Hot answers tagged design
17
The service that's been making the most waves in this area is Balsamiq, a micro-ISV itself that's grown to greater than one million in profits in around a year and a half.
13
Last time I worked on a project that used an outside design agency, the results were quite good. The one-time costs were high, but not out of line with a fully-loaded employee. To this day (about 4 years later) the site continues to grow using the same basic design.
Some tips:
If I needed design help on a low-budget project, I'd probably outsource to a ...
13
Generally, the feedback you receive by releasing a product early is more valuable than postponing its release until it is 'perfect'. In fact, you actually don't know what 'perfect' is yet - your users' behavior and feedback will determine that - and the longer the product is in a black box the longer it will take to get that feedback and improve.
Your goal ...
12
I have worked in several startups where some of the code has been outsourced. You always face the principal agent problem, that the company you hire has different interests than you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem.
The costs for managing the coders in the foreign country are higher compared to the local ones. Whereas the local ...
9
Branding is important but not as important as releasing rev 1.0 and getting customers. Your initial customers, really don't care about your brand -- they care about your product.
It's tricky on when to start the branding process since it can cost real money. My suggestion would be to wait till you have some initial marketplace traction (e.g. paying ...
7
We have had a single encounter with 99designs and did not quite like the process nor the result. Went out of both time and budget. Now shopping for designers locally again.
7
Launch a mediocre design now, using the best abilities and design skills you have now.
Then, when you have your business up and running, you can invest more time, money, and thought into the design. This way, you can save your initial startup capital and use it for more crucial costs.
6
I think this is a good question. I think looking modern is critical. People will judge your product in a few nanoseconds just by the way it looks. It might not be important to the early adopters but it will be more important to the mainstream users.
Being different is a key value in business but is really hard design-wise. It's probably best to focus more ...
6
Christian, try these:
Sortfolio.com
webdesignserved.com
siteinspire.com
These are some of my favorite places to keep track of the designs and designers. These are places where the best designers like to show ase work. Spend some time on them, find sites you like and see who designed them. There are good freelancers and boutique studios out there.
Some ...
5
You need to consider four separate things. (And most companies completely skip the last item, which is a big mistake.)
The designer's portfolio- what does his or her work look like? If you aren't impressed with what he has done before you are unlikely to be happy with what he does for you.
Performance references. Ask for references and check them!
How well ...
5
I think hiring locally is always beneficial for several reasons. The biggest being that you can easily consult with the designer on changes in person. Secondly and probably just as important is that if they end up working out really well then you have a local contact who you already have worked with whom you may be able to hire PT or FT when the time ...
5
It’s interesting to see when entrepreneurs, founders of startups and marketing executives of companies still question and debate whether they should spend money on branding or if they should even start the process at all. Branding is an activity that happens whether or not you consciously choose to do so.
Once you take the initial step of launching your ...
5
Good question.
I've logged into a few new web apps recently, and have experienced that 'what do I do now?' feeling on the first use.
For that reason, I'm putting a lot of effort into merging my sign up workflow and user experience into the first few uses of my app, keeping them on board and walking them through the app, hopefully motivating my users to ...
5
The answer is painfully obvious-- you need a product or service that others like. That's precisely why the button that allows them to become a fan says "like" on it. You like what you like, and you don't like what you don't like.
I think the real question here is, "How do you create a business that people can get excited about" and the answer is: you create ...
4
There is also a relevant post by 37 Signals on this topic:
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch09_The_Blank_Slate.php
For the design of traditional management information BI dashboards, I can't recommend this book highly enough:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Information-Dashboard-Design-Effective-Communication/dp/0596100167
4
I think you should definitely outsource vs. hire someone. Unless that person is going to be busy every day, then you have the great potential of having a headcount that's costly and wastes money. It sounds like the design won't be changing much so outsource it.
I disagree about hiring locally. I've been on both sides (agency and client) involved with web ...
4
I have used Elegant Themes and:
WooThemes
Theme Forest
Studio Press
Thesis Theme
All 5 of these have excellent themes.
4
"A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week." -- George S. Patton
Actually, it really depends on your product and how much of a delay upgrading the UI would cost. You'll also have to ask yourself why a user disappointed with the current UI wouldn't return after UI improvements are made. That has to be addressed in ...
4
99 Designs is a popular choice, along with some similar services like Crowd Spring and Design Crowd.
You can also find a designer to work directly with you, which offers more control over the process but can be more expensive and time consuming.
4
Tough call. Ideally you would want someone who would bring as much to the table as you. Hence the terms co-founder and partner. If this person will single-handedly create the project and you market it, 50-50 or 60-40 makes sense.
You can't count penny by penny and try to see who will bring more value to the table. If you are a designer or a software ...
4
You will find that once you launch and start watching people and taking feedback that what ever you "think" is the right way won't be a vast amount will be driven by the users with your own vision as a guideline.
My advice is
Release early. Get it to a good, basic set of core functionality that looks good and release it.
Have the plan. Have a good queue ...
4
Some resources
http://dribbble.com/ - find a designer whose work you like then contact them
http://elance.com - look through the designer profiles and ratings then contact direct rather than placing a jobn posting unless you have something specific
http://odesk.com - as elance
http://forrst.com - its currently invite only at the minute but keep an eye out ...
4
You can advertise on facebook targeting your preferred demographic, this will obviously cost you money.
Otherwise you need to promote your facebook page where ever possible:
make sure you make a prominent link on your website to your facebook page
find forums where your demographic hang out and post in the forums about your page
The most important thing ...
3
I have used crowdSpring for a webpage banner. The result was ok with a loootttt of hand holding and feedback. I am now considering 99designs for website design. The problem I am having is $$ cut to either of the sites is $39 + 15% which ends up to over $100 for a very small site. Given the fact that threshold to enter a website contest is $500, I believe ...
3
Web work is collaborative and a personal expression of your business. Often this is best done on a local basis with face to face interaction.
On the other side of the coin, not staying local opens an enormous pool of designers to you. This can be good (lots of choice) and bad (how do you choose?).
3
Tags not categories: Tags allow you to crowdsource your category structure. You can always bolt on your own category system later, with the benefit of knowing how your audience views the space. That said, sometimes it makes sense to present your items in a hierarchy, and how to suss a hierarchy out of a heap of tags is not obvious.
User-defined: ...
3
What do you want for the tags? How will they be used? Will you have search functionality where people can type in tags and find what matches all the tags, or any of the tags?
I am not crazy about limits on tags, as you may have some products that have many tags, as they can have many uses or be multi-cultural.
But, you could do as this site, and just ...
3
There are number of wireframe stencils that can help speed up your mockups. I have tried several for Visio. Yahoo has their Design Stencils, which are available for many tools.
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/about/stencils/
Yahoo! Design Stencil Kit version 1.0 is available for OmniGraffle, Visio (XML), Adobe Illustrator (PDF and SVG), and Adobe ...
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