Is Becoming a Full-Stack Designer a Bless or a Curse?
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Many of today’s tech job specs are multi-disciplinary, meaning it’s increasingly difficult to pinpoint and define a clear scope of skillsets and job descriptions for a specific job role. This is especially common in the landscape of startups where the broadest possible spectrum of skills for an individual role is desired by the employers.
In the case of UX/UI designers, many will start off with a focus on the visual and aesthetic designs of the product being developed, but will soon receive requests to handle marketing related tasks such as social media promotion, landing page and edm design, and even print promotion.
Soon enough, these designers will realize the lack of competent in their project management, frontend coding, copywriting, and much more. They are then on the quest to plan their next step in acquiring new set of skills to boost their career development and advance in their career path.
If the above scenario is what you are currently facing, you might already be unwittingly on the path of becoming a full-stack designer.
What Defines a Full-Stack Designer?
Simply put, a full-stack designer is a designer that is involved at every stages of the product design process, from project planning, product positioning, market and user research, user experience design, to UI design implementation, and sometimes even coding. This might seem overwhelming, challenging and unrealistic, but definitely satisfying and rewarding down the road for being able to become this unicorn designer.
Full-stack designer is rare, and often can earn a thick paycheck. They typically have an understanding of the entire product development process, possess a broad inventory of skills including UX and UI design, frontend coding, project management, UX writing, creating design systems, prototype testing, and is familiar with a wide range of design software including Sketch, Figma, InVision, Zeplin, Adobe Suite, etc.
Are Full-Stack Designers Desirable?