Category: Team & Hiring

Adding A UX To Your Startup

Last year I consulted some on hiring decisions: what kind of UX person do different start-ups need? It certainly is not a one-size fits all decision. Even if the all of us were perfect blends of insightful user researchers, interaction designers, amazing illustrators and graphic designers, and hardcore coders (also known as ‘unicorns’ since they do not exist or are very rare), we would still not all fit everywhere. In fact, for most start-ups that combination of skill at that high level would be completely over-specified and those unicorns would be both bored and overworked. Bored because not all the work would be at the level they like to do, over-worked because invariably they would be asked to do the work of 3 people.

From observing start-ups you certainly want someone who can grow with the company, has the right energy and endurance for start-up life, but also brings the right mix of skills at the appropriate level for where the company is. And just like as a founder you would research (if not already know) the various disciplines that go into creating working, maintainable, source-controlled code so that you know what you need, you also need to either be well versed already in, or at least research, the various design disciplines. The sentence “Well, we need the interaction made simple, but they could also design the logo and slide templates” makes me worry.

On top of that, “design thinking” as a system to create new and better products at start-ups is very fashionable, but it means more than hiring a Graphic Designer early, or even as a co-founder. If you do not have a background in design, learn who these people are—even if by asking an expert.

Founders who are tech experts really need to evaluate designers, interaction or service or visual, by the same lines as they would coders. What level would they hire, how much do they think they can teach or need already be supported by? Would you really pay a lower salary for someone who brings the look, the feel, the ease of use that sets you apart, the experience that makes your site memorable and instills trust in your website so clients spend money on your services? I was a little surprised at one point when the salary range quoted was equivalent to one for a junior coder.

If you are a Designer Founder yourself, you can grow together with a junior or mid-weight, but if you re a Dev or Biz Founder, you will not be able to really grow your junior designer; in contrast to what many think, “Make it pop!” or “Make it easier!” or “Make it like Facebook” are not actual design critiques that will get you a good result from your new worker nor will it make them better at what they do over time.

The level and experience need to be the right fit, but so does the approach to problems, and it actually should be different from the code or biz team, creating a frisson from which new ideas and directions will spring. Evaluate this from the portfolio, but mostly by asking how problems were approached, and approaching a current issue in the start-up together. Never ask a designer to do a lot of homework for the interview for free; in the current market it comes off as exploitative. Pay a free-lance rate for a few days to solve a bigger problem together and try. And ask other friendly UX Designers for help in evaluating.

Acquiring Talent Is Not Enough: You Have To Be Willing To Listen

Recently I spoke to a company, very technology and features-driven, around for a little less than a decade, about their need for a UX person and what they wanted out of the role. My primary contact said that they were coming to the conclusion the company “needed their own Johnny Ive”, better known by his full name, Jonathan Ive, SVP of Industrial Design at Apple.

Finding your own Johnny Ive isn’t that hard: just throw money at an executive search of top-of-their-class grads with stellar subsequent careers. However, if what you are after is Johnny Ive-class results, finding this person is not enough. History shows that Mr Ive had started work for apple in 1992, and yet, as talented as he obviously was as shown by his current output, for the next five years Apple steadily slid backwards with a confusing, unimaginative, and mediocre line-up. It was only after Mr. Ive started working for someone who put good design above all else that his output became so stellar. In 1997 Mr. Ive had been empowered by a CEO Creative Director From Hell who, for example, was willing to move heaven and earth at great cost to make the outward appearance and feel of his product better six weeks before launch, while all his competitors were satisfied with the status quo. In that kind of environment, a designer can shine and the products end up spectacularly well designed, because spectacular design has now become the end arbiter of what gets made. Not ease of production, not time-to-market, not check-box features.

It’s not just the hire that matters, but how they fit in your culture and process, what you will give priority to as a company, how you will change to get the results you are after with this hire. When asked about how they saw their new “own Johnny Ive” fitting into their company, the team was very clear they wanted the “low-hanging fruit” picked up first, instant measurable ROI, features put out there before they were “perfect”, and fixing the current user interfaces without asking for fundamental changes to the existing code-base. Basically what they had been doing already. Only if  that was in place could they tolerate the design research to be done for their new products.

I warned my contact he had more work to do for the new desired results than finding the right person.