, operations, scaling, etc. etc.
  - nihonjon 14y ago
    Nice! Knew what a fullstack programner was so I was thinking it might be along those lines. As was mentioned before, more often than not, startups have limited funding and can't afford both a UX guy and designer. Full stack for the budget! FTB?
  - mortenjorck 14y ago
    I'd prefer "relevant stack designer." Full stack implies backend and database, about which the designer really need only have a basic understanding of constraints. Relevant stack would mean a mastery of front-end technologies.
bluetidepro 14y ago
One of the best UX/UI designer articles I've seen! >> "15. Don’t over design. Less is better in the early stages. Launch with too much going on and you won’t know which pieces are broken and which are working." That's my favorite. I feel like I always see new products trying to hard on their first few product design rounds. In my experience, it's a great thing if you start small (with fast iterations) and fail X times rather than spending 5 years on a single attempt, that still fails miserable. Testing product design at a quantum level goes such a long way in the long haul. That goes with A/B testing as well.
TylerE 14y ago
While I think a lot of this is good, did anyone else get the feeling the _real_ gist of it was: "shower me with $$$"?
- nvk 14y ago
  Yes, it was 'definitely' a sell sheet, but most of the points were good and have merit.
  - bradddd 14y ago
    Agreed. A lot of the points seem to be stressed from the point of explaining how important what he does is. Bring in the UX designer before you’ve attempted any UI work. I can’t tell you how many times my clients have said “I wish I’d brought you in earlier!” The UI changes are often enough to necessitate technical re-architecture. Starting with a good designer from day one will save you a lot of headaches later on... If they nailed it on their own, they're not going to bring someone in, but still.
- RossM 14y ago
  I was quite surprised not to find a "I'm available, hire me!" tagline at the bottom, great points but I kept getting distracted from them.
- JonLim 14y ago
  To be fair, aren't most blog posts about that? ;) Anyway, to play the devil's advocate in this situation, I believe the gist was more along the lines of "please involve UX designers early on in the process, and know that we're not just your make-up appliers." If that involves showering him with money, then sure.
  - sigkill 14y ago
    I totally agree with your devils' advocacy. The problem occurs when the people making decisions are not able to differentiate the UI(can be changed anytime) from the UX.
- 14y ago
iridium 14y ago
Good points, but I dont agree with this: >> 14. Design for mobile first (even if a mobile app is not in your roadmap). The constraints of a mobile context will force you to focus on what’s essential, and help you cut what’s not needed. The question “How would I design this as a mobile app?” always clears my head and helps me find the simpler, elegant solution. Unless you are primarily designing a mobile app, this ends up shortchanging the web user. A full web interface can always do more and the challenge should be converting those features to mobile as opposed to dumbing down the design for the lowest denominator.
- ohashi 14y ago
  That one bothered me too. For someone so focused on the experience, it seems narrow to think of focusing on one platform that admittedly, might not even be used. Shouldn't you be focused on building the best experience on the intended platform?
- icefox 14y ago
  Around three years ago I postulated that websites will soon start to develop their mobile version first and not second. Little by little I keet seeing more examples and the last year it has really been accelerating. It is an interesting time and while many besides yourself will find offense with this "rule" I would expect more of it in the future.
- ashraful 14y ago
  Regardless of the amount of screen real estate available to you, there should always be one main purpose for your website/app - one action (usually the most common action) that the user should take. Designing with the mobile-first approach makes it easier to determine what that main purpose is and aligns the design of your site with that purpose. This does not mean that you don't include all the additional functionality, just that you prioritize the main objective of your site.
- JCB_K 14y ago
  It's not dumbing down, it's simplifying. By designing mobile first, you force yourself to think about the priorities in your UX. You can still add all kind of things on top in the full web interface, but that's on top of the core experience.
rnernento 14y ago
I guess effectively using contrast isn't one of them...
- notimetorelax 14y ago
  Yeah, he embraced the idea to never use black: http://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black/ http://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black/ EDIT It looks awful in Chrome(Windows) but in Explorer it's OK... http://imgur.com/a/CA7Ow http://imgur.com/a/CA7Ow
