A good designer makes a huge difference.
As a startup, it’s of great necessity to hire a designer compatible with your demands. Even if you have some design knowledge, it’ll be extremely different when it comes to your business. If you have little knowledge about design, you’ll unfortunately not know where to go first.
However, there are some things you can start with to smoothly push your business by choosing a good designer.
Here are some principles to conform to as you are ready to hire your first designer below.
How to determine that you do need a designer?
It’s natural that whether you need to hire a designer mostly depends on your startup and its corresponding requirement.
Nevertheless, you should find a designer as soon as possible if you’re designing any product.
Keep in mind that what a designer does isn’t to make things beautiful alone while he/she does much more. Design plays an essential role in leading to users’ experience, which is especially important for products centering on users. What a designer does is raise correct questions or do research on competitive products to guarantee a product is designed to totally meet the demands of users.
Of course, some startups rely on UI tool kits or freelancers to do their product designs. However, it’s possible you will pay for bad designs in the future. Generally speaking, the later you’d like to pay for professional designers, the more cost you’ll pay in the future. The first impression of your product decides whether users would like to stick to it.
It’s understandable that each business has its own budget but the budget for design should never be saved. For example, the design of EasyLine cost us the most time at the beginning of product design and quite a number of versions have been denied with the current version being used now.
What do you need most for your first designer hiring?
There’s much work to be done before your first designer comes. After all, you don’t know you don’t know. However, there’s still something you can do to get the best ready for your product design.
Prioritize Your Design Requirement
First of all, you should clarify why you do need a designer.
When it comes to a startup or small business, the reasons for a designer include:
- Do you need a leading designer?
- Is branding your essential demand?
- Does your marketing or social media call for design participation?
With the questions above clarified, you can also do basic research about related design resources from the websites like Dribbble, Behance, DesignX, etc. You should constantly collect the designs that attract you, which will be the first-hand resources for your first designer. In addition, the designs should be also collected about your competitor or top product so that their own design advantages and disadvantages will be used as an important reference for designers.
Learn about Design as Much as Possible
It’s time to know about design knowledge if you’ve never done such a job. At least, you should be aware of what design is a good design and the basic principles of a good design. All such knowledge will help you find a really professional designer. Moreover, you can also from time to time visit some websites where designers share their designs like Canva or Pinterest.
Learn from Competitors’ Designs
Designs may vary from the product but they definitely share similar product features leading to the basic requirement for your hired designers. While using competitive products, the following questions should be answered or noticed:
- How well-used the products are?
- How do you feel while using the products?
- Do you feel happy as a product user using the product?
- The words on the products are clear and directive enough?
- Do you feel vague about some functions?
With all the questions carefully answered, you’ll figure out where to go when it comes to product design.
How to Hire a Perfect Designer?
It seems a myth that a perfect designer is expected. Don’t worry, then. The word “perfect” here refers to the fact that it’s perfect for you but not a perfect designer. The principles below should be kept in mind when selecting a designer.
Be Attractive
Designers are usually attracted by beautiful things so it’s equivalently a good idea to “decorate” your business into a nice one to attract excellent designers. An email is never enough to successfully persuade a designer to participate in your product team but you also need to talk with them via voice. You can call him or her and explain everything in detail about your product. It’s important to get a designer moved with constant calls than directly tell them to do a job thing.
Be “Lucky”
As a startup, it’s never possible to compare with a giant company in terms of salary or working conditions. However, such items may be unimportant for good designers since they have little interest in such things.
Therefore, as you interview a designer, talk more about the future and dreams. It’s necessary to share your ideas about the business’s future. Designers like stories and tell them good stories about your business.
Sometimes, you also need some luck, which is possible when a good designer resigns from a big company when you’re searching an excellent designer. Such an opportunity should be grasped without all efforts.