Ask HN: Is it worthwhile for a startup to use a professional designer?

[techiferous]

A potential client recently asked me this question and I'm interested in the community's opinions on this.

Also, this is not really a yes/no question; it's a discussion prompt. :)

[replicatorblog]

I think the better strategy is to infuse your organization with design thinking. AirBnB has been one of YC's best recent performers and 2/3 of their founding team are designers. To quote Steve Jobs:

In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

So if your goal is to make something consumer facing or where the user is key in your thinking don't use a professional designer, make one a co-founder.

I think design is wildly underutilized and 1 good design hire can be worth 5-10 engineers at the early stage. This may sound heretical, but a good designer can make UX decisions that have massive impact across a site, but piggy back on pre-existing engineering tasks. This doesn't scale though. 10 designers aren't equal to 10 engineers.

That said, if you are creating some B2B product that doesn't have a lot of meaningful user interaction, the value exchange is simple, or there aren't a lot of competitive solutions (web or otherwise) then piece something together via woothemes and 99 designs, or make friends with a good designer.

[bretthellman]

well said

[nostromo]

Yes.

I'm a programmer by night / business type by day. I have a website soon to be released in beta and I hired a designer I trusted (and could afford) from a previous job. She worked wonders for the project -- seeing the new design also reinvigorated me.

A few tips: Hire a friend if possible (you'll probably get a friend-rate), if not work by referral. You want someone you can sit with face to face. Avoid 99Designs and the like if you can. Pay your invoices immediately and you'll find the designer will likely continue to be super helpful. Also, get an hourly rate up front since you'll probably find things that need to be adjusted. Lastly, I wouldn't use the designer for HTML, just have them hand off PSDs, the markup tends to be not so good. Insist on PSDs, not flattened images.

By the way, I'm happy to give a refferal for a trusted friend. Just email me at juliuss at gmail.

[robertg]

Ditto on the PSD advice. There are plenty of PSD to HTML chop shops that will do a much better job slicing and creating standards compliant markup for your site.

It ends up costing a little more in the long run, but you also get a better quality product.

[gbrindisi]

Making webdesign with Photoshop is old school, in my opinion. Modern webdesign is no more a mask to apply to your html, it's the entire front end side: you'll have to deal with markup, CSS and javascript.

Also, the majority of professional webdesigner out there are starting prototype with CSS.

[mattmanser]

Any reasons on why to avoid 99designs and ilk?

[limedaring]

Am also a designer.

v1? Just get the damn thing out. Don't worry about whether it has the perfect design or interactions at this point since the hardest part is simply launching (and you're going to change your idea/design once you get feedback anyways). After that, I believe a designer is invaluable, for taking user feedback and results and crafting the product into something that promotes more sales/views.

[leftnode]

I am a programmer starting my own business. I pretend to be a designer, but when it comes down to it, I'm really lost. I've tried the ThemeForest/WooThemes route for nice templates. While they have some beautiful templates, they'll still need customization that I can't do.

Suck it up, find a good designer and pay them well. I'm glad I did.

[edanm]

It depends.

Firstly, what stage of a startup are we talking about? Are we talking a guy building just a landing page? Are we talking a 20-person team with VC? The answer is different for each case, both because of the money available, but also because of how much that design will end up being used. A landing page that might never lead to a product shouldn't cost you $1,000.

I haven't had much experience on the later stages of a startup, but I have built a few products to the beginning stages. Early on, I made the mistake of building the product without a design first thing. I figured, if it gets good feedback, I can alway redesign it. Instead, what I would do today if I were building any product is go buy a template for $50, and work off that. Saves a lot of redesign time (which is harder to do, since you've already got legacy code). Also, gets you the "good design first impression" right off the bat, which will lead to more accurate results when you need them the most (since you really don't know if the product will be a success or not).

For a landing page, which you should do before building a product (unless the product is really simple), I've recently learned the best way. Go to WooThemes.com or ThemeForest.com, buy a WordPress template for $70, and it will make setting up your landing page a Wysiwyg experience, which is much better. Even if you're a programmer like me, trust me on this, using WordPress will make things smoother, and the design will be better for it.

As for an actual startup with an actual product (and money in the bank), I wouldn't even think twice: hire a designer.

[jbail]

No.

...assuming the startup is bootstrapping. Why?

1) Ugly designs are often very effective. 2) You can polish it later when you're making money.

Your site might look amazing. Your site might look crappy. If no one knows about your site or no one cares, then it doesn't matter either way.