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    Looks like he embraced and extended it. Not using #000 is one thing, having almost no contrast is another.
    - alexduloz 14y ago
      Hello. Just to make things clear. I made the design. I run the Pastry Box Project. Stephen Anderson is a guest. :)
      - bryne 14y ago
        In the vein of constructive criticism: there is a set of W3C-suggested accessibility guidelines that include tests for things like the contrast between text and its background (http://www.w3.org/TR/AERT#color-contrast http://www.w3.org/TR/AERT#color-contrast). This page fails that contrast guideline algorithm (258 out of a minimum suggested 500) and is a little annoying to read even for someone without a sight/color deficit.
        alexduloz 14y ago
        Thanks a lot. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. A redesign is on its way. This issue will definitely be taken into account.
- 14y ago
alexro 14y ago
Minimal Viable Experience is what I took away. I think it serves better than MVP in the early days of the product.
nmcfarl 14y ago
The first bit seems very much "Hire a UX guy, not a graphic designer" but it does got better. Still, the "sell, sell, sell" feeling of the piece leaves me cold.
- mattmanser 14y ago
  Yes, and it's still fairly revolutionary for a designer to even think of UX or usability, contrary to what the article claims. This feels a bit like if a programmer went round and said 'everybody uses node.js these days, are you getting a programmer who uses PHP or Node.js' completely ignoring the fact that the proportion of php to node code written is like 99.999 : 0.001. Most of the designs I see still give little thought to the UX of the entire experience. He even mentions it himself without realising the irony: I spend a lot of my time just getting everyone on the team—designers included—to see the problem in a different way, not the way it has been implemented).
brendanobrien 14y ago
I really like the general theme of pointing the designer into the core of the startup, and think a lot of this is very good, accurate advice. As a long time designer turned developer, supported. I would have made the tone a little less preachy (and added a dash of "relatively speaking"), but hey, I didn't write it.
nihonjon 14y ago
I'm going to work on a post in response, "29 things I wish designers knew about fashion."
- msutherl 14y ago
  UX designers are web designers with no sense of style.
jeremiep 14y ago
The first thing I noticed is that you cant scroll horizontally or zoom from an iPhone. The text overflows on the right and theres no way to display it. oh the irony.
- bradddd 14y ago
  As others said. That's not from his own site.
shawndrost 14y ago
One thing I, as an entrepreneur, wish more designers knew: I can't do everything, and I have to make tradeoffs based on cost-benefit analyses, and you will influence me more if you speak in that language. All but one of these 29 things (in fact, there are 32) are additional things this guy thinks I should spend my limited resources on.
- posabsolute 14y ago
  Agreed, I think lot fo the stuff here, it's his job to educate others about it.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    Maybe he should write a blog post about it and put it on HN.
- ender7 14y ago
  All too often, UI people end up being marginalized because management doesn't support them. Unless you just want "a new coat of paint" a good UX design will require some hard changes and product realignments. If the CEO is not interested in taking part in that conversation then you'll never be able to build a good product.
  - true_religion 14y ago
    It depends.... in an early stage startup, you're still tossing around ideas and trying to find what fits with your target market. In that stage, you can't just contract out UX to a designer. You'll burn up all your runway doing so, as you iterate. In my opinion its better to do UX internally, and coordinate with your designer for stylistic changes.
  - timr 14y ago
    All too often, "UX Designers" end up marginalized because they're wankers - people who don't code and don't design, but want to get right in the middle of things and fling around opinions. Especially dangerous are the representatives of this breed who want to "manage process" as a way of "designing the product". Hiring that kind of person is a great way to get a useless bureaucrat on your team. There are good designers who specialize in user experience, but those people are also good at marketable skills like graphic design, coding or statistics. Everyone on the team is responsible for good user experience. The existence of a person who does nothing more than "UX" is a process smell.
armageddon 14y ago
The color scheme on that page is so washed out that my eyes did a double take. That's one thing I wish a designer knew about users - not everyone is using a crisp iMac to view a website. I'm on my already washed out PC and their color scheme makes it even worse.
