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I'm not at all talking about minor A/B experiments after the design is built. I'm not talking about a process at all. Instead I'm talking about a goal. I'm tal

by solve 12y ago

I'm not at all talking about minor A/B experiments after the design is built. I'm not talking about a process at all. Instead I'm talking about a goal. I'm talking about, from the start, building with the goal of maximum conversions (or whatever primary end-metric the business uses) versus building with the goal of maximum portfolio beauty. Design often massively affects conversion rates, as I'm sure you know. Saying that one's job isn't to do what's best for the company, and you can totally disregard what the company's overall goal is? I'm sure whoever's running the business will find that perspective interesting, no matter what industry you're working in. I've never worked as a designer though, so I'm interested to learn more about this.

ThomPete 12y ago
Design affects conversion rate but the thing to understand is that you rarely know what it is that affect it before you actually test it. There is an almost infinite amount of space between something completely useless and something purely functional and there is an almost as big amount of factors that affect how it converts many of them outside the scope of the design. The exact same basic bootstrap theme will convert really well for some and horribly for others and have nothing different between them than the product and the images. And so to repeat (sorry) you need to understand how to use the designer for the right things. It's not their job nor should it be to create the optimal design up front. It's their job to give you a good starting point and to achieve that is fairly simple as long as you set some limitations up for them. You could might as well require of the developer to have great aesthetic sense or the marketing guys to understand why a call to action on a page require a certain amount of "white space" to make it stand out. If they do it's great but there are just far between them. Otherwise there are already a bunch of tried and true templates out there you can just buy and that is what many do. I agree that there are some designers who are purely aesthetic but sometimes that actually is a force that if you understand how to use that skill you can create something truly amazing. Of course good designers have some sense of what is a good basic structur, but just expecting a designer to somehow both be a marketing expert, seo expert, analytics guy etc up front is a tad too demanding IMO.
- solve 12y ago
  Interesting. Thank you for sharing. "You could might as well require of the developer to have great aesthetic sense" - Yes, the full-stack-developer trend is exactly that. I do think that is a great idea in general. Just a side note: In all my years of startups and day jobs, I've always found that if someone ever says "not my job" = it's an extremely bad sign for the business. Perhaps someone might say, "doing X instead is better for the company." But simply framing it as "not my job" - shows a lot about the deeper thinking that the person is having.
  - ThomPete 12y ago
    I agree. And about the "not my job" part. This is definitely a problem, especially in a startup where everyone basically have to be jack of all trades. But as a company grow it's important to find a way to utilize each others skills in such a manner that things actually get build and the responsibilities are clear. Often you end up realizing that what one person did half-hearted because they also have other obligations, could actually benefit from having someone only doing that also financially.

by solve 12y ago

ThomPete 12y ago

Design affects conversion rate but the thing to understand is that you rarely know what it is that affect it before you actually test it. There is an almost infinite amount of space between something completely useless and something purely functional and there is an almost as big amount of factors that affect how it converts many of them outside the scope of the design. The exact same basic bootstrap theme will convert really well for some and horribly for others and have nothing different between them than the product and the images. And so to repeat (sorry) you need to understand how to use the designer for the right things. It's not their job nor should it be to create the optimal design up front. It's their job to give you a good starting point and to achieve that is fairly simple as long as you set some limitations up for them. You could might as well require of the developer to have great aesthetic sense or the marketing guys to understand why a call to action on a page require a certain amount of "white space" to make it stand out. If they do it's great but there are just far between them. Otherwise there are already a bunch of tried and true templates out there you can just buy and that is what many do. I agree that there are some designers who are purely aesthetic but sometimes that actually is a force that if you understand how to use that skill you can create something truly amazing. Of course good designers have some sense of what is a good basic structur, but just expecting a designer to somehow both be a marketing expert, seo expert, analytics guy etc up front is a tad too demanding IMO.

solve 12y ago
Interesting. Thank you for sharing. "You could might as well require of the developer to have great aesthetic sense" - Yes, the full-stack-developer trend is exactly that. I do think that is a great idea in general. Just a side note: In all my years of startups and day jobs, I've always found that if someone ever says "not my job" = it's an extremely bad sign for the business. Perhaps someone might say, "doing X instead is better for the company." But simply framing it as "not my job" - shows a lot about the deeper thinking that the person is having.
- ThomPete 12y ago
  I agree. And about the "not my job" part. This is definitely a problem, especially in a startup where everyone basically have to be jack of all trades. But as a company grow it's important to find a way to utilize each others skills in such a manner that things actually get build and the responsibilities are clear. Often you end up realizing that what one person did half-hearted because they also have other obligations, could actually benefit from having someone only doing that also financially.