Any visual design pointers for non-designer founders?
Any visual design pointers for non-designer founders?
Particularly for SaaS businesses, there's a lot of visual/aesthetic work that goes on in the initial stages (landing page/UI design/etc), but before you've figured out product/market fit, you don't really want to invest too much money/time into it.
I usually take a stab at everything myself, but it's far from perfect.
Just wondering whether any professional designers have some pointers for those of us who don't have a visual element in their body.
I found this quite enlightening: https://refactoringui.com/ and will try and apply the techniques later.
Big +1 for this book.
I'll add https://designacademy.io to the stack of great resources for learning design fundamentals as a dev.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
Getting better with design is similar to getting better at programming. The more you do it the better you get.
That being said as a consultant I usually try to help my clients get a better sense for design so that we can work together more easily. Here are a couple of tips that you can try as a first steps to get better:
I hope this helps. Feel free to pm me if you want some tips on your product. That includes anyone else who might be reading this.
https://designforstartup.net has a lot of useful starting points. I also found Don't Make Me Think super useful.
Well i started to interact more regularly on IH, and when i see someone asking for design feedbacks i try my best to take some time to answer. If any of you guys needs some design feedback do not hesitate to @ me
Also maybe you had some coworkers working as designer in your career, they would be most of the time glad to give you some design feedbacks.
Ps: Most of the time i despise my own designs 1 week after its done.
I would accept design feedback, @NxAlessandro. Does this place have anything like a direct message?
I don't think / know. But you can always create a topic and @me could alway be interesting for everyone to see what you are doing
Check out my post on 'How developers and tech founders can turn their ideas into UI design' – https://www.simonmccade.com/blog/how-developers-and-tech-founders-can-turn-their-ideas-into-ui-design
For a B2B SaaS platform, we've often found that the UI/UX is straight up determined by the flow of the customer. If you truly know what problem your customer is trying to solve, chances are there's really only 1 clear design pattern to get the job done.
In my experience, design work beyond the functional part hasn't brought in additional revenues. As long as you solve the problems for the customers, they will be happy regardless of whether some button placements feel off or not.
Pointers on design are like pointers on soccer; a person can take tips and coaching, but the most important thing is practice.
That being said, my number one tip: Don't overthink it. Of course, always try to do good work, but people (myself included) can make themselves really anxious trying to find "the perfect design". When you're in initial stages, like you said, a little bit of design will take you a long way. Get to your MVP and start testing and learning.
Also, be sure to design for usefulness first, then aesthetics. It's easy to feel like your audience is a discerning bunch of art critics who will bail at the first whiff of aesthetic disharmony. In reality, most people have no idea what they're looking at; good, bad or ugly. The most important design element is actionability. Comprehension is the sexiest design aesthetic.
Do you think it's worth practising? I mean, it's not like we want to become professional designers, we just want to validate customer demand in the cheapest way possible.
I guess my impetus for saying, "You gotta practice," is because (as a designer by trade) I get a lot of requests to tell people how to design successfully. As if I can utter a sequence of steps, then the knowledge has been transferred.
I was simply trying to manage your expectations. You might not need expectation management, I don't know. I'm just saying, it's not as simple as, "Tell me how to design."
Results and mileage may vary.
If you want to accomplish anything, you'll have to practice some. That might mean an hour; that might mean thirty years. You have to determine your own threshold.
If your passion isn't there, then I'm slightly inclined to say it's not worth much hardcore practice. But if you simply want to get your product to market and you're not looking to win awards; read all of the links provided here (good stuff), use your brains, and bang something out. How pretty it ends up being depends on how much work you put into it, and what you learned along the way.
I've seen people go from zero to pretty okay in a week. It depends on the individual and that individual's willingness to invest in the process.
Makes a lot of sense, and that's basically what I've been doing so far.
I just often feel like it takes a lot of time for me - a non-designer - to churn out something that's pretty mediocre. It feels like a poor use of my time.
"Become a passionate designer" is a reasonable way forward, though.
Some great resources in here - really appreciate the comments.
I mean that's a skill you might need to develop but it isn't that hard.
For UI the best resource for technical people is Refactoring UI -> https://refactoringui.com/
As far as SaaS Landing page goes (which is my specialty) is more about the content and the explanation (where most technical people struggle...) than the actual design.
I've created a SaaS Landing page cheatsheet you can copy, slap on a template and it should be ready to go ;) -> SaaS Landing page Cheatsheet
Good luck!
What I do is take a screenshot of every site / product I like and keep a directory of those in a 'product-design' project.
Then I just scan through them when I'm stuck.
@pedrocortes
Thanks for the mention ;)
I know who to call.