Design is the most important “feature” of your start-up
July 19, 2010 | design, entrepreneur, start-upauthor: Karol Zielinski | comments: 11 | views: 1375
Tags: design, entrepreneurship, interface, promotion, startup
Why do people use this software (or hardware) instead of another? Why do they use this web-based app or this website? Why are they interested in this blog in spite of its weak content?
In most cases answer is simple: because of its design.
Lots of functionalities, thousands of servers, great code, phenomenal cache solutions, millions of lines of code… people don’t care about that.
Geeks take care of that, average users don’t.
So… what’s the most important “feature” of your project? Its interface or more specifically… its design.
People take care about what they see. People pay for what they see.
Think about it… why do people buy Apple‘s products (apart from the fact that it’s trendy)?
Why do people buy Sony Vaio?
Why do people buy gadgets?
Not because of its functionalities, because it doesn’t have any special ones. Not because of its price, because in most cases it’s much more expensive then products of competitors. Not because of included software, special technical solutions or new version of OS.
Everything is because of its design.
So…
don’t be afraid of spending money for graphic designers or web designers. Users will come to you because of them. Their work will sell much more of your products than any (even the best one) sales specialist.
It doesn’t matter how good back-end you have. Without good front-end you won’t sell anything.
July 26, 2010, 7:56 am
Was just thinking the same thing until I read this article “Death of a Designer” http://bit.ly/9x0jgI , it’s about becoming a more mature in design thinking.
July 26, 2010, 4:56 pm
In all honesty, I wouldn’t bought my one month old 27 inch iMac if it was running on a Windows platform. I’d switched from an old XP machine to a Mac not based on superficial design nuances, although I greatly appreciate the aesthetics of the iMac, the sole reason for switching, believe it or not, is the OS. OS X just seems more fluid, stable and have great apps that would benefit me as a designer. Uninformed consumers are aplenty out there but for you to just summarize the rest of us as ‘gullible’ to anything shiny and ‘looks’ good is insulting our intelligence. To add to that, I’m an Android fan because I know what I need, and I don’t need hype.
July 27, 2010, 11:06 am
I didn’t want to insult anyone. I truly believe that most of us (including me) take care of design. I truly believe that most of us (including me) while having a choice of two products with similar characteristics will choose the prettier one. Not only that… lots of us will choose product with weaker parameters, only because of its design.
If we are talking about you… please notice that you are the special guy
You are a designer. So you need something special for your needs. You can’t chose anything you want, because first of all your computer should help you in your daily work.
You knew what you wanted to buy before you walked into the store. You were testing Mac’s OS, you were reading reviews and opinions of other users, you were watching video tutorials, etc. You have already chosen something perfect for yourself (perfect for your specific needs).
Trust me… much more people don’t know what they want. They don’t have any specific needs. They want something good, something nice, pretty and useful. That’s their needs. That’s why first of all they look at the design. Then… they can (but don’t have to) look deeper.
July 28, 2010, 7:03 am
I apologize if I may have represented myself with a harsh tone on my previous comment. I know where you are coming from. It boils down to the marketing aspect doesn’t it?. If that’s the case, yes, I do agree whole heartedly with your article.
Uninformed or I would rather call them ‘Bimbo-consumers’ doesn’t dwell deeper into a product. It doesn’t matter if it is just a social-network site, a web app or health product. People these days are so easy to succumb to anything that they take fancy in an instance or through word-of-mouth. And then there’s the marketing hype.
It doesn’t necessarily mean its a bad thing. A product has to sell in the end I suppose. Personally through experience, I rely on a good brand to establish itself. One company that has alluded me to want to use their product is 37 Signals which I believe you as a developer know them quite well. Great service, check. Great UI design, check. Great functional softwares, check. Great ethics and philosophy, I’m bought.
As a designer, we have to consider every aspect of our design in relation to the marketing, psychology etc to attract customers/consumers/clients but if the back-end is just bad, then its just another Windows Vista in my opinion.
July 28, 2010, 12:47 pm
Of course, I agree with you. However if I would have to decide what’s “more” important in my project (front-end or back-end) then I would say that front-end. Why? Simply because front-end sells my product, not back-end.
And of course I agree that back-end can’t be bad. Because so what, that I attracted user to buy my product, if because of bad back-end code, he would turn away from me after a month or a single use.
I would prefer to launch well-looking project with several quite nice functionalities, than not-well-looking project with all the functionalities which I would like to have.
First of all… good interface/design/front-end, then all the back-end stuff.
August 15, 2010, 9:36 pm
very good topic