We are in an age where even ramen-lovin' back-end programmers with no design talent (like myself) have no excuse for ugly web designs.

Thomas and I chat about this periodically. For about $15, an hour of browsing ThemeForest, and half a morning with 960.gs and Compass/Sass/whathaveyou, you can make any throwaway app look like it had someone with actual design talent touch it.

http://themeforest.net/item/simplpan-admin-panel-template/fu...

That's one I just happened to grab out of a search for "admin". Does it look like something that got Jediguruninja handling from a team of bespoke design consultants? No, but it sure craters the approach to that bridge, for three to four orders of magnitude cheaper.

Patio11- Design is not just about pretty colors and interface... its more about understanding the audience and their interaction before delving into creating the best user experience. Therefore, what you suggest could be a temporary quick fix that will not give you the results for a sustaining business.

You can never expect a kickass programmer to also have the best design chops. They require different forms of thinking. So stop giving false advise to programmers on enlisting design skills and instead partner with the best designers!

Don't think of the $15 theme as permanently defining the look and feel of your site. It needs to be just good enough when you're starting to look like you have some legitimacy. If you're startup is going to be generating any amount of significant revenue for you, after some amount of time, you'll be able to go back and revisit the design.

If you're a programer and not a designer, just think of your design as another optimization point.

Whenever I worry about the design/branding of my current startup, I visit the historical timeline of amazon's logo as a reminder that we'll be able to make it better eventually, but there's more important things to work on now: http://www.kokogiak.com/gedankengang/2004/07/amazoncom-logo-...

Thanks for sharing the Amazon logo timeline. I have never seen that before and am surprised to see how much it has evolved...

"Understanding the audience and their interaction" is commonly referred to by programmers as "usability engineering" (in design terms, it's also known as interaction design, which is a sub-discipline of industrial design.) It's a talent very similar to programming, and one almost all programmers are good at, for the same reasons they're good at programming: it involves structural analysis of the actions users are performing, getting into the mindset of users, a lot of problem solving and "polishing off burrs" to optimize and automate workflows.

On the other hand, communications design—what you call "pretty colors and interface"—is an entirely different set of skills, honed mainly by years of critical exposure to different visual aesthetics and artisanal practice in replicating those aesthetics to understand their composition. It's an orthogonal skill to programming—but, once it has been done and a suitable aesthetic created for a piece, it's pretty easy for a programmer to take the results (a "theme"), break it down structurally into re-usable components, and then apply those components to solve their problems. The bit the programmer is untrained at, the understanding of what works with what, has already been performed by the designer.

Right - but pretty colors and interfaces go a long way towards someone saying "you know what? I will read the about page" vs. "woah, this is gross - they expect people to use this?".

For $15, you probably won't get the most absolutely-custom-tailor-made experience - but you might at least get something that convinces visitors to take a closer look.

To me, app design goes beyond just looks. Its how it works... how well it flows the user into getting exactly what they want done when they want it. Every color has a purpose for main and secondary actions, every shape has a purpose. Well designed UI will draw a users eyes to what is critical, what is major later, and what is 'be cool to use'.

Ive ran across apps that simply look good but terrible user experience. User experience is what separates the amateur apps to the full blown mega millions..

Thanks for the link patio, found a few that I bookmarked for future use hopefully.

There is a reason why Steve Jobs is successful :)

As a programming single-founder, you have already taken the first major step! You realize your core competency and your weakness and the importance of filling that gap. I wouldn't be that disappointed because I know of a lot of programmers that don't even take that first step. Most of them don't value design because its a foreign world to them.

The biggest recommendation I would have for you is to find a designer that will take your framework and elevate it to the user experience that makes sense to the world...

The Groove team definitely nailed it when they said that design is an important element...

In the same boat as you being a programmer. Apart from Elance for design (ew), and not having design contacts, how would one go about finding a designer to work with?

It's tough. I've had the most success with referrals from friends in the industry. I don't think the average Elance designer is at the level you see on Groove.