đ¨ Do solo makers need a UI/UX designer?
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For solo makers, wearing every hat is almost unavoidable - developer, marketer, support, product⌠and often designer too.
AI makes this even easier now. You can generate UI pretty quickly, but a lot of products end up relying on consistent, polished AI-generated solutions rather than something truly unique or thoughtfully designed for their specific product.
So Iâm curious:
Do you design the UI/UX yourself when building solo?
Or do you think bringing in a designer (even for a few key screens) is worth it?
And if youâre using AI for design, do you feel itâs enough to get you to a good product experience?
Would love to hear how other makers approach it.
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As a developer, I usually handle the UI/UX myself, especially in the early stages. AI has made it much easier to explore different ideas and get a polished interface quickly.
But I donât think AI completely replaces a good designer. For important products, having a designer review the UX, flows, and overall consistency can make a big difference.
For me, the best approach is probably developer + AI for speed, designer for the final polish and user experience.
@rohanparmar Yes, this might be the best approach.
Do you have a dedicated designer at LaraCopilot?
@adana Yes, we do have a designer on the LaraCopilot team. I think that combination works really well: developers can move fast with AI, while a designer helps make sure the final experience feels polished and user-friendly.
@rohanparmar Happy to hear that combo works well!
And no one canceled AI usage for designers either =) They can use AI a lot too, but from their professional perspective.
@adana Absolutely! đ AI is useful for everyone. The real value comes from knowing how to use it with your own expertise. Designers + AI can be just as powerful as developers + AI.
I would say that if you know the principles, it is not a necessity, but at least, I would like to have an opinion from up to 5 professionals who could give me a feedback for better design.
@busmark_w_nika Nice idea - having a platform where you can get valuable feedback on your UI designs from experienced professionals could be really useful!
@adana For now, I am using Reddit to get that feedback :)
@busmark_w_nika Canât finally get familiar with Reddit!
This comment from you became the last signal. Time to do that =)
@adana It also depends what kind of product you use, I found my community in chrome extension subreddit :)
it's kinda enough tbh
when starting out, we are just trynna validate the idea and get some traction
so, imo, just build the very basic version of the product and get it to users
it can be redesigned later on, and you can add a few more people to the team
that's what im doing
im designing & building the product with AI, and i will later have a team to work on it if it turns out to be something worth doing for a long time
@itzhaydar Users today are very demanding. I think theyâre used to smooth, polished experiences, so even if a product has a great idea, a very basic version might not appeal to them.
@adana true
I didn't mean devs should just ship the worst UI.
We can use AI to generate a pretty clean UI for the new idea and build version 1.
It has to look good for sure. But we don't necessarily need a designer to create that version.
Plus, have you ever seen a product with a bad UI these days?
UI is clean if the dev knows how to give epic prompts and if they have a clear picture of the app's identity, main colors, and target user optimization.
@itzhaydar Agree, of course. I think more about complex products, where involving a designer can actually help the developer ship faster and hit the goal right from the first take.
@adana oh, complex products
definitely, if it's a complex product from the very beginning, you do need a designer, and a few say 2 or 3 more experts who believe in the mission to join you and work on it together
i was thinking about building v1 to solve a specific at a small scale, validate, and later expand and bring in more features, and more experts to the team
Imo a half-baked AI-generated UI can hurt startups more than people realize. The interface is often the first signal of how much thought and care went into the product. If it feels generic or inconsistent, users can subconsciously question the product's credibility and quality. And trust is harder to rebuild after a poor first impression.
AI is great for speeding up exploration, but I think the real value comes from having someone make the intentional design decisions that give the product its own character and clarity.
âShip fast and iterateâ is great advice, but I think that approach tends to work better for companies with a large, established customer base that can absorb imperfect launches (like Apple did with Apple Intelligence on the Iphone 16pro). @adana
I personally design my own UI. That's entirely because I did not have the proper resources back then, to hire a proper designer. And it feels more comfortable to design things that my users are going to use
@gsvprharsha Yes, that approach can definitely work too - when you want to design your own product specifically for your users. I found your product and it looks really interesting. Wishing you lots of success with it!
@adana Thank you! Best of luck to you too!
@gsvprharsha Thanks !
I think as a solo maker you should design the UI/UX yourself at first. It helps you understand your product and your users much better.
@dimabraven Yes! And even if you need a designer, you can give them your own direction and thinking, which makes the whole design process much more focused.
@dimabraven I canât agree 100% =) I think thatâs enough to get started, especially for small tools and products. But when it comes to more complex products, I still think having a good designer is necessary.
No matter if your designer is human or AI, there is still a user research stage, trial and error.
@anna_ulanova I agree about user research and trial and error, but I do think there is a difference between AI and human designers =)
What product are you working on?
As a product designer myself, itâs never really an issue to build something with thoughtful UX and polished UI. But for non-designer builders, I think itâs definitely worth getting opinions from others. AI can do a lot these days, but it still lacks a bit of aesthetic judgment and user-centric thinking. Getting some professional feedback from others can definitely help make the product better.
@martinique Yes, from a designerâs point of view, itâs much easier =)
Wow, I saw your product! The thing I adore - postcards! Iâm old-school =D
Recently, I saw a launch for a postcard app, but it was iOS-only. So Iâm really happy to find your product.
Trying it out right now.
@adana Thank for the kind words Adana, much appreciated! let me know what do you think :)
@martinique I liked it very much! But can I share a couple of honest thoughts, if you donât mind?
⢠I couldnât find my country on the list - are you planning to expand the country list?
⢠And as a designer, Iâd add one nice-to-have feature: while changing the country in the list, it would be great if the stamps switched to different ones too. I think it would add so much personality to the postcard and make the process more interactive.
@adana Thanks for the feedback, Adana! Absolutely, since this is a hobby project, Iâll keep collecting more vintage postcards from around the world and update the database from time to time. I really like the idea of having different stamp sets for different countries too. will keep improve it for sure.
One thing Iâm really glad about is that I can now do things like remove image backgrounds with AI instead of relying on Photoshop. Thank God for that, because it a lot of images to take care with haha đ
Depends, you can generate a lot of ideas with Stitch from Google, or with Claude, so if you're at MVP stage and have some level of taste, do it yourself, if you are like a hardcore backend developer, yeah perhaps get someone in for at least a few screens.
But a design system is even more important, so all screens have a coherence between them, otherwise your app will feel shizo pretty quickly
@toto_db Haha =) You put my thoughts into words.
I lean on AI for the base UI but bring in a designer for the key screens that actually need to feel unique. Gets you to good enough fast, but you can usually tell when a product skipped a real designer entirely
@samran_elahi Happy to see that the value of a really good designer still exists in the AI era =D