- geoka9 14y ago
  Yeah, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that modern design == hard to read websites. Incidentally, they are also usually slow.
justjimmy 14y ago
Question for other designers: Do you feel that while UX is at one end of the spectrum, visual designers at the other - UI Designers sit squarely in between them? I ask cause I love visual design, making elements pleasant to look at, enticing user to push buttons or guide their eye to areas I want them to look at. But I also spend huge amounts of time time thinking about user flows, scenarios and tasks, how one page flows to another, how it all connects and constantly going around asking/testing with people if the flow is confusing or interfaces aren't clear on what they should do. I guess UI Designers are half UX and half Visual?
- stevenkovar 14y ago
  To me, the spectrum ranges from Functionality to Aesthetic; each type of design can be approached from a more functional or more aesthetic approach. There is UX that 'feels' amazing but is used in an insubstantial product (aesthetic UX) just as there is functional visual design—think of the IKEA catalog which emphasizes visual simplicity as a means to sell, in addition to the 3D rendered scenes used to save in production cost.
- malachismith 14y ago
  To paraphrase from Yves Behar, "there are two kinds of designers. Good ones and bad ones. Good ones can do all kinds of designs. Bad ones invent new subsets of design to excuse their failings."
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  Personally I don't like the "UX designer" job title, but would put UI Design and Visual Design under the umbrella of UX (ala JJG's classic "elements of UX" diagram http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf)
talmand 14y ago
3. So a designer who uses lorem ipsum is not a designer? What? So if he's hired to work on a project he sits around waiting for copy before comping design ideas? As someone who's been in this position it is quite wonderful to start with finished or semi-finished copy but that doesn't always happen. 4. A designer who sweats every detail is a designer that never finishes. Sometimes the designer just has to let loose those details that only that designer realizes are a potential issue in the design, not functionality. If during review enough comment on it then fix it, otherwise let it go. 10. I cannot agree with this more. Although I'm a front-end developer so I may be biased just a tad bit. 14. I don't necessarily agree with this. It depends on the project and established goals. As someone else pointed out, if you do this you may give the desktop user a less than ideal experience. If you're willing to put some of that cut stuff back in for the desktop people at some point then sure. But to give a mobile experience to desktop people cannot be a good thing. 15. Almost contradicts rule #4. Some people would say sweating the details is close to over design. 26. This is excellent advice. The hard part is knowing the difference between an app with a good design versus bad. This is a hugely subjective thing. Popular apps don't necessarily have good UI. Also, be careful, because in today's environment if you get an idea from an app you may get sued for it. 29. Not necessarily true. Depends on the people. Your best bud may refuse to document his code in a useful way (or he may just suck at it) and the best coder in your group may be a total jerk outside the professional environment. I'm a glass half empty kind of guy so that's the focus of my comments. The rest can be assumed I agree with or neutral on. Also, I kept getting confused over which designer he means as he explains his points. There are three examples in the article; Visual, UX, and UI. But then he just uses "designer" too often for all three.
- seltzered_ 14y ago
  totally annoyed with his #3 as well. Been working with a folks who want everything to be decided by the "designer" first and make copy-perfect photoshop templates first - even if they're not that happy with the design. This introduces an annoying 'waterfall' process where I can't test whether the designer's ideas actually work in-browser and practice until they're officially 'done'. CN to managers: don't make a designer your product todo list. use a system for that and accept some quirks and broken-ness at first. Read quora's photoshop-less design process for an alternative (and arguably better) approach: http://www.quora.com/Joel-Lewenstein/Joels-Posts/Life-Without-Photoshop http://www.quora.com/Joel-Lewenstein/Joels-Posts/Life-Withou...
drp4929 14y ago
"1. Learn the difference between a UX Designer and a Visual Designer. They are not the same. And while there is (and should be) a lot of overlap in skills—it’s good to know what the designer you’re hiring thinks is priority." This is very important. On the flip side, I have seen too many designer profiles online where they don't clearly identify whether they are UX designer or visual designer.
