Web Designing At Startups

For any web-based startup, the battle of choosing a great design for your site starts early on. Many companies don’t even get past this point as they self-destruct while retooling their designs constantly as they try to get the perfect look. Developing many web applications myself, sometimes I’ve come out as the victor, many times as the loser, and the days that I acted wisely, I stayed out of the fight.

I don’t have the answers on what’s the best design process to use at a startup. But I’ve seen many stereotypes.

Typical Things You Hear At a Startup

• Let’s make it look like Apple’s site. Ok, backup. Most software startups consist of developers. Why is it that some think they can just “copy” Apple’s design and put it into their own cool Web 2.0 site? I personally admire Apple’s designs, so much so that I appreciate the TEAM of non-CS people they have hired to spend MONTHS on what they do. I can understand when someone says “let’s make it simple, like Apple’s stuff”, that’s ok and it makes perfect sense to want something simple. But you can’t just copy-paste their slider widgets and rounded corners and expect your site to be the next big thing.
• Hire a designer and ask him to copy another site. Why bother? Any graphic designer worth anything will hate to be asked to just copy another site’s look and feel. Sure they may look at it for inspiration, but if you keep saying “it has to be like Facebook”, I can guarantee you are wasting talent.
• I like blue, but not red. Picking colors like that is subjective, so it’s hard to win an argument. The only case that I can think of where a particular color theme has a valid for being chosen is if the designer a) knows what messages those colors convey or b) they follow fashion/design trends that are happening around the world.
• It has to be perfect. No.. it really doesn’t. I mean, once you launch your site, you are planning on maintaining and keeping it updated, right? Once you actually finish the project and put it into production in front of real users, then the feedback will start coming in. Users will tell you what they like and what they don’t. And it’s actually a good thing to keep updating your design look over time because it will keep your site fresh and interesting for people who visit daily.
• We have to redo everything because a user couldn’t figure it out. For example, I was recently told that some new visitors to Radio Javan cannot figure out how to listen to the radio.. Well, there’s a big orange “Listen Now” box up top. I’m fairly sure if we make the whole page just one “Listen Now” button and one random image, some users will still keep trying to click on the random image to listen. User feedback is extremely important, but whenever in doubt, do a survey among users to be sure.

Why It’s Fun Designing At a Startup