Focus on traction for the product or service you're providing, then worry about the design of your letterhead, business cards, shiny web 2.0 logo, etc.

[kranner]

Can you explain number 1 please?

I'm hoping it's true because I'm bootstrapping an app that's on the ugly side. I've been told the product and workflow are solid but that the amateur design will hurt conversions. It's a B2B product. Personally I think the ugly design will filter out some tire-kickers (which is good because the product is somewhat compute-intensive) but anyone who knows they need the product will not be deterred. Of course I could be biased.

I'd like to add that I don't intend to keep it ugly, but I'm hoping to see some revenue first.

[anateus]

I think this hits the crux of the problem but not directly:

An ugly design that works is actually a good design.

Several people in this thread make the point that design isn't just the veneer, but definitely the whole user experience. But sometimes people confuse "looking pretty" with "well designed". Those often go hand-in-hand, but not always, which is very important to keep in mind.

It's easy for folks who are used to conflating the two to accept a good looking design because it looks good, rather than it working well for the user.

[anony79]

I agree that design shouldn't be the focus if you are at the early, bootstrapping stage. You should instead focus on user traction and shaping your product based on user feedback. You can always work on the design part later on.

That said, for a consumer facing product, user experience and design does become important after a point - but it need not be your priority at the very early stage.

[swalberg]

"Worthwhile", I don't know. I guess it depends on what your product is supposed to do.

My product is http://smallpayroll.ca, it's a do it yourself payroll site made for people who don't know anything about payroll. I freely admit it looks like crap. But of the handful of people that have tried it out and paid for it, I haven't heard "this looks like crap". What I hear is "this product makes my life so much easier"

Could I get more conversions with a better design? Maybe... But I know for my product it's not preventing me from getting paying customers.

(As an aside, I've often thought there should be a place for people like us to find designers that know how to work with applications instead of just designing web pages.)

[techiferous]

Your design definitely doesn't fall into the "looks like crap" category. These sites fall into the "crap" category:

http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/

http://www.sporcle.com/

Your site strikes me as in the "good enough" category. The design isn't anything special, either good or bad. This means that there is nothing bad about the design to bring your product down and I think it also means that the law of diminishing returns may apply to putting resources into making the design better.

[cemregr]

The green CTA isn't very readable. Making it a bit darker with a contrasting text color (black) would assumingly increase conversion :)

[jbarham]

Yes, definitely. A well-designed and aesthetically pleasing site adds instant credibility, especially for people who are non-technical (i.e., the people who often make the final buy/no-buy decision).

And it's rare for a strong systems or web back-end programmer to also have a good design sense and to be versed in the various rendering quirks and workarounds for the common browsers.

Note that it doesn't mean you have to hire a full-time designer. A lot of designers are freelancers, and like it that way.

37signals' Sortfolio (http://www.sortfolio.com/) lists a lot of independent designers for a range of budgets.

[devmonk]

Yes. Shop around just like anything else.

But, you'll be even better off if you have someone with good design skills working for you if you plan to be able to do revisions, ongoing changes.

I worked for a small company that outsourced some design for logo, but ended up hiring someone full-time to do photography and design. It was a bold step since they were a telecom company, but the polish and sheer amount of the work by having someone in-house differentiate them from their competitor.

At first I thought they were foolish (for years actually), but now that he is still working there, and seeing where they are, it was sheer genius to have hired him.

[kqueue]

I think finding a good designer willing to work on your project is the most difficult part of the whole project.

Focusing on what you do best (programming) and subcontracting what you do worst (design) leads to a great product imho. If you end up doing both, you'll eventually lose motivation because you'll never get satisfied with your own designs (you are not a designer after all). Not to mention that you'll be shifting focus back and forth between design/programming, and each one requires a different kind of focus and way of thinking. The end product if it sees the light? Mediocre at best.

[vaksel]

well you do need a good design, the web has matured...if your site looks like crap people will leave.

but you don't need a designer for that.

1. istockphoto gets you a ton of illustrations that you can use to spice up your pages.

2. 99designs gets you a good logo or any other custom work you need. Some people will knock 99designs...and yes the quality may be worse than one you'd get from a top of the line designer. But it'll be miles ahead of what you can achieve on your own, and you'll get to avoid paying thousands for a logo.

from my experience, a single illustration can turn a boring and bland page into something that's decent.

