Do early stage startups really need visual designers?

A few weeks ago we had put up an article about how design puts a startup in a catch 22 sort of situation, primarily for two reasons - a) It is necessary, and b) It is expensive. Many have suggested that a founding team should have a designer on board, so as to not incur the cost of a designer that most early stage startups cannot afford.

But if you think about it, design houses must have such high rates for a reason. While there is no specific science to pricing, most companies go with what the market is ready to pay for a service or product. This could mean that the majority of the design houses' customers are those who can afford such high costs.

Which brings me to the first question - Is visual design really needed for an early stage startup?

What is good design? 

This might sound a little rhetorical, but with everyone talking about the importance of having great design, I think not everyone knows what great design is. The great designer Dieter Rams, has 10 principles that define good design. So influential was his work in the field of design, that the likes of

Steve Jobs wanted to hire Dieter Rams to design Apple Products. Jobs had to settle for FrogDesign founder, Hartmut Esslinger, a good friend of Dieter Rams.If you were to go through the 10 principles, there is nothing about the way a product looks that makes a great design. Not a single point. Which leads to my second question -

Do you really need visual design?

Well, what are you building? 

I spoke to a few Indian designers who've been in the space for a good few years; they shared and they echoed each other's sentiments. We asked Harish Shivaramakrishnan, who has been a worldwide evangelist and usability expert at Adobe and a UX architect at Myntra, if startups need to worry as much as they do about visual design. He says, "Before even thinking about visual design, a designer should actually set up an information infrastructure and have defined workflow set up. If your designer sits with photoshop from day one, you're in trouble. However, you need to know what you're building. If it's a core utility application that you're building, then visual design can take a back seat. But if you're building a lifestyle e-commerce site, then

visual design cannot wait."Kingsley Joseph, co-founder of travel startup TripThirsty believes that the requirement of visual design is subjective. He says, "It really depends on what you're building. For example, if you're building a game, the development process starts with sketches. Having said that, the vast majority of applications being built today are mainly utilitarian, which don't need so much visual appeal. Of course, they must have a good sense of aesthetics - if you were to launch something that looks like Naukri or Craiglist, no one is going to spare another look. There is a basic sanity level in building products which has become more standardized over the past few years. While I don't think visual design is unnecessary, it isn't the first priority for utility products and product startups."

So why are startups so keen on getting good visual design?

Design - a misunderstood fad 

TripThirsty founder, Kingsley believes that the Indian VC community has made design a checkbox to tick while considering to fund a startup. He says, "With VCs going around asking for "design centric" startups, startups looking for funding will obviously start looking for designers. Now most people misunderstand design to be only looks." This leads to a vicious cycle - a startup shells out a lot of money to a designer or a design house and ends up not getting the product that they need.

Sachin Gupta, co-founder of HackerEarth says, "People are attached to experiences of a product and not the way it looks. Not many will remember how the older versions of Facebook looked. Whatever new iteration they throw at us, we quietly accept because the interaction with the site has stayed the same over the past years. The same with Google. Those subtle color and font changes drew a lot of criticism from within Google itself, but at the end of the day it didn't matter, as the interaction hardly changed. As an early stage startup, I think we've got to get aesthetics right; which button goes where and how will a functionality be used. The visual part of it comes much later."

Utsav Agarwal, co-founder of Nwplyng says, "If you look at the most popular mobile apps, they've somehow managed to make the experience of performing a function a lot easier than what it was. Most applications are minimal and use white spaces very well. On mobile, It is about getting the usability first and then the look, just right. When we launched the first version of the Nwplyng for iPhone, it didn't do very well, because we didn't pay any heed to design. The redesign not only changed the way it looked, but also the way a user would use it and the adoption has been much better because of that."

So, early stage startups, do you really need a visual designer? 

If you're building a fashion, lifestyle or portfolio sort of product, then visual design is a must. But I would assume that the founder of such a company comes with some sort of design background as well. For the other majority of companies looking to build utility products, why do you need a visual designer?

From speaking to a lot of people in the startup ecosystem, there seems to be a sense of intimidation with the word design, because of which, startups actually contemplate burning cash into it; something which they have so little of.

I think it is important to understand that visual design is a premium service. An early stage product startup needs to be worrying about getting interaction, experience and some level of aesthetics right. Do you really need a visual designer for that?

Tell us what you think.