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7 tips for great startup design

Gearóid O'Rourke
November 29, 2013

7 tips for great startup design

Delivered at hack{cyprus} 2013.

Gearóid O'Rourke

November 29, 2013
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Transcript

  1. • Design needs good inputs to have good outputs. •

    Research should be the first step of your design process.
  2. • Understand the problem you are trying to solve, the

    ‘who’ you are trying to solve it for and what "solved" looks like.
  3. • Talk to potential users. • Determine their needs, the

    strengths of those needs and how they are currently attempting to address them.
  4. • Understand the job to be done by the software.

    What are your users hiring it to do?
  5. • Design is a team responsibility and a team effort.

    • Kill “over the wall” thinking.
  6. • Sketch together, do it often and do it early.

    • Pair up your designers and your engineers. Physically sit them next to each other.
  7. • Build less features. Say no more often. • Build

    too much and it will all be half-a***d and poorly made.
  8. • We all agreed on MVP... right? • MVP ≠

    poorly designed. • Poorly designed = no learnings.
  9. • Design is about effectiveness, not prettiness. • Don’t test

    looks. Do test functionality, implementation and success against a metric.
  10. • Design is fractal. Good design, or bad, exists at

    every zoom level. • Design that's just concerned with the surface will feel fake.
  11. • Do you send crappy ‘system’ emails to users? Is

    your error message text good? Do you provide a good built environment to your team?
  12. • Any CEOs or founders or managers in the room?

    • Achieving great design is greatly influenced by having a great design culture.
  13. • Design is not fluffy. It's not a nice to

    have. It's not what comes ‘after’. • Design can be your biggest competitive advantage.
  14. • Might seem obvious, but hire a great designer. •

    Hire one early. Spend money on getting them.
  15. • Understand the difference between an experience focused designer and

    a "stylist". • Get an experience focused designer early on.