In the last decade, high-quality design has become a necessity in the software space. Great design is a commodity, not a luxury, and yet, designing beautiful products and finding great designers continues to be a struggle for many entrepreneurs.
At Early Stage 2021, design expert Scott Tong walked us through some of the ways founders should think about design. Tong was involved in product and brand design at some of the biggest brands in tech, including IDEO, IFTTT, Pinterest and more. He’s now a partner at Design Fund.
Tong explained how to think about brand as more than a logo or a social media presence, what design means and the steps that come before focusing on the pixels, and gave guidance on when entrepreneurs should hire third-party design agencies or bring on full-time talent.
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Reputation
“The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation,” wrote Shakespeare. Though we often think of a brand as a logo or a social media persona, a brand is the equivalent of a person’s reputation. It signifies what the company and products stand for, and it has an element of being memorable for something, whether it’s prestige, like for Chanel, or terrible customer service, like for Comcast.
The closest word in the English language to brand is actually reputation. The analogy is that brand is to company as reputation is to person. If you can link your brand with your company’s reputation, I think it’s a really great place to start when you’re having conversations about brands. What is the first impression? What are the consistent behaviors that your brand hopes to repeat over and over? What are the memorable moments that stand out and make your brand, your reputation memorable? (Timestamp: 2:40)
Existing versus preferred
Tong outlined what design is truly about. There are many different schools of thought on design methodology and there are many different types of design. You may be thinking about product design and logo design and brand design all at the same time, and the only way to successfully hire for those tasks and complete them is to understand what design is, at its core.
To design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones, according to the economist Herbert Simon. That definition has stuck with me for many years, because it highlights two different states: existing and preferred. When you’re thinking about existing situations, you have to come to a kind of shared understanding of what is true today with your product, with your service, with your brand, whatever you’re designing. What works, what doesn’t and why? That’s kind of the starting place for any new thing or incremental change that you hope to improve on.
And then when you get to a preferred situation, embedded in the word “preferred” is, “Who is this preferred for?” and how is this better for this audience that you have some intent to make the situation better for. So really keeping those words in mind, existing and preferred, and the transition between them … the intent behind the transition between the existing state and the preferred state … is really something to keep in mind when you’re thinking about design. You know, it’s not just about the pixels at the end of it, it’s the thinking that goes behind it. (Timestamp: 5:55)
Iteration
When working alongside designers, many entrepreneurs seem to miss an important step in the process. The designer needs to understand the difference between the existing and preferred states, and comprehend the deeper problem and solution. Tong explains it as the difference between designing the right thing and designing the thing right.
A good designer and design team will think about both sides of this equation: Are we designing the right thing? Or are we spending our time polishing and finessing and making sure that this is the best possible version of the current solution? Over time, the right thing ends up becoming dated, or competition comes in and everybody copies the idea. Maybe there’s a need for innovation.
So you might go back after designing the thing right to designing the right thing again. I’ve also heard this articulated as problem-seeking versus problem-solving. And when you’re building products, especially in software, there is no real end state. It is an iterative process; it’s a dynamic process. You know, the user needs change, business needs change, technologies change. And so there is this need to vacillate between problem-seeking and problem-solving. (Timestamp: 9:08)
Tong also discussed how founders can navigate the decision of hiring a third-party design agency or hiring designers as full-time talent, which you can find at the 10-minute mark of the transcript below or in the video.
Check out the complete transcript of our conversation with Scott Tong here.