Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software wants to hire a UX/graphic design person. Here’s the meat of the job posting:
UX and Graphic Designer
At Fog Creek Software, we love great design and know how important it is. But to be honest, this is a company founded by developers, and we’re just not very good at it.
If you dare to accept this challenge, you’re going to change all that.
This is not just a job; it’s a mission. You will work on all parts of our product portfolio, improving, revamping, redecorating, and redesigning. That includes three major products currently under active development and a bunch of websites that support them. We have a wide variety of projects and a diverse selection of work to do that includes:
- Graphic design
- Web design
- Print design (including brochures, logos, stationary, even the occasional book)
- User Experience design
- Navigation and information architecture
- Design for usability
Qualified candidates will have extensive training and experience in a variety of aspects of design including graphic design, web design, user experience, and information architecture…
My gut reaction is: “There’s no way one person can do all that.”
It’s not just that there aren’t enough hours in a day; it’s that each of those line items are very different disciplines. You do want people with overlapping skillsets, but no great print designer is also a great web designer, and a great logo designer, and a great book designer, and a great software product designer.
Joel’s job post did get me thinking though. If I were the king of Fog Creek Software, what would I do? More to the point, how would you make user experience a core value at a mature company? If Quality is Fractal, how do you bake it in after the fact?
The good news is that Fog Creek already acts as if Quality is Fractal. The Joel Test hints at this, as do Joel’s obsessions with creating great working conditions and making workers the god of their area of responsibility.
So, here’s what I would do:
Hire a GOD of UX, not a pixel pusher.
Maybe call them the Chief Taste Officer. You’re looking for someone who is equal parts Steve Jobs, Don Draper, and Seth Godin. Assuming such a person exists (and that you can hire them) they will be responsible for Quality, top to bottom, and they’ll have the power (hiring, budget, creative authority, whatever it takes) to make it happen.
This is a pretty tall order. It may even be impossible. Apple was able to do it, but only because Steve Jobs is a genius who wanted his baby back, and Apple was circling the drain so Jobs was given the time and authority he needed to remake the company.
Maybe it is possible for a smaller company like Fog Creek to reinvent itself with a “Quality or die” approach, but can you imagine Google or Microsoft trying to do so? The engineers, MBAs, and shareholders would never stand for it.
Notes:
While writing this post, Jin Yang pointed me to this StackOverflow podcast where Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood — both programmers who hire designers — talk about Joel’s UX job posting, design in general, hiring designers, and why client and design consultant relationships go wrong. It’s worth a listen, start at about 36 minutes in.
Both of them understand that Quality can’t be tacked on, but you get a sense that like many software developers, they’re very reluctant to allow anyone else in the software design driver’s seat. I believe there are coder culture reasons for this reluctance, but that’s a topic for another time.