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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I built my app "SteadFolio" all alone but when I asked some friends of mine to take a look, they had some important comments making my product much better. They were, a product owner working on a tech company and a UI/UX expert. So, I believe it is critical to have it checked by someone other that you.
@adana SteadFolio solves the question "I don't know anything about investing and I don't know from where to begin". The app has structured lessons explained simply, assestments to check what you 've learned, simulators to play around and above all it has Sofia, an AI coach who explains your questions, guides you and is your mentor. In addition to that you can also monitor your actual portfolio and Sofia will come in to help. Feel free to try it out, it is free at the moment. I 'd love to have some feedback.
@andreas_broutas Great! Iâll give it a try, and if I have any feedback, Iâll come back. Iâve already signed up!
@adana Thank you so much! I am eager to hear your valuable feedback!
Not a solo maker by any stretch, but I think more than UI, having someone pitch in on UX can be useful. And sometimes having someone who has a bit of distance and can see the proverbial forest helps. The other important thing is that if that person has some experience under their belt they're going to bring that to the table. If they can then translate it to unique elements in your UI that's a big bonus, because I feel like so many products today are starting to look incredibly similar? And sometimes a unique feature you're trying to build might get held hostage by the limits of what AI generated UI can do because at the end of the day it's going to be as good as its source data I guess?
@akshay_roongta Agreed. And the incredibly similar products really do exist. I honestly get a little euphoric when I come across a product with a genuinely custom, interesting design or a solution I havenât seen before.
Honest answer from someone who just found out the hard way in the last few weeks: it depends what âneedâ means, but not in the way people usually mean it.
I built my entire launch gallery, product cover art, and video covers without a designer. Easy call, low stakes, ship it and move on.
Where I disagree with the usual advice, though, is the part everyone treats as sacred: brand foundation. Logo, color system, typography rules. The common wisdom is âDIY the daily stuff, but hire a real designer for the foundation, thatâs expensive to redo.â I get why people say it. I just donât buy it anymore.
Hereâs why: brand foundation isnât actually one skill, itâs several narrow ones stacked together, a mark, a palette, a type system, a point of view on all three working as one thing. A generalist designer is doing all of that from instinct and taste built over years. That instinct can be captured as a defined process instead, and once it is, you donât need to hire it out, you need to run the process well.
I know this because itâs genuinely my whole field. 35 years in marketing and brand, and I now build my own visual identity the same disciplined way I used to bill agency clients for, just without paying agency rates or waiting on someone elseâs calendar. Same rigor, same order of decisions, none of the overhead.
So my actual answer: no, not even for the foundation, if youâre willing to treat it as a real process instead of a vibe. Where solo makers get burned isnât skipping the designer. Itâs skipping the discipline the designer would have brought, and assuming a simple logo generator replaces both.
@tiffany_trboyevich Thanks for sharing such a detailed experience. I think that in some cases, when solo makers are working on a complex product and all their mental energy goes into architecture and building, it can be really hard to find the time to go through the process you described.
But overall, I think your approach is absolutely right.
@adana Thatâs a fair complication, and probably the honest reason âhire a designerâ advice exists in the first place, not because DIY canât work, but because attention is the scarcest resource a solo maker has, and brand work competes with the actual product for it.
Where Iâve landed: brand foundation is a front-loaded cost, not an ongoing one. A few focused hours defining the mark, palette, and type system once, then months of not having to think about it again versus a recurring tax on every future decision if you skip it and wing each asset individually. So maybe the real advice isnât âDIY vs. hire,â itâs âwhichever you choose, do it BEFORE the building consumes all your bandwidth, not after.â Retrofitting a brand onto a product thatâs already shipped is a much bigger lift than building it in alongside.
@tiffany_trboyevich Yes, thatâs really good advice. Thanks for sharing it!
I'm launching a product a month. The UI/UX is unique to each product and getting excellent reviews. All thanks to good prompting to get great UI/UX advice from Claude/ChatGPT. I can safely say that solo builders don't need a UI/UX designer anymore.
In fact, I used to earlier buy Themeforest templates and keep a big stack of them which I used to circulate between projects. Now, it is no longer required.
@jogindertanikella I think you have a designerâs eye, because youâre able to evaluate the final result, make changes, and shape it toward your vision. Not every maker can boast those skills.
@adana Thank you for your encouragement.
@alex_luan Thanks for sharing your opinion!
What stage is your product currently at? Do you think the time has come to bring in a designer or not yet?
@alex_luan Wishing you all the best with the launch!
What problem does the product solve?
I always do the UI myself without AI, unless the screen has low relevance and a simple layout structure that doesnât require much creativity.
@sarunas_rodriguez This is really good. In this case, youâre your own designer =)
For us a designer earns their keep on the icon more than on the screens, since the icon is what people recognise in a crowded dock. The rest can be plain and nobody complains. We went live with a browser tool today, where there is no icon to lean on, and losing that crutch has been the strange part.
@yelyzaveta_kibets Interesting point⌠How do you act in this situation? More focus on description, visual identity, or something else? I donât know ... =D
@adana Mostly the first screen. With an app you get recognised by the icon before anyone reads a word, but on the web the headline has to do that job in about two seconds. So I spend far more time on the one line at the top than I ever did on store copy.
I feel you don't need a designer but you have to have good taste and a good eye to really spot the difference between a normal website and a professional one.
@shayan_basu_roy Yes, but makers are often technical, and they spend so much time zoomed in on development itself. So itâs not only about the website - every feature, popup, and button in a product should be designed with good UX in mind. So a designer can really help with that.
@adana Very true but I think that if you are wearing that solo founder hat you have to be good at everything like not pro level but at least enough knowledge to pull of building a product that is decent to ship and get customers. I feel that customers themselves will give that feedback required .
@shayan_basu_roy Canât disagree! =) The word maker itself maybe means a person who figures everything out.
As a solo maker balancing a head chef job and building my SaaS, I don't have time or budget for dedicated UI/UX design. I focus 100% on performance, accessibility, and high-speed UX (100/100 PSI, clear CTAs). For local business tech, utility and raw speed always beat fancy design trends.
@fab_lp Agreed, but I guess you still have some skills that help you create clear CTAs and an interface that's easy to use. The designer lives inside you - you just don't need to hire them! =D
solo founder here, i do the design myself. what actually moved my UX wasn't hiring a designer, it was watching real people get stuck and then cutting steps. AI gets you to a clean generic screen in minutes, and generic is the trap, everything starts to look the same. early on you don't need a full time designer, you need taste and one honest tester who will tell you where they got lost. hire the designer once you know exactly which screens are your product's soul.
@linoy_bar_gal Agreed! Thanks for sharing your vision =)
@adana đđź