The Unicorn Designer — Full Stack Designer
What’s a full stack designer?
A full stack designer is a multidisciplinary individual who offers multiple skills sets but thinks about projects more holistically and comprehensively. They get involved in every stage of a product design: research, design, HTML/CSS.
Full stack does not mean to do all. Specifically, it refers to a person who masters multi-skills and he can use them to independently complete a design or product development.
With the rise of startups and consumer facing products and teams that are small and lean, companies are really looking for individuals that have a wide array of skills sets that they can apply for instance.
The stacks in the unicorn horn
1st stack: UX design (User experience design)
- Layouts and wireframes , user research, and fining the core demographic so that you know who you should be designing for . This is the very start of the design process.
2nd stack: UI Design (User interface design)
- This is the lipstick or makeup applied to the UX design. UI world is where you will be focusing on about visual design and graphic design, colours, typography layout the things that make an product,app, website etc desirable aesthetically.
3rd stack: Interaction design
- Prototype, animate , think about interactions in your designs
4th stack: Front end Dev
- HTML, CSS, Javascript.
Pros
- Comprehensive thinking. Unicorn who is familiar with the product development and design process, and knows the limitations of product designs. Fullstack designers, think about the strategy and the structure as well as the visuals and you’re thinking about the way things move and change and interact and then you’re bringing them to life in some of the kind of client-side technologies that’s that feel like a very comprehensive stack for you to offer to any employer or client.
- Understands separate areas. A full stack designer understands how all the separate areas of the design and development process interconnects. More understanding of the user and the business. The user’s always comes first, a unicorn understands the user’s needs and motivations but also the structure of the product, development process, marketing, and other details that create the context of a product development.
- Variety in opportunities. Unicorns experience a wider variety of activities.
- Unicorns are great freelancer. There are allot of value for clients who make use of freelance full stack designers .
Cons
- Jack of all trades and master of none. Even though a unicorn may possess multiple skills, some may be less or more developed than other. Unicorns aren’t able to get as much detailed experience as specialists do, in either user research or design.
- It’s hard to keep up with new technologies. With the industry growing at such a fast rate, there’s a new language, library, and use pattern by the end of each day.
- Time management. Unicorns time is more difficult to manage because you have to plan three disciple and account. It’s a lot of work for one person to do all of the user research, design, and usability testing on a project.
Summary
If you are a Unicorn or full stack designer you will undoubtedly add a great value to your team. Unicorns have the ability to step in at any phase of a project and help out even outside their area of focus. If you are a freelance designer, it is necessary to be a full stack designer.
