1) A lot of designers work at an agency at one point or another. The environment there encourages behavior very different than what startups need. E.g., long cycles vs rapid iteration, "final" deliverables vs incremental release, an emphasis on what clients want vs what users need, hopping from project to project vs really digging in on one thing, ability to specialize vs necessity of being an adequate generalist, high-church design vs getting one's hands dirty, and being hip vs being passionate.
2) One gets to be a really good designer by designing a lot of different things and keeping very current on trends. But startups require a long-term focus on a single product, which takes people out of the design game. That's a very hard sell.
At our startup we outsource individual pieces of design (e.g., logo creation, color and layout selection, coming up with a new look for something). But that ends up serving as raw material for the in-house activities. Most of the design ends up being done by the product manager, the engineers, or both collaboratively. That works for us because we do a lot of user testing and iterate frequently, and also because we know when to hand some piece of visual creation off to an expert.
Agree completely with the agency problem. There are far too many folk who confuse the agency model of doing design with the way design is done. It's one of the reasons that the Lean UX community of practice get some bad press in parts of the design community.
(Although the agency problem isn't really lack of iteration. Pretty much every design process is highly iterative. It's just that the agency folk do it by themselves and, usually, up front.)
I find the second point much less convincing. I know lots of folk who love doing long-term product work. I guess I see about the same short/long term work preferences as I do in the development community. You get to be a good designer by doing lots of design. As long as the in-house opportunity has that, you can attract designers if you're recruiting the right way.
From your last paragraph it sounds like you outsource most of the visual design work, and in-house things like interaction design, generative user research, user testing, etc.
That works well for some products (I'm guessing that what you're building is a B2B or B2C web or desktop app that uses a "normal" UI without unique interaction models, and with a market that isn't design focussed - but I could, of course, be way wrong there).
Other kinds of products really need in-house visual design skills - because not having them gets in the way of that rapid iteration that you so correctly identify as being essential (games, some kinds of mobile apps, products with custom interaction models, markets that are design focussed, etc.)
I agree that the agency design process is internally iterative. But they don't ship or observe actual usage, so I can't call it real iteration, which I think requires a closed feedback loop.
I agree that there are a lot of people who love doing long-term product work. But I think to be amazing at a particular sort of design, you have to do a substantial variety of it. I don't think most startups offer anything close to the variety that an agency or a freelance career can provide. Which is why we turned to external specialists for things like our logo.
I agree entirely that about different contexts needing different skills in house.
Hi William! (guess who didn't look too closely at your username before :-)
Well, depending on the agency, there is a closed loop with the user - it's just a pre-product closed loop built around interviews and prototypes. But I generally agree that the agency model sucks quite badly for product development in startups (and a whole bunch of other things too come to that.)
I don't believe that's a closed loop. The purpose of commercial products is to sustainably deliver value to purchasers. Until that is achieved, the feedback loop is open.
There could be some design firms that actually go that far, but I've never heard of a project like that. I do agree it's better when design shops attempt to test their design hypotheses through prototypes and user testing, as that does leaven the dreams with a dose of reality. We do a bunch of that for exactly that reason. But we never mistake a successful user test for actual success.
Obviously product based feedback is "better" on some levels, but it can get in the way of learning the answer to some questions quickly I'd much rather just get the answer quickly ;-)
As I play with experiment/hypothesis model I'm more convinced that increments-of-learning rather than increments-of-product help me more - at the early stages anyway. Since many of the folk I talk to seem to be really bad at validating business questions via early customer contact I think there's an opportunity for external folk to come in and help.
I'm really interested to see what agencies like Proof (http://proof-nyc.com/) organise themselves and their work with clients. I know my relationship with some clients is more like design/UX coaching rather than more traditional agency type work.
/re your last point, that's exactly what we noticed. A lot of companies think they need a full-time designer, but they could get away with contracting one multiple times throughout the year, leading to a much happier designer who gets to work on multiple projects.
I think a big bonus of this approach is that forces developers to improve their design skills. I'll never be an amazing designer, but taking these external design suggestions and adapting them to our ever-changing context has been challenging but productive. Rote copying of PSDs stunts the growth.
This contributes to the problem the article illustrates. You outsource your design, as you put it the "logos, color and layout selection, or a new look for something," and then say that the PM and engineers wing the UI and UX?
So you outsource your design and art, and then don't even really have a resource, outsourced or not, for user experience.
Also, it's quite a shame that you're associated designers with being "hip and not passionate" and "specializing and not being an adequate generalist."
Imagine if your post was reversed, and described why design-based startups can't find good programmers. All the pejorative "this vs. that" statements you could write about a programmer and what their "environment encourages."
> Imagine if your post was reversed, and described why design-based startups can't find good programmers. All the pejorative "this vs. that" statements you could write about a programmer and what their "environment encourages."
I imagined it. And?
There are places where programmers are treated as commodity, and there are places where programmers are prized possessions, and same holds for design, business, sales or any other stream of work. If I feel that all I need is someone to do a $25 logo because basically I don't give a shit about the logo and code is what that matters, it's totally my prerogative. I am under no obligation to appease random people's sense of entitlement.
If you run a design shop or are one of those "idea guys" who need a code monkey to do the easy job of coding so that you can work on the hard parts, would I do it? Fuck no. But that doesn't mean there aren't people who would do it or you are wrong to have such expectations.
I don't know why people feel that the whole world owe them something, and complain about being prosecuted when their perceived debt isn't paid.
We don't "wing" the UI and the UX. We design it. We outsource specific, discrete pieces of other kinds of design that we aren't good at. My point there is that, as the article suggests, we aren't looking for a unicorn designer.
Also, take a deep breath and read what I wrote again. I didn't say that designers in general had those problems, just that the environment at agencies encourages those traits. I stand by that. Programmers who work in particular environments can also have problems adapting to startups, but this article isn't about hiring programmers.
1) A lot of designers work at an agency at one point or another. The environment there encourages behavior very different than what startups need. E.g., long cycles vs rapid iteration, "final" deliverables vs incremental release, an emphasis on what clients want vs what users need, hopping from project to project vs really digging in on one thing, ability to specialize vs necessity of being an adequate generalist, high-church design vs getting one's hands dirty, and being hip vs being passionate.
2) One gets to be a really good designer by designing a lot of different things and keeping very current on trends. But startups require a long-term focus on a single product, which takes people out of the design game. That's a very hard sell.
At our startup we outsource individual pieces of design (e.g., logo creation, color and layout selection, coming up with a new look for something). But that ends up serving as raw material for the in-house activities. Most of the design ends up being done by the product manager, the engineers, or both collaboratively. That works for us because we do a lot of user testing and iterate frequently, and also because we know when to hand some piece of visual creation off to an expert.