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A comment on Poll: Does your startup have a designer on the founding team?. Parent comment

Re:Poll: Does your startup have a designer on the founding t... by stingraycharles on Monday November 02, 2009 @03:36PM (#917834)
I do not see a designer as someone critical to the success of a startup -- you can safely hire an external designer who isn't necessarily as passionate about the company and still get a very decent design. Furthermore, I kinda see design as a problem that needs to be solved once, while technical and sales/marketing problems continuously arise and need to be solved.

Disclaimer: I'm in a niche enterprise market, so design is less important for me than startups developing for consumers.

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Re:Poll: Does your startup have a designer on the founding t... by replicatorblog on Monday November 02, 2009 @03:53PM (#917888)
I think you are certainly right that design is less of a success factor in the enterprise, though 37 Signal shows that a bit of design can get people excited about a fairly underfeatured (intentionally or not) product.

I think of something like World of Warcraft that wouldn't work as a tech only company with no design/narrative. Same thing with a lot of iPhone apps

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Re:Poll: Does your startup have a designer on the founding t... by stingraycharles on Monday November 02, 2009 @04:40PM (#918013)
I think you are certainly right that design is less of a success factor in the enterprise, though 37 Signal shows that a bit of design can get people excited about a fairly underfeatured (intentionally or not) product.

Yeah, that reminds of client who once told me "people want their beer with foam" as a metaphore: no matter where you go, people are still people, and they like to be pampered.

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