[tofumatt]

The real issue with sites like 99designs isn't the quality (though it IS mostly terrible), it's the _consistency_. If you're getting a bunch of different designers to design you something over their lunch break with no interest in or knowledge of your company/goals, you're gonna get something different every time.

Seriously, skip the kids at 99designs and hire a local freelance designer. Maybe you can get lucky and guarantee them [X] number of hours a month in exchange for a lower rate.

[iampims]

If you're building a search engine, better get a UX guy.

If you're building a photo sharing site, better get a UX guy.

If you're building a social app, then hell yes, get a UX guy AND a designer.

[techiferous]

Thanks. Would you mind elaborating more on the difference between UX and design? And how each can help a startup achieve its business goals?

[mynameisraj]

I'm a designer myself, but I'm confused at what the question is asking.

A designer can be many things. You can hire an interaction designer. You can hire an interface designer. You can hire a website designer.

I am going to assume you are speaking about an interface/web designer. Yes is the answer. When it comes down to it, your end users are probably going to avoid your service if they don't think it looks good. The amount of traffic you'd gain with a good design easily justifies the price of hiring a good designer.

Now, the other thing is the word 'professional'. Professionals are very expensive. You're talking at least 10 thousand dollars for a decent project. If you go with someone who's a student or the like (cough), you'll get a better rate, but you won't get the timeline that a startup might need. There's the other issue. If it's not going to repay itself in traffic easily, then it's not worth it. In most cases, will it? Of course.

The other option is DIY. If you take some time and learn your shit, you can usually do something that doesn't look half-assed.

Now, moving on to the HTML bit. I do both. Many designers do both. Plain and simple: if you don't know markup, you shouldn't make mockups.

[sahillavingia]

Disclosure: I am a designer.

YES. The value that a design has in a first impression helps with that first bit of traction so so much. I've had projects fail because of crappy designs, and crappy projects succeed because of - subjectively - great ones.

Invest, it's not even that much compared to some of your other costs. Look into students (like me!) who may need the money and the recognition, though don't abuse them.

[wdavidturner]

Yes-ish. If it takes too much of your time to produce anything that looks/feel reasonable, then hire one. If you think you can get by doing it yourself, then make it so. If you have enough chops to get by, but don't know where to start, yes - then start tweeking stuff yourself.

try to stick to something simple and clear that lets users know what they're doing next.

[giffc]

It depends on stage and context of product. In the earliest days, I think whoever owns "customer development" should also own the UX. It doesn't need to be beautiful, just good enough (that's where context of product comes in -- it defines "good enough" -- a product for engineers will have different requirements than one for grandparents).

The trouble with using free time from a friend is 1. by being free, it is harder to give blunt feedback; 2. by being a favor, you are beholden to their schedule, and can they really keep up with your pace of iteration and learning based on customer development? It can put strain on friendships.

So in the earliest days I say try to DIY unless you really don't have a design bone in your body. Use paper and Balsamiq to sketch, and examine what you like and dislike of comparable products.

You can always hire a professional designer later to come in and help once you feel confident that you are close to the right product for the right customer.

[jeffclark]

Definitely.

A designer does more than just make pretty pictures.

Ugly or not (the art, not the designer), a designer actually will help design the usability of the site at the same time so that you can grow.

A good designer knows where to put the little calls-to-action and the email signup forms and all that so that you can meet your business goals.

It's definitely worthwhile to get a professional designer.

[togasystems]

If you want people to start taking you seriously, then YES!

I have been turned off on a number of occasions by the lack of a professional design.

You could probably scrape by, by getting a free theme from the intertubes, but what about your logo/branding.

Go to your local college and post something for a design job. You will get a ton of replies and it probably won't cost you that much.

[fjabre]

<plug>I hired some pro designers for my site: http://www.hobsonfiles.com </plug>

One thing to keep in mind: No matter how good your design is, it is no match for an ugly site with a really useful feature..

[KevinMS]

I'd like to know the answer to this also, but after reading the comments I'm still clueless.

Maybe this will help - Has anybody dared to do any A/B testing on professional vs "unprofessional" design?

[ramit]

This is a complicated question.

I know of a direct-response guy who had horribly ugly sales pages that literally included misspellings. He tells this story about how all kinds of marketing consultants and designers would come in and say, "Your sales page is so ugly! You need a redesign." He would laugh and say, "Everyone says that. But I have data from the last 5 years, and this is the single best-performing page of all." He made $25m last year.

