As a tech startup founder, you get a lot of geeky-techy guys around you. You build an awesome new technology. And to build it further you can get more geeky techy guys with some effort, as you are just one of them. You know the tech community and you can use various ways to attract great technology talent.
The problem starts with design talent. As a tech startup founder, you really haven’t been around with the Designer community. You don’t know where they hang out online, you don’t know how pitch to them for hiring, hell you don’t even know how to differentiate the ‘Great’ from the ‘Good’, while meeting these guys.
But you need to attract best possible design talent to succeed with your product. I am a Co-founder of AppSurfer. We are currently trying to solve this problem by outsourcing the design to a design firm, and working closely with them. But it is best to actually hire a great designer and be able to iterate through multiple design approaches with speed.
So how do you do this? Any pointers?
Nishchal Par
Hi Aniket,
You are right about the ‘good from the great’ bit. But ultimately design is what works, so I think the output of your design has less to do with the design and more to do with the ‘experience’ you want to give the user.
I don’t know the details of your project so I won’t comment on whether it’s a good idea to outsource design or get an inhouse resource. But as far as designers go I can tell you, the clearer and focused yor brief is, the more excited they will be to create something interesting.
If you are looking for someone to hire, take a look at Behance…a lot of designers post their work there, you could go through them countrywise and perhaps get in touch with someone who you could hire.
Hope this helped. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with.
Nishchal
Jack John
our founding team itself consisted of capable designers 🙂
Deepak Mittal
Hi Aniket
There are no shortcuts to hiring the right candidate.
Start with a clear definition of the job description and also highlighting why a good designer should be interested in joining your team, post it on the right portals. Scan CVs carefully.
Spend time with the candidate during the hiring process, you may do a real case study with one of your current design problems, make it interactive and ask him to work on it on a computer on the spot. See if he asks the right questions and if the communications works.
Personally I would only consider outsourcing a function in the long run if it is not a key USP of the product or offering. I would love to hear and learn more on this from the members of this forum.
Having said that, traditionally design has been largely associated with graphics or layout alone in India, some of the top online destinations produced out of India offer just about average user experience. On a general note, we are short on design and UX talent as a country in comparison to our coding skills.
You need to clearly identify what you want as a definition of design for your offering. I have added a bookmark to your website, will be watching out 🙂
Ronak
Hi Aniket,
Getting design talent is difficult for sure. But if you know what you want it ultimately is about getting someone to beautify it which anyone with good photoshop/coreldraw skills can do. Someone rightly said that design is not how it looks but rather how it works. My personal experience: We spent a lot of time on deciding the user flows, critically evaluating each and every aspect of our flow, what to include, what to exclude, what button color (e.g. red for important buttons, blue for search, grey for cancel and so on), what call to action, where to place the buttons, how do the tooltips appear, what error messages should appear, should they appear immediately or when they save something, what happens when the client saves the data – does he get immediate feedback (like u get the yellow msg bar in gmail when a mail is sent). it goes on and on….
having said that if u r lucky u can get an awesome designer who understand the business aspects really well and put that to work.
all the best.
aniket awati
That place looks interesting. Thanks.
aniket awati
We have been following more or less the same thing that you said. But most of the people we meet just have good graphics skills, and almost no understanding of how web works with respect to design. Reaching to people who understand this has been difficult for us.
Outsourcing was the last option, but we have had a great rappo with the design firm, so it works well for now. And it’s great that you will be watching out, I hope we will manage to come out with something good. Would love to have a feedback then. Thanks.
aniket awati
Lucky You 🙂
aniket awati
Yeah design is ultimately our responsibility. But it is always great to have an awesome designer who makes your job that much easier. Hope we get lucky soon.