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Why most startups suck - on doing better through design

Fred Oliveira on December 1, 2006

It bears no question that I believe design is a defining factor in the success or failure of any web-based product. These days, with “Web 2.0″ and rapid prototyping, anyone can have an idea and run with it - which is fantastic -, but with all the running and ad-based business-modelling, this huge part of the success puzzle is forgotten.

A clarification, first: I’m not talking about large type, gradient and rounded-corner design, but the understand user needs, develop meaningful experiences design. I’m talking about the art of tailoring products to the necessities of the user, creating emotional connections and building compelling solutions.

How you can do better

Forget that design is only about color picking, pantone matching, corner rounding, html producing and product embellishing. To “design” is to cater for the user’s needs, to think about your product at a high level. To figure out whether your value proposition matches what your users see.

If you spend time thinking about how your users see - and think about - your product before you get the Rails developers to build it and a fancy “web designer” to splash it with some gradients, you’re on the right path. What do people need, and how do you give it to them? What can you do and what can you NOT do to make people’s lives a little easier?

As Peter Merholz would say, stop designing products, start designing experiences. And please, stop building - and asking for - X-clones (where X is one of Myspace, Facebook, Flickr or Delicious) - you can be original if you think before you hit the huge “Build new success” red button.


Comments on this post

Hugo

I think you are totally correct. It’s amazing the number of services launched everyday, that doesn’t have any concerns with the usability of their sites.
By the way, congratulations for the redesign of webreakstuff’s blog.

Benjamin David

I agree with you, the number of sites that popup everyday on Buzzshout is amazing. I would say that a clone can be interesting when it solves a real problem, such as international language support. Many services like Flickr or Facebook are great but in France, most people just don’t use them, because most people don’t feel comfortable with English. Then a clone such as Zooomr is interesting (even if I don’t use it anyway).

Congratulation for the new design. The way you design so simple things but also very useful and powerful is killing me :)

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[...] WebBreakStuff get it absolutely right with their post today on Web 2.0 startups and the scourge that is wanting to be the next X (where X is one of Myspace, Facebook, Flickr or Delicious). [...]

Danny-T

Whilst I do agree wholeheartedly, I find it somewhat dismaying that ad driven business-modelled, company X clones do seem to perform so well whilst paying very little regard to usability and experience.

MySpace - wtf
YouTube - okay I can figure out how to play the vids, but what do the rest of the site features do?
FriendsReunited - has been forced to shoe-horn additional featues into a dated setup
Digg - at the risk of being flamed I really didn’t find this too intuitive off the bat or even now
etc…

Sites like MySpace, I believe, get where they have by massive corporate backing (Murdoch) and being able to take advantage of traditional forms of business practice and marketing, if you have the budget to advertise everywhere you’ll get the eyeballs you’re after. I would apportion some success also to being the first to get the ball-rolling in a big way (YouTube) as another success factor. YouTube and MySpace certainly aren’t the best-of-breed, however they were financially backed and early to do what they do.

Unfortunately smaller start-ups still have to rely on things such as mind-blowing design and usability with an objective of getting the word-of-mouth required to “make it”. All very David vs Goliath no?

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[...] [its not about the] …” large type, gradient and rounded-corner design, but the understand user needs, develop meaningful experiences design. I’m talking about the art of tailoring products to the necessities of the user, creating emotional connections and building compelling solutions. ” — Fred Oliveira [...]

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