Sophisticated direct marketers are not to be trifled with.

However, if you're building a company that depends on other non-direct factors like brand, you can't really A/B test that. You just have to make a decision.

A few years back, I met a guy whose girlfriend worked on the optimization team at Amazon. Now THEY are sophisticated. They knew how A/B tweaks would affect users several months later. But even still, Amazon often makes strategic decisions that can't always be justified with data.

Bottom line: It's important to know the advantages and disadvantages of various types of marketing, including direct/brand/etc. But you will have to make some tough choices.

Personally, on my sites, I've seen lots of interesting results with testing designs...but I finally told my staff to stop micro-testing since we'd optimized the hell out of some of our stuff and were only getting incremental gains (e.g., going from 35% opt-in rate to 39% is prohibitively difficult). The biggest results I've gotten have been from strategic changes like changing the offer, adding a new product, pricing changes, back-end offers, deeper customer research, etc.

[mikegee]

I suspect you're referring more to visual design, correct? If you mean design in the broader sense then comparing "Professional" design with "Non-Professional" is like asking if you can test the difference between a product made by someone who knows how to build a product versus someone who doesn't. Anyone building a product is, in fact, designing. Whether they are good at it is another thing entirely. Design is combination of "how things work" and "how things look" (and I'd even argue the latter is still a child of the former).

Visual design as decoration is probably less effective, and I think you'll get a lot of that with "Unprofessional" designers. Visual design as a way to amplify/enhance existing well-designed interactions is definitely effective (i.e. strong button affordance, good use of color to convey meaning, etc). This is the type of output you'll get with a "Professional" designer.

Philosophy aside, I think you'd probably do better with qualitative testing. Do people tend to complete tasks easier if the action being tested "looks" easier? Does the brand identity match the audience you're targeting? Are your design patterns consistent across the site? Etc, etc. It's certainly a bit more nebulous but I think with the right questions you could certainly use A/B testing to answer some of these things.

[jkriddle]

I think it comes down to usability as opposed to design. I've seen some absolutely beautiful sites (professionally) that nobody could figure out how to navigate, and thus had a low conversion rate. Yet a site that look straight out of a 14-year old's bedroom hosted on Geocities could return more results since the call to action was very clear.

This post talks a lot about this type of usability and speaks to this point (and even mentions A/B testing with usability): http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/10-usability-...

[pchristensen]

The book "Emotional Design" (http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/0465051367 ) has lots of studies about how people complete tasks better and have better experiences with functionally equivalent products that are well designed. The beginning has a well-cited example of how customers could use Japanese ATMs better when they were made "pretty". Suspecting it was an artifact of the Japanese cultural love of beauty and craftsmanship, they tried it in Israel, which was more culturally hard-nosed and pragmatic. The improvement in usability was even more pronounced.

[dasil003]

It's not really a variable that can be isolated in any effective way. If you did a massive test across 1000s of sites you might be able to extract some useful data, but even then I think the psychological effect varies quite a bit depending on what kind of site it is to begin with.

[ee1izzie]

As a former direct mail marketer, I contend you can A/B test anything, if the two aspects of the variable are well-defined.

[bmelton]

I think that in almost all cases, the 'professional' design is going to perform better -- where I think you'll find the conflict in advice is whether or not it's worth it to spend the expense on an untested idea.

If the idea holds enough water, it doesn't NEED a good design (re: Craigslist, tarsnap, the original Digg, etc.) -- it just needs to work. If it works, and you can prove there's a business there, then by all means, spend the money to make it perform as well as you possibly can. Design in this sense is an 'optimization' technique, not part of the core product.

The flip side, is if you have a horrible idea, and you spend $10k on design, you've effectively thrown that money away.

The exceptions to this, of course, are in the demographic. If your target market is web designers, they're going to be hypercritical of any design, so it needs to excel from day 1. If your startup is an iPhone app, same thing. Otherwise, most people will be forgiving of a spartan design, so long as the damn thing works, and that'll give you leverage to design against.

Also, another big point in this is that as you build the product, you'll change how things work, a lot. In the application I'm building now, I had Photoshop mockups for every page, and how I thought they would look, but in the initial testing, I've changed almost every page somewhat dramatically. It costs me time, which I hate, but it's better than costing me time AND dollars I'd have to pay a professional designer to re-design because I changed the position of button x. And, while I hate having to re-implement, I'd much rather not move into production with button x in the wrong place because I couldn't afford to pay a designer to move it.