Why startups need full stack product designers
We’re living in a world today where millions of new startups are launched each year. In fact, according to a GEM report, 3 new businesses are launched every second!
It’s a no-brainer that hiring the right product team is of utmost importance for most startups. However, startups find it very difficult to hire product talent. In my experience, this is because:
- Entrepreneurs often don’t understand the differences between the various product design fields.
- Product designers don’t possess general abilities in various design fields and usually have a niche (UI design, UX design, interaction design, graphic design, branding/illustrations, etc.)
Let’s take a closer look…
The differences between various product design fields are not well understood
Software product design in the not-so-distant past was mainly thought of as defining pretty interfaces. A cute icon here, a seductive colour there, and a graphic every now and then. Platforms like Dribbble, arguably, don’t do much to change this notion either.
Thus, a lot of people could be forgiven for not appreciating the different fields of Product Design. If I had a penny for the number of times a UX designer friend of mine was asked to make logos and worse yet “drawings”, I would have quite a few dollars.
How can this change then?
The design community must come out and support product design fields like UX research, design thinking and product ideation which may not have as appealing a visual component as say, UI design or graphic design. I, for one, find the sketching and prototyping processes as beautiful, if not more, than those visual “shots”.
If the design community (especially senior designers) would ensure that equal appreciation is given to design thinking and process as to shots, it will ultimately lead to a better startup ecosystem where design is understood better by community outsiders and taken more seriously.
The advantages of being a full stack product designer
It’s not a surprise by any means that startups (even Series B and C ones) have a resource crunch. It’s quite unlikely to find an early or even mid-stage startup have designers with various niches. I often credit the bigger companies (like Airbnb) with creating the various niches like UX researcher, experience designer, motion designer. Startups on the other hand, can seldom afford and/or train so many different kinds of designers. Even if they could, the products aren’t mature enough to have such defined needs. Thus, while it is a fantastic thing for the design community to have defined niches for designers, it’s just not practical for a startup to operate this way. Thus, the lack of such defined roles does lead to an expectation mismatch for startups and designers.
To solve for this, product designers who want to join startups must acquire skills in all the design fields so they can be more employable and contribute better from the get-go. A UX designer who is proficient in visual design as well must be seen as a big plus by startups. And while we’re at it, can I have him/her also code CSS with a cherry on top?
Conclusion
Designers who want to work for startups must be “good enough” in all fields of product design (UX, UI, motion, and graphic design) and have a niche in a particular area — designers who want to work for startups must be “full stack” product designers.
Follow me if you want more product design related articles. I’m currently building Product Planet (https://productplanet.io), a community of designers. We host regular design challenges.
