RunEvr
Agentic project management environment for creatives
Start new thread

🎨 Do solo makers need a UI/UX designer?

by
•

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 I’m 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 you’re using AI for design, do you feel it’s enough to get you to a good product experience?

Would love to hear how other makers approach it.

4.3K views

Add a comment

Replies

Best

I’m somewhere in the middle. While building Uxia, I’ve changed my mind on this a few times: I think a solo maker should absolutely own the first version of the flow, otherwise it’s easy to polish something you don’t fully understand yet. But as soon as the product gets even slightly complex, an outside perspective becomes invaluable. AI is great for exploring directions quickly; the real test is still watching someone use the flow without explaining it and seeing where their mental model diverges from yours. That’s usually where the best design decisions come from.

 I think a designer is not just needed to polish. A designer must be part of the thinking process of how to build the flow. That’s why I think a good UI/UX designer can help from the early stages.

But I agree with you about watching real users experience it.

I think yes definetly, look at all the similar vibecoded websites

 Yes.. =) Are you building something currently?

 Yes, I am building shim, it sits between your ai app and ai providers. And makes your ai traffic more compliant, more visible and more token efficient. It is open source and our site is under rebranding :) we decided to go with an UI expert. I can send details if you want. any feedback on product and/or rebranding would be nice.

 It's really interesting, thanks for sharing the link.
I'll definitely give it a try and share feedback =)

As a solo indie founder I kind of have to do the UI/UX myself, but of course with AI tools. But without external opinions it's usually looks very sloppy :/ So I ask my former colleagues for another opinion and I also run things like for an extra review round to remove AI-ness.

I have to do many iterations until I'm happy with the UX part because current AI tools are still not so good at it.

 Interesting approach with an extra review tool. Going to check it out =)

It is probably difficult from scratch, once a baseline is established, AI can follow the existing taste and style to craft more UI.

 As a designer, I approach it from a different angle =) I generate a draft version of my vision to have a starting point, and then start evolving it.

If you are solo maker & indie hacker or some kind of solopreneur; I guess no. Unless you build your UI-UX with vibe-coding and the final product always dress with a purple to pink gradient palette.


 Haha =D Spot on with the gradient.

I personally used claude as my ui/ux designer and my skills for my startup but as we are moving forward , i am realising why a professional UI/UX designer is needed

 What problem did you face that made you feel that way? Is it more of an experience issue or visual?

 The perfection , the clarity and the vision which a ui/ux designer brings seems lacking with claude .It uses a fixed pattern and to twerk it have to use many plugins or addons which is a headache

 Ah, I see.. How are you going to find the best-fit designer? =)

 wanna hear from everyone also on how to find best one , i'm waiting for people to review it themselves first without me asking

I see! AI gets you to a decent first pass, but I've been through the drift when every new screen gets a fresh prompt. A small design system helped keep the language coherent. Do you set that up before shipping?

 To be honest, in the case of our own product, it was the other way around. We started with a straightforward design and gradually discovered and built the system as we went along.

Yes! I create the initial designs myself, then get feedback from several people to refine and improve them.

 Do you create them with AI or in Figma, or using another design tool?

 I use Mobbin and Dribbble quite a bit for inspiration and ideation - then I use Figma for the creating initial designs.

 That's great !

I design it myself early on, not because I think I'm good at it but because the UI is still changing shape every week at that stage and paying someone to polish a layout that gets ripped out in a month is wasted money. the point where I'd bring in a designer is once the core flow stops changing and the thing holding back conversion isn't "what should this screen do" anymore but "why does this feel clunky even though it works." that's a different skill than mine and AI tools don't really close that gap, they're good at generating a plausible screen, not at knowing why a specific interaction feels off to a real user

 I keep seeing the same point from so many makers: they bring in a designer when almost every screen is already working.

For me, a designer is a full builder of the product, too. Because it’s not about polishing screens or making things look beautiful - it’s about the experience.

I see designers discussing the whole architecture with developers, understanding the pains and key points, and suggesting a real, working experience. They also bring another perspective and notice things developers might miss.

 that architecture point is the part I'd push back on a little though. a designer sitting in on planning can absolutely flag a bad flow, but so can five minutes of watching a real user get stuck on it, and at the early stage I don't have five users yet, I have a hunch. bringing in a designer before the product has enough usage to show where it actually breaks means they're designing against the same hunch I already have, just with better taste. the architecture conversation gets way more valuable once there's real behavior to point at

 So maybe I'm speaking more from my own perspective, since I'm responsible for UI/UX in our product, and some decisions come from the screens or scenarios I bring to the table. I'm always in touch with my co-founder, who handles the tech and architecture side, so I always know which direction to take.

But now I'm thinking that it might be different for a solo maker who brings in a designer, as you described. I need to think about it more! =)

 that's basically the real finding here though, it depends on how the responsibility is split. if you're the one carrying UI/UX day to day, your hunch already has designer training behind it, so bringing in a designer earlier makes sense for you. my hunch doesn't have that training, it's just a founder's guess, so the only thing that upgrades it is watching someone real get stuck. same logic, different starting point

First
Previous
•••
567