dreamdu5t 14y ago
I am so sick of job titles like "UX designer," "UI designer," and "visual designer." All visual design on the web is related to UI/UX. You can't do UI design without affecting UX and vice-versa. Let's just go back "web designer." Please.
- cheald 14y ago
  Jakob Nielsen would disagree with you.
- erikpukinskis 14y ago
  You can put Graphic, UI, and UX all under the umbrella of "Design" if you like. They are specialties in the way that front-end, back-end, or database engineering are all specialties. You can also have one person doing all of them, the same way you can have a single engineer at your company, but very very very few people can do all three well, and on many projects there is too much work for any one person to do. Also, much of UX design doesn't necessariy fall under the category of web design. A UX designer is looking at the entire product experience, which would potentially include things advertising, customer service, advertising, etc. You can use the shorthand "designer"... that's fine. But you can't just wish away entire professions. There are pairs of Graphic and Experience Designers who have almost nothing in common in terms of responsibilities and skills.
dmak 14y ago
Nevermind 20pxs, I think 1px makes a huge difference.
- jbee 14y ago
  But 1px is rarely the difference between confusion and delight for a user.
juddlyon 14y ago
Starting with the data is sage advice. Reminds me of a Robert Bringhurst quote that smacked me in the face when I read it: "Typography exists to honor content."
TeeWEE 14y ago
After this section below I stopped reading. He probably is a good UXer. But also an arrogant one. The best ones understand that they always need to learn. "You get what you pay for. I charge a lot. But, I guarantee you’ll save money in the long run. Most visual designers at 1/4 my rate will take much longer and still not get you where a seasoned veteran will. Note: veteran doesn’t necessarily mean years experience—2 years at a dot com startup taught me more than most people learn in 5–7 years at a big company."
TeeWEE 14y ago
I agree that UX design is important. But it is basically applying common sense. See common solutions to UI problems and apply them. Actually its the fun part of creating an application. Also i hate it when they say: Programmers cannot do UX. They are too technical. Well i do it all myself. I dont call myself an UXer. Because its just a small part of creating a product.
pixie_ 14y ago
This is some really great advice, 'The best UIs often start as written conversations between the user and the system.'
mcollinsblog 14y ago
This is absolutely ridiculous. What, there's a "UX designer" AND a "visual designer?" I do both. They're completely connected. How could you do "design" and not include the user experience? Sounds like another one of those things where people "specialize" in certain areas but really don't have a clue what they're doing, and charge a hefty price tag for a whole lot of nothin'. And it's worth nothing the design of that blog makes me sick to my stomach.
- jamesdelaneyie 14y ago
  Been lurking here for months but I made a profile just to say Thank God. Thank God someone else gets it.
- vlad 14y ago
  If the visual design is like Google or many other web apps, then it's possible that a UX designer can set you on the right path. If you want a very pretty, original look, that could require the services of a visual (graphic) designer.
evincarofautumn 14y ago
This really stood out to me: “good designers start with the data“ Only when you deeply understand the structure of information can you present that information in a meaningful way. In other words, a good designer turns data into knowledge. And to my mind, the key point of good software design is starting with good data structures. In general, the model shouldn’t need to change—a changing model is an ill-defined domain. Once you understand the domain well enough, features are just algorithms.
- Silhouette 14y ago
  In other words, a good designer turns data into knowledge. I think I agree with you, but I'd probably phrase it rather differently. To me, data is already knowledge, but often we are limited by having too much raw, low-level knowedge and not knowing what to do with it. A good UX can help us to understand the data and/or to make actionable decisions based on it, and so to me, a good designer (in the sense we're talking about) is someone who helps to build such a UX.
  - evincarofautumn 14y ago
    How about this: good design lets you see the forest in spite of the trees.
riffic 14y ago
Design isn't just "Front End" or "Interface"; Design is everything -- most importantly functionality, process, and model. "What works is better than what looks good. The looks good can change, but what works, works."
novaleaf 14y ago
the tl;dr; pay attention to ux!
loceng 14y ago
Very good writeup.
ted0 14y ago
30. pick a domain that people actually remember. 3 hyphens on a .net wtf, bro?

