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Who is a Full Stack Designer?

It is no longer enough to be just a rounded designer: a creative individual who has gone through both a UX design course and a UI design course. An experienced designer no doubt has a variety of skillsets that s/he may have picked up at a ui ux design course; but to complete a design development project means to be able to traverse the entire life cycle of the design phase. Earlier this merely meant that a designer should also be familiar with coding like HTML/CSS and Webflow. Today, it means more. Much more. It means you should get up close and personal with product design and with business design too. It means you need to become a full stack designer.

Traditional Full Stack Design 

A decade ago, full stack design was explained almost as a parallel to full stack development. Typically with an illustration such as this: 

Though it did not necessarily mean a designer had to morph into a developer, it is quite clear that some amount of developer skills or knowledge was expected. Some went ahead and learnt front end development, grappling with Framer.js and Proto.io even as they juggled with information architecture (IA), Interactive Design (IxD) and low fidelity prototypes like Marvel and Invision. This of course led to a debate on how much do UX designers make and how long it takes to become a UX designer. 

 Fluid and Overlapping Roles

Around this time, out leapt a term: the design unicorn and referred to a designer who had mastery over coding, designing, graphics and copy! Except that there was no such creature. As you can see, the design industry was only evolving to allow its talent to break boundaries. UX design allowed them to know how a user feels about apps while UI design gave them clarity on what, