How to be a CEO who cares about design
Khosla Ventures design operating partner, Irene Au, explains why design is crucial to a startup's success and how founders who don't have a design background can still flourish in this crucial area. Read More
Khosla Ventures design operating partner, Irene Au, explains why design is crucial to a startup's success and how founders who don't have a design background can still flourish in this crucial area. Read More
User experience design is a multidisciplinary field. A well-designed product must be visually appealing and simple, and easy to understand, learn and use. Creating a well-designed product is an endeavor that requires technical skills — an understanding of computer science, human computer interaction and visual perception and cognition — and tremendous creativity. Read More
The best thing you can do for your company as founder/CEO is to hire a great team, so it’s worth investing a lot of time and energy into writing a good job description. Even if you are relying mostly on your network to source candidates, you’re likely to need at least a description of your company to circulate to elicit interest from candidates. Read More
“Where do you find designers to hire?” Now that you understand what UX skills you need to have for your team and have written a job description that describes these needs, it’s time to get the word out and start recruiting. Read More
Before looking at the portfolio and when deciding whether to contact a candidate for a conversation, start with the resume to establish some expectations. Read More
The phone screen is an opportunity to make sure the designer and opportunity are potentially a good fit for each other, based on obvious criteria: salary expectations, role and responsibilities, skills required, potential interest, and communication skills. Read More
These 5 C’s are essential ingredients for making your company attractive designers, based on my own experience of recruiting hundreds of UX people to join companies that were not originally obvious places for designers to join, and based on the experience and advice of two of the best and well-known UX recruiters in our industry. Read More
“How much does a designer typically make?” The answer to this question varies widely, based on a number of factors: Current comp, Comp history, Competing offers, How long has the company been looking, How important is the role to fill, How much do you want the person, Quality of the candidate’s skills and experience. Read More
Today, design is as important as technology. I was meeting with a startup last week when the principal architect asked me why is design more important now than ever before? And to answer that, let’s reflect on the evolution of automobile design. Read More
Design matters. In 1980, when I was working on my first startup, Daisy Systems, I hired my first designer, David Kelley. This was long before his IDEO days and much to the chagrin of people who thought we were wasting precious venture money. The attitude towards design has since changed dramatically; mobile is the ultimate example. Cell phones were around for decades and then the iPhone came along and that changed everything. It also changed the perception of design’s role in technology, not just in terms of aesthetics but also in user experience and design thinking. Read More