212 points by charliepark 14y ago

nvk 14y ago

Some great points here. >> "29. Please, please, please spend time hanging out in the latest and greatest apps, regardless of their personal relevance or interest to you. If you do, your expectations of a “good experience” will be raised. Archaic team communication tools are often a good indication of what the decision makers believe qualifies as “good.” (Hint: it’s often a very low bar relative to what’s possible!)" I can't emphasize enough how important it is to use well designed tools, they will influence your product.

tylermauthe 14y ago

I'm no expert, but wouldn't a startup want a designer who wasn't so picky? Instead wanting a "full stack" designer; who could solve all their visual worries?

rcgs 14y ago
A good "full stack" designer is a very rare thing.
- talmand 14y ago
  And there are way too many people who claim such a thing as well.
nihonjon 14y ago
Can you define full stack designer?
- duiker101 14y ago
  I suppose it can be definite as "someone who does what is asked for with nice(maybe not spectacular but at least nice) results, whether it's his main field or not, as long as it's related to it."
- tylermauthe 14y ago
  I just made it up, but I guess it would be a designer that can do the whole song and dance. In the article he specifically mentioned that UX and Visual Design is not the same thing; fair enough but startups want to do more with less... Again, I'm no expert and I'm just a technical nerd who "doesn't get" designers. Probably should keep my mouth shut, in retrospect ;)
  - adrianhoward 14y ago
    In the design world these are known as "unicorn designers" - since you're about as likely to find one :-) It's the design equivalent of asking for a developer who is an expert in front-end, back-end, databases, operations, scaling, etc. etc.
- nihonjon 14y ago
  Nice! Knew what a fullstack programner was so I was thinking it might be along those lines. As was mentioned before, more often than not, startups have limited funding and can't afford both a UX guy and designer. Full stack for the budget! FTB?
- mortenjorck 14y ago
  I'd prefer "relevant stack designer." Full stack implies backend and database, about which the designer really need only have a basic understanding of constraints. Relevant stack would mean a mastery of front-end technologies.

bluetidepro 14y ago

One of the best UX/UI designer articles I've seen! >> "15. Don’t over design. Less is better in the early stages. Launch with too much going on and you won’t know which pieces are broken and which are working." That's my favorite. I feel like I always see new products trying to hard on their first few product design rounds. In my experience, it's a great thing if you start small (with fast iterations) and fail X times rather than spending 5 years on a single attempt, that still fails miserable. Testing product design at a quantum level goes such a long way in the long haul. That goes with A/B testing as well.

TylerE 14y ago

While I think a lot of this is good, did anyone else get the feeling the _real_ gist of it was: "shower me with $$$"?

nvk 14y ago
Yes, it was 'definitely' a sell sheet, but most of the points were good and have merit.
- bradddd 14y ago
  Agreed. A lot of the points seem to be stressed from the point of explaining how important what he does is. Bring in the UX designer before you’ve attempted any UI work. I can’t tell you how many times my clients have said “I wish I’d brought you in earlier!” The UI changes are often enough to necessitate technical re-architecture. Starting with a good designer from day one will save you a lot of headaches later on... If they nailed it on their own, they're not going to bring someone in, but still.
RossM 14y ago
I was quite surprised not to find a "I'm available, hire me!" tagline at the bottom, great points but I kept getting distracted from them.
JonLim 14y ago
To be fair, aren't most blog posts about that? ;) Anyway, to play the devil's advocate in this situation, I believe the gist was more along the lines of "please involve UX designers early on in the process, and know that we're not just your make-up appliers." If that involves showering him with money, then sure.
- sigkill 14y ago
  I totally agree with your devils' advocacy. The problem occurs when the people making decisions are not able to differentiate the UI(can be changed anytime) from the UX.
14y ago

iridium 14y ago

Good points, but I dont agree with this: >> 14. Design for mobile first (even if a mobile app is not in your roadmap). The constraints of a mobile context will force you to focus on what’s essential, and help you cut what’s not needed. The question “How would I design this as a mobile app?” always clears my head and helps me find the simpler, elegant solution. Unless you are primarily designing a mobile app, this ends up shortchanging the web user. A full web interface can always do more and the challenge should be converting those features to mobile as opposed to dumbing down the design for the lowest denominator.

ohashi 14y ago
That one bothered me too. For someone so focused on the experience, it seems narrow to think of focusing on one platform that admittedly, might not even be used. Shouldn't you be focused on building the best experience on the intended platform?
icefox 14y ago
Around three years ago I postulated that websites will soon start to develop their mobile version first and not second. Little by little I keet seeing more examples and the last year it has really been accelerating. It is an interesting time and while many besides yourself will find offense with this "rule" I would expect more of it in the future.
ashraful 14y ago
Regardless of the amount of screen real estate available to you, there should always be one main purpose for your website/app - one action (usually the most common action) that the user should take. Designing with the mobile-first approach makes it easier to determine what that main purpose is and aligns the design of your site with that purpose. This does not mean that you don't include all the additional functionality, just that you prioritize the main objective of your site.
JCB_K 14y ago
It's not dumbing down, it's simplifying. By designing mobile first, you force yourself to think about the priorities in your UX. You can still add all kind of things on top in the full web interface, but that's on top of the core experience.

