7 tips for great startup design

Delivered at hack{cyprus} 2013.

Transcript

1. GEARÓID O’ROURKE, STARTUP DESIGNER 7 STEPS TO GREAT STARTUP DESIGN
2. GEARÓID [GAH—ROAD] @OROURKEDESIGN
3. IT’S NOT MAGIC, RESEARCH IT. 01.
4. • Design needs good inputs to have good outputs. • Research should be the first step of your design process.
5. • Understand the problem you are trying to solve, the ‘who’ you are trying to solve it for and what "solved" looks like.
6. • Talk to potential users. • Determine their needs, the strengths of those needs and how they are currently attempting to address them.
7. • Understand the job to be done by the software. What are your users hiring it to do?
8. IT'S BETTER TOGETHER. 02.
9. • Design is a team responsibility and a team effort. • Kill “over the wall” thinking.
11. • Sketch together, do it often and do it early. • Pair up your designers and your engineers. Physically sit them next to each other.
12. BUILD LESS, BUILD BETTER 03.
13. • Build less features. Say no more often. • Build too much and it will all be half-a***d and poorly made.
14. • We all agreed on MVP... right? • MVP ≠ poorly designed. • Poorly designed = no learnings.
16. IT’S NOT MAGIC, TEST IT OUT. 04.
17. • Great designers love data and love feedback. • How can you test design?
19. • Design is about effectiveness, not prettiness. • Don’t test looks. Do test functionality, implementation and success against a metric.
20. • Qualitative • Interviews, card sorting, guided user testing
21. • Quantitative • Click test, A/B tests, heat maps, usage stats
22. IT’S FRACTAL, SO ‘LIVE IT’. 05.
23. • Design is fractal. Good design, or bad, exists at every zoom level. • Design that's just concerned with the surface will feel fake.
24. • Do you send crappy ‘system’ emails to users? Is your error message text good? Do you provide a good built environment to your team?
26. BELIEVE THAT IT'S WORTH IT. 06.
27. • Any CEOs or founders or managers in the room? • Achieving great design is greatly influenced by having a great design culture.
28. • Design is not fluffy. It's not a nice to have. It's not what comes ‘after’. • Design can be your biggest competitive advantage.
29. INVEST IN GREAT PEOPLE. 07.
30. • Might seem obvious, but hire a great designer. • Hire one early. Spend money on getting them.
31. • Understand the difference between an experience focused designer and a "stylist". • Get an experience focused designer early on.
32. IT’S NOT MAGIC, RESEARCH IT. 01.
33. IT'S BETTER TOGETHER. 02.
34. BUILD LESS, BUILD BETTER 03.
35. IT’S NOT MAGIC, TEST IT OUT. 04.
36. IT’S FRACTAL, SO ‘LIVE IT’. 05.
37. BELIEVE THAT IT'S WORTH IT. 06.
38. INVEST IN GREAT PEOPLE. 07.
39. Follow up @ @orourkedesign go@gearoidorourke.com