Let me start by saying that I have a marketing background and while design is pretty tight connected with marketing, I never saw it as something I needed to learn. I was wrong. My co-founder (let's call him D.) is a full-stack developer. Generally speaking, there are two types of developers: some are able to design and some are just not so good at it. D is more of the latter.
The problem
Last year, D and I started working on a price comparison website. I was the person with the idea and the business model and he was supposed to code it. Sounds simple, right?
Everything about the website was in my head: how the homepage should look like, what kind of settings will it have, the color palette etc. I envisioned a perfect high-converting website that looks amazing. However, soon I realized that the website will never look the way I imagined it , simply because my co-founder would take my notes and code a website according to his “taste”. Needless to say, I did not like it. While it had all the features, the way it was designed just didn’t meet my expectations. We ended up sitting in front of Photoshop and I was trying to explain what needs to be done, while he was adjusting it on the screen. Such a pain.
The solution
Right then and there, I realized that if I wanted to continue working with him and if we were to become a good team, I needed to desperately learn how to design. 2 months after , I was able to give more accurate directions of how something should be designed and adjust simple things like image size, edit the text and adjust the colors. Nowadays, I feel comfortable enough to design my own startup ideas. How great is that?!
By learning design, you will have the power to guide your technical co-founder, to help shape the product and to better understand how your potential customers will use your product.
What's in for me?
Here are my top 5 reasons to start learning design right now:
It gives you the power to visualize your ideas and eventually built your startup
It makes you aware of how users should use your product
You can communicate better with developers
You will be able to create websites that are functional and look great at the same time
Embrace your creativity and let the whole world see it!
These are just some of the reasons why you shouldn't wait and start your design journey right now :)
If you are in a similar situation, just go for it. It will pay off, I promise!