rnernento 14y ago

I guess effectively using contrast isn't one of them...

notimetorelax 14y ago
Yeah, he embraced the idea to never use black: http://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black/ http://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black/ EDIT It looks awful in Chrome(Windows) but in Explorer it's OK... http://imgur.com/a/CA7Ow http://imgur.com/a/CA7Ow
- StavrosK 14y ago
  Looks like he embraced and extended it. Not using #000 is one thing, having almost no contrast is another.
  - alexduloz 14y ago
    Hello. Just to make things clear. I made the design. I run the Pastry Box Project. Stephen Anderson is a guest. :)
    - bryne 14y ago
      In the vein of constructive criticism: there is a set of W3C-suggested accessibility guidelines that include tests for things like the contrast between text and its background (http://www.w3.org/TR/AERT#color-contrast http://www.w3.org/TR/AERT#color-contrast). This page fails that contrast guideline algorithm (258 out of a minimum suggested 500) and is a little annoying to read even for someone without a sight/color deficit.
      - alexduloz 14y ago
        Thanks a lot. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. A redesign is on its way. This issue will definitely be taken into account.
14y ago

alexro 14y ago

Minimal Viable Experience is what I took away. I think it serves better than MVP in the early days of the product.

nmcfarl 14y ago

The first bit seems very much "Hire a UX guy, not a graphic designer" but it does got better. Still, the "sell, sell, sell" feeling of the piece leaves me cold.

mattmanser 14y ago
Yes, and it's still fairly revolutionary for a designer to even think of UX or usability, contrary to what the article claims. This feels a bit like if a programmer went round and said 'everybody uses node.js these days, are you getting a programmer who uses PHP or Node.js' completely ignoring the fact that the proportion of php to node code written is like 99.999 : 0.001. Most of the designs I see still give little thought to the UX of the entire experience. He even mentions it himself without realising the irony: I spend a lot of my time just getting everyone on the team—designers included—to see the problem in a different way, not the way it has been implemented).

brendanobrien 14y ago

I really like the general theme of pointing the designer into the core of the startup, and think a lot of this is very good, accurate advice. As a long time designer turned developer, supported. I would have made the tone a little less preachy (and added a dash of "relatively speaking"), but hey, I didn't write it.

nihonjon 14y ago

I'm going to work on a post in response, "29 things I wish designers knew about fashion."

msutherl 14y ago
UX designers are web designers with no sense of style.

jeremiep 14y ago

The first thing I noticed is that you cant scroll horizontally or zoom from an iPhone. The text overflows on the right and theres no way to display it. oh the irony.

bradddd 14y ago
As others said. That's not from his own site.

shawndrost 14y ago

One thing I, as an entrepreneur, wish more designers knew: I can't do everything, and I have to make tradeoffs based on cost-benefit analyses, and you will influence me more if you speak in that language. All but one of these 29 things (in fact, there are 32) are additional things this guy thinks I should spend my limited resources on.

posabsolute 14y ago
Agreed, I think lot fo the stuff here, it's his job to educate others about it.
- saraid216 14y ago
  Maybe he should write a blog post about it and put it on HN.
ender7 14y ago
All too often, UI people end up being marginalized because management doesn't support them. Unless you just want "a new coat of paint" a good UX design will require some hard changes and product realignments. If the CEO is not interested in taking part in that conversation then you'll never be able to build a good product.
- true_religion 14y ago
  It depends.... in an early stage startup, you're still tossing around ideas and trying to find what fits with your target market. In that stage, you can't just contract out UX to a designer. You'll burn up all your runway doing so, as you iterate. In my opinion its better to do UX internally, and coordinate with your designer for stylistic changes.
- timr 14y ago
  All too often, "UX Designers" end up marginalized because they're wankers - people who don't code and don't design, but want to get right in the middle of things and fling around opinions. Especially dangerous are the representatives of this breed who want to "manage process" as a way of "designing the product". Hiring that kind of person is a great way to get a useless bureaucrat on your team. There are good designers who specialize in user experience, but those people are also good at marketable skills like graphic design, coding or statistics. Everyone on the team is responsible for good user experience. The existence of a person who does nothing more than "UX" is a process smell.

armageddon 14y ago

The color scheme on that page is so washed out that my eyes did a double take. That's one thing I wish a designer knew about users - not everyone is using a crisp iMac to view a website. I'm on my already washed out PC and their color scheme makes it even worse.

geoka9 14y ago
Yeah, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that modern design == hard to read websites. Incidentally, they are also usually slow.

justjimmy 14y ago

Question for other designers: Do you feel that while UX is at one end of the spectrum, visual designers at the other - UI Designers sit squarely in between them? I ask cause I love visual design, making elements pleasant to look at, enticing user to push buttons or guide their eye to areas I want them to look at. But I also spend huge amounts of time time thinking about user flows, scenarios and tasks, how one page flows to another, how it all connects and constantly going around asking/testing with people if the flow is confusing or interfaces aren't clear on what they should do. I guess UI Designers are half UX and half Visual?

stevenkovar 14y ago
To me, the spectrum ranges from Functionality to Aesthetic; each type of design can be approached from a more functional or more aesthetic approach. There is UX that 'feels' amazing but is used in an insubstantial product (aesthetic UX) just as there is functional visual design—think of the IKEA catalog which emphasizes visual simplicity as a means to sell, in addition to the 3D rendered scenes used to save in production cost.
malachismith 14y ago
To paraphrase from Yves Behar, "there are two kinds of designers. Good ones and bad ones. Good ones can do all kinds of designs. Bad ones invent new subsets of design to excuse their failings."
adrianhoward 14y ago
Personally I don't like the "UX designer" job title, but would put UI Design and Visual Design under the umbrella of UX (ala JJG's classic "elements of UX" diagram http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf)

talmand 14y ago

3. So a designer who uses lorem ipsum is not a designer? What? So if he's hired to work on a project he sits around waiting for copy before comping design ideas? As someone who's been in this position it is quite wonderful to start with finished or semi-finished copy but that doesn't always happen. 4. A designer who sweats every detail is a designer that never finishes. Sometimes the designer just has to let loose those details that only that designer realizes are a potential issue in the design, not functionality. If during review enough comment on it then fix it, otherwise let it go. 10. I cannot agree with this more. Although I'm a front-end developer so I may be biased just a tad bit. 14. I don't necessarily agree with this. It depends on the project and established goals. As someone else pointed out, if you do this you may give the desktop user a less than ideal experience. If you're willing to put some of that cut stuff back in for the desktop people at some point then sure. But to give a mobile experience to desktop people cannot be a good thing. 15. Almost contradicts rule #4. Some people would say sweating the details is close to over design. 26. This is excellent advice. The hard part is knowing the difference between an app with a good design versus bad. This is a hugely subjective thing. Popular apps don't necessarily have good UI. Also, be careful, because in today's environment if you get an idea from an app you may get sued for it. 29. Not necessarily true. Depends on the people. Your best bud may refuse to document his code in a useful way (or he may just suck at it) and the best coder in your group may be a total jerk outside the professional environment. I'm a glass half empty kind of guy so that's the focus of my comments. The rest can be assumed I agree with or neutral on. Also, I kept getting confused over which designer he means as he explains his points. There are three examples in the article; Visual, UX, and UI. But then he just uses "designer" too often for all three.

seltzered_ 14y ago
totally annoyed with his #3 as well. Been working with a folks who want everything to be decided by the "designer" first and make copy-perfect photoshop templates first - even if they're not that happy with the design. This introduces an annoying 'waterfall' process where I can't test whether the designer's ideas actually work in-browser and practice until they're officially 'done'. CN to managers: don't make a designer your product todo list. use a system for that and accept some quirks and broken-ness at first. Read quora's photoshop-less design process for an alternative (and arguably better) approach: http://www.quora.com/Joel-Lewenstein/Joels-Posts/Life-Without-Photoshop http://www.quora.com/Joel-Lewenstein/Joels-Posts/Life-Withou...

drp4929 14y ago

"1. Learn the difference between a UX Designer and a Visual Designer. They are not the same. And while there is (and should be) a lot of overlap in skills—it’s good to know what the designer you’re hiring thinks is priority." This is very important. On the flip side, I have seen too many designer profiles online where they don't clearly identify whether they are UX designer or visual designer.

