Silicon Valley tech companies are increasingly favoring designers

Absrtact: In Friday, Reuters published an article saying that Silicon Valley technology companies are becoming more and more interested in design talent, under the influence of Jobs ' legacy and the prospect of technological prosperity, while design-college graduates are keen to join technology companies. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors agree that

In an article published in Friday, Reuters reported that Silicon Valley technology companies are becoming more and more interested in design talent, with Jobs ' legacy and the prospect of technological prosperity, while design-college graduates are keen to join technology companies. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors agree that corporate development must have a keen talent for design, but it is not easy, and big companies, including Google and Facebook, are competing with start-ups for good design talent.

The following is the full text of the Reuters article:

Justin Edmund, five years ago, came to Mellon University, a freshmen of artistic talent with the dream of joining a well-known design company such as Ideo or frog. However, in his sophomore year, a Facebook employee's recruiting book attracted his attention and prompted him to change his ideals.

"I never thought I'd be able to work for a tech company," Edmund said. I completely changed my trajectory. "So, in 2010, Edmund an internship at Facebook's newly established design team and eventually joined Pinterest, who was Edmund at the age of 21, playing a central role in the development of the virtual Clipboard site as the hottest start-up in the Internet arena.

Edmund's experience is not a special case. Under the influence of Jobs ' legacy and the prospect of technological development, young designers flocked to Silicon Valley to shake off a culture of engineers and programmers.

This new "User experience" designer is an artist and programmer, as well as a scientist who is the hottest employee in the tech industry. A new survey by the American Association of Graphic Arts Research shows that entry-level interactive designers are making an easy 80,000 dollar break, almost as much as twice times the median income of a graphic media designer (45,000 dollars).

The training of design talents

The top wind investment company, from Google Wind to Andreessen Horowitz company, are recruiting interior designers for young start-up companies to help. An angel investor even set up a designer fund to look for start-up companies driven by design talent.

To meet demand, new digital design courses have sprung up in the past two years, such as at Stanford's elite engineering universities and the California Academy of Art. The New York Institute of Visual Arts opened a digital design course in 2009, and the number of applications for the course has increased by 43%.

Entrepreneurs and investors believe that the development of digital design shows the progress of Silicon Valley.

The new generation of startups is focused on mobile device applications and social networks, and relies on increasingly low-cost cloud computing services, where success is no longer based on breakthrough technology, but on how to make functionality useful, interactive, and subtle.

The latest example is Instagram, a picture-sharing app that has just been bought by Facebook at a premium of 1 billion dollars. The founder of the company, which has only 12 people, is Kevin Strom (Kevin systrom) and Maik Crigger (Mike Krieger), Strome graduated from Stanford University in Management science and engineering, while Crigger specializes in "people interacting with the computer and the user experience".

Eric Feng, founder of Erly, a photo-sharing company, said: "It is important and increasingly widely recognized that the company's first employees should be talented people with a keen sense of design." Eric Feng The same goes for big companies like Google and Facebook, which are already moving in this direction. "Eric Feng has served as the chief technology officer for Hulu and worked as a partner at Kleiner, a venture capital firm.

Facebook design Team

Of course, engineers still occupy the top spot in Silicon Valley's talent level and the most competitive talent, but even Facebook, a "hacker" culture, has begun to talk about integrating "design thinking" into its products and constantly strengthening its design department.

Facebook's design team is located at its Menlo Menlo Park Office, where the studio is brightly coloured, and design director Kate Aronovitz (Kate Aronowitz) sends designers and engineers, product managers, and sometimes a researcher into a group that conceives new products, or improve the user information or communication services and other functions.

Aronovitz says the passion for design began with the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has repeatedly stressed the importance of building an excellent design team. Zuckerberg

In a highly competitive recruiting environment, even companies like Facebook will find it difficult to get good design talent. Under the toughest circumstances, Aronovitz will play his cards: she will ask Zuckerberg to call himself.

"This will work when they don't return my mail," says Aronovitz. "Aronovitz himself was dug up from LinkedIn by Zuckerberg in 2009. "I'm lucky to have the cards," she said. ”

The design team became the focus of attention last November, when Facebook said data virtualization expert Nicolas Felton Nicholas Felton The Timeline interface, one of Facebook's most important revisions in recent years.

The importance of design to start-up companies

The angel investor David Mcclure Dave McClure for early startups, understanding the impact of design on user behavior is more critical. He cites Mint, an online management tool for personal finance, as an example of a start-up company that was Intuit in 2009.

Jason Putorti, founder of Mint, has made its website interface "warmer," Mcclure said, a key to a start-up that deals with sensitive information. The design "makes this application feel trustworthy, comfortable and functional," he says.

Last year, Mcclure invested in a "designer fund" designed to identify entrepreneurs with strong design backgrounds and provide them with seed money, as well as guidance from senior entrepreneurs such as Putotti and YouTube founder Chad Heli (Chad Hurley). Enrique Allen, the fund's Enrique Allen, is a 25-year-old graduate of the Stanford University Design Institute, with partners including Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner and other well-known VCs.

"We have to change the way we start businesses," says Mcclure. But he added that "there is still a lot of resources and talent shortages" for interactive designers.

The difficulty of finding a design person

However, it is not easy to find good design talent. Last year, Calvin Wang, co-founder of Ridejoy, a carpool service provider, said he had "a few months of hard times" to recruit interactive designers.

Dirk Cleveland, director of Riviera, the Silicon Valley search firm, said it was difficult for startups to find designers who designed "Kirin", the interactive digital technology that many application startups need.

Cleveland said: "This can be said to be the most difficult to fill the post, supply and demand completely unbalanced." Engineering education has made progress, and startups want to do more with limited resources, but I don't think it has anything to do with design. ”

Calvin Wang said that although he left 150 resumes, "a lot of startups and a lot of technology companies are competing for them, which is a bit ridiculous." Ridejoy interviewed candidates from Toronto, New York and the Midwest and eventually hired a graduate from the Parsons Design Institute (Parsons parochial).

"We have to go outside of Silicon Valley because the Bay Area designers have a lot of options, they either choose a company that they know, or they choose a big company like Google," says Calvin Wang. ”

The vision of Design college students

The job market has not escaped the attention of design schools across the United States.

Liz Danzico, founder director of the Lize Danzico of Interactive Arts at the New York Institute of Visual Arts, said the initial goal was simply to understand the direction of the innovative economy, "and now we can actually experience that economy".

Danzico expects most graduates to stay in the traditional design hotbed of New York. After investigating her first graduate, she was surprised to find that nearly half of the students went to the West Coast to join technology companies such as Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Yelp.

"Students, employers and even professors are talking enthusiastically about the prospects of working in Silicon Valley," Kelly Lauchi Kelly Lau-kee, a junior student at Mellon University's industrial design program.

Labor said she was able to see pictures of Facebook and Instagram posted by friends who had been hired by startups every day, outlining a picture of California's life: Stylish workplaces, trendy co-workers, and the bright sunshine that comes through the window. She said: "A lot of people like this kind of work and entertainment thinking, start-up companies that propaganda done very well." This is a culture that we are very willing to experience. ”

Wayne C, professor of industrial design at Mellon University. Mr Chung said the new economy in the field of employment was evident in schools, where traditional design companies that had been battered by the last recession had significantly reduced hiring, while technology companies maintained their recruiting efforts on campus.

Wayne often predicts that after the end of the semester, a large number of graduates will travel to the west coast of Silicon Valley. "There is nothing more exciting in their hearts and eyes," he said. ”