"Anyone who makes a decision about how the product should be is a designer. Designer is a role, not a person. Almost every developer on a team makes some decision about how the product will be, just through the act of creating the product. These decisions are design decisions, and when you make them, you're a designer. For this reason, no matter what role on a development team, an understanding of the principles of design will make you better at what you do."...While I agree with Jesse Schell, what we are highlighting, the potential for designer founders, is not mutually exclusive with your concern...there are many ways to get design done eg Jared Spool lays out some types (I am by no means advocating for one size fits all), but I am saying that having a strong design leader may help your team (the best ones don't have to control every little detail, they empower others), it's like having an editor eg http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/technology/what-apple-has-.... my major issue with design thinking and make everyone a "designer" so easily is you lose a bar of quality, craft, and professionalism that you want everyone to aspire to be...just like you'd want your CTO to inspire other developers to work with him/her, you want a designer founder to do the same...great talent attracts other great talent... It makes sense that a prerequisite for a tech company is to have a founder with technical skills. The same heuristic should hold true if you want to consistently ship well designed products like Pinterest, AirBnB and Path. Why not have a co-founder with design skills who champions the user experience?
Since I currently have a co-founder with design skills who champions user experience, I'm for that.
I'm also all for inspiring leaders. But in the startup context, I think the job of "designer" is as dangerous as its technical equivalent "architect". As Schell points out, design is a pervasive concern, just like software architecture is. A CTO who fancies himself chief architect is likely to drive off good talent, because talented people want to solve whole problems, not mechanically execute somebody else's vision.
I think the same applies for the visible sorts of design just as much as it does for the under-the-hood design: if everybody cares (which requires feeling empowered to make things happen) you'll get a better product.
Exalting designers as founders does not mean the designers are sitting in a throne ordering their minions to do the coding. I'd argue that any startup that has a "designer founder" today, that designer is getting their hands dirty with working with the code — perhaps not to the level of a true developer, but actually ideating and executing their vision. Why not encourage this? Does every startup need to just be a business/dev pair with a designer employee, or is it okay to someone who feels they're a designer first in the founder position?
My main issue here is with exalting "design" as if it were a separable activity from the rest of making something. Everybody at a startup should feel that they're a designer first. Because they are: each person's work should have a significant impact on the user experience.
