read my menu. I can't even order.

This is again an example of form this

idea of well, we want to make people feel like this is a romantic premium,
incredible experience but then if I can't even read the menu, why am I
here? This happens all the time. One of my favorite books that I highly
recommend that you read is Don Norman's Design of Everyday Things, and he
basically has a whole chapter about this on doors that are incredibly
beautiful, but you have no idea how to use them. So this is one of the more
absurd situation. So like someone actually had a right pull on this thing,
because too many people could not figure out how to use a door. A door is
one of the simplest things that you could possibly try to use, but when you
put form over function, if you put the wrong door, or it's too elegant, it's not
clear how you use it, well that's missing the point. So if you take a moment
and try to think through, why is it that we see form over function so
much in the things we use, the products we use just walking around in our
daily lives. Why does this happen? Clearly, this should not happen and so
that form should follow function. Deep down, I really want to emphasize the
one thing that frankly as founders, I think you need to spend a lot of time
on, and that's empathy. This is the thing that I admire, one of the things
that I admired the most about my time, both working at YC but also as a
founder going through Y Combinator back in 2008. It was sitting down with
Paul Graham, he would give us such incredible advice about specifically
what are your users thinking? What are they feeling? Why are they here?
Really being able to peel away the layers of I know we're sitting in a room
looking at this particular UI, but put yourself in the shoes of someone who
has never seen this before. This is something we'll come back to again and
again. One of the things that I put actually in my recommendations for
design resources and on its face, it's absurd, this is this depression era
book written by Dale Carnegie, a self help book. I actually think that it
should basically be required reading for founders. It's that one must
actually become genuinely interested in other people, So part of the
problem with form over function, and this actually happens even in the best
products. I'd like to call out apple for its notch, that is the definition of form
over function. This is a photo from their marketing website, and certainly
it's incredibly novel. Certainly it serves the purpose of a marketer to be
able to have this very novel, different thing and differentiate it from all of
these other smartphones out there. In terms of function when I'm watching
a video, this is categorically worse. Like why am I ... I'm not here for the
notch, I'm here for the content and this happens all over the place. You
might go to a restaurant later tonight, and it's a beautiful restaurant.
Incredibly well decorated, very, very thoughtful, incredible food, but
you'll walk in and you'll sit down at this seat and gosh, it's so romantic
but I really can't you actually have to see their point of view. You want to
be able to be sympathetic, understand what are their ideas, what do they
understand and what do they actually want. This goes back to YC itself.
The first day you get into YC, you get a tee shirt that says make something
people want. I think, I don't know if they still do this but do they, do you
still get a tee shirt if you get an exit that says, I made something people
want? Yes, I need to get mine by the way. Shoot, okay. Maybe that's why I
haven't gotten mine yet. Okay. One of the things that's really interesting
about building highly technological products is that we often think about
them as incredibly complicated machinery someone might have, but if you
buy any of these products and you have that problem you're trying to solve,
now you have two problems. If anything, each one of these inventions were
created mainly to serve the central problem of the inventor, of the inventor
wanting something to solve. So this is the opposite again, just to give more
examples, this is the opposite of empathy. This is something, this is you
putting novelty, putting one zone interests ahead of your users, of society,
of the people around you. So at the end of the day, if there's no problem,
then there's no solution. It ends up being designed for its own sake and
design for its own sake isn't designed, it's art. There's nothing wrong with
art. I love art, but that's not what we're here for actually. It's founders
creating things that people don't actually need, engineers do this too.
Make stuff that we think we need and then actually it's not better, it's not
novel, it's not something that other people actually want, and that's a
problem. So there are so many types of design, it's no mistake that some of
the most obvious examples of companies that are designed driven, they're
actually hardware companies. There are as many kinds of design as types
of things that humans need, it's no mistake by that. Architecture is
absolutely a form of design, branding and identity, communication design.
Being able to communicate something using data and iconography, or
maps, or charts. Furniture design, a piece of furniture easily has all the
same mechanisms as anything else that a human being might use. A
landscape design, how does someone go into a place, how do they use
it, where do they know where to go? Packaging, so how does this make me
feel when this arrives on my doorstep if this is a gift? Why is there a gift
box anyway? What is the form and function of each piece of this
physical object? Transportation design, a car is one of the most evocative
things. It's your almost entirely pure emotion. For the people in this room, I
think these are probably the ones that are most relevant to you, and we're
going to spend a bunch of time talking about that. So this is again an
extreme oversimplification, but the way I would break it down in terms of
design for startups really is product design. So what's the problem and
who's it for? Interaction design, so how do we actually do that? How do I
actually create wireframes, create the flows, create the intermediate step
between that and the Pixel perfect, ready to go, ready to implement thing?
The visual design really is about that last mile. Part of the reason why we
divide this up this way, to be frank the ideal is that you have a co founder
on your team who is able to do all of these. Then if they can co, that's
amazing. If they can do business too, that's incredible but that's obviously a
unicorn. Unicorns are incredibly rare, they do exist though and I'm sure
there were a few unicorns in this room as a matter of fact. Certainly quite a
few watching online, so shout out to the Unicorns in the room. Part of it is
you will find very specific people who have experience, and who are
extremely good usually at one of these things. If you can find someone
who's good at a few of them, you're really, really blessed. Man, if you can
find someone who can do all of those things, immediately make them a co
founder but only if you've known them for a while. Going back to the overall
product process, there is a sequential aspect to it. Truly you start with
product design and each of these it really is a little bit of a water flow
sometimes. You really can't start interaction design without
actually capturing requirements. Then finally of course, engineering. Ideally
you're in conversation all the way through, but engineering and actually
implementation often that is something that happens afterwards. . The most
useful mental model for me in what I've been doing is actually to not think
of it as building a car, or even building a website, or writing software, or
anything like that. It's actually about throwing the best possible party you
possibly can. So if you think about great parties you've been to, there is no
line. You're ushered right in, a human being, ideally someone you know,
someone who's very friendly comes to you and says, "Hey, welcome. I'm so
glad you're here. Here are your friends. Let me take your coat, beers are
over here." That politeness, that inviting welcome nature, that
thoughtfulness, that's something that you really have to keep in mind as
you do your work as not just a designer, but as a founder. The key piece
here is actually knowing what problem you're actually solving. Just being
very crystal clear, and this is if I'm starting to sound like a ... If I'm
repeating myself, that in a nutshell is I think what you're going to get over
and over again at startup school is that really, how do we be as crisp as
possible about, here's the problem that we need to solve. This is the core
tenet of design thinking as well. So part of the problem with not knowing
what your problem is and going back to lack of empathy, and going back to
basically form over function is that if you don't know who that user is, what
their problem is, then you are in danger of creating something like this. So
if you, basically each of these do talk about a particular product. They refer
to a particular problem that