dreamdu5t 14y ago

I am so sick of job titles like "UX designer," "UI designer," and "visual designer." All visual design on the web is related to UI/UX. You can't do UI design without affecting UX and vice-versa. Let's just go back "web designer." Please.

cheald 14y ago
Jakob Nielsen would disagree with you.
erikpukinskis 14y ago
You can put Graphic, UI, and UX all under the umbrella of "Design" if you like. They are specialties in the way that front-end, back-end, or database engineering are all specialties. You can also have one person doing all of them, the same way you can have a single engineer at your company, but very very very few people can do all three well, and on many projects there is too much work for any one person to do. Also, much of UX design doesn't necessariy fall under the category of web design. A UX designer is looking at the entire product experience, which would potentially include things advertising, customer service, advertising, etc. You can use the shorthand "designer"... that's fine. But you can't just wish away entire professions. There are pairs of Graphic and Experience Designers who have almost nothing in common in terms of responsibilities and skills.

dmak 14y ago

Nevermind 20pxs, I think 1px makes a huge difference.

jbee 14y ago
But 1px is rarely the difference between confusion and delight for a user.

juddlyon 14y ago

Starting with the data is sage advice. Reminds me of a Robert Bringhurst quote that smacked me in the face when I read it: "Typography exists to honor content."

TeeWEE 14y ago

After this section below I stopped reading. He probably is a good UXer. But also an arrogant one. The best ones understand that they always need to learn. "You get what you pay for. I charge a lot. But, I guarantee you’ll save money in the long run. Most visual designers at 1/4 my rate will take much longer and still not get you where a seasoned veteran will. Note: veteran doesn’t necessarily mean years experience—2 years at a dot com startup taught me more than most people learn in 5–7 years at a big company."

TeeWEE 14y ago

I agree that UX design is important. But it is basically applying common sense. See common solutions to UI problems and apply them. Actually its the fun part of creating an application. Also i hate it when they say: Programmers cannot do UX. They are too technical. Well i do it all myself. I dont call myself an UXer. Because its just a small part of creating a product.

pixie_ 14y ago

This is some really great advice, 'The best UIs often start as written conversations between the user and the system.'

mcollinsblog 14y ago

This is absolutely ridiculous. What, there's a "UX designer" AND a "visual designer?" I do both. They're completely connected. How could you do "design" and not include the user experience? Sounds like another one of those things where people "specialize" in certain areas but really don't have a clue what they're doing, and charge a hefty price tag for a whole lot of nothin'. And it's worth nothing the design of that blog makes me sick to my stomach.

jamesdelaneyie 14y ago
Been lurking here for months but I made a profile just to say Thank God. Thank God someone else gets it.
vlad 14y ago
If the visual design is like Google or many other web apps, then it's possible that a UX designer can set you on the right path. If you want a very pretty, original look, that could require the services of a visual (graphic) designer.

evincarofautumn 14y ago

This really stood out to me: “good designers start with the data“ Only when you deeply understand the structure of information can you present that information in a meaningful way. In other words, a good designer turns data into knowledge. And to my mind, the key point of good software design is starting with good data structures. In general, the model shouldn’t need to change—a changing model is an ill-defined domain. Once you understand the domain well enough, features are just algorithms.

Silhouette 14y ago
In other words, a good designer turns data into knowledge. I think I agree with you, but I'd probably phrase it rather differently. To me, data is already knowledge, but often we are limited by having too much raw, low-level knowedge and not knowing what to do with it. A good UX can help us to understand the data and/or to make actionable decisions based on it, and so to me, a good designer (in the sense we're talking about) is someone who helps to build such a UX.
- evincarofautumn 14y ago
  How about this: good design lets you see the forest in spite of the trees.

riffic 14y ago

Design isn't just "Front End" or "Interface"; Design is everything -- most importantly functionality, process, and model. "What works is better than what looks good. The looks good can change, but what works, works."

novaleaf 14y ago

the tl;dr; pay attention to ux!

loceng 14y ago

Very good writeup.

ted0 14y ago

30. pick a domain that people actually remember. 3 hyphens on a .net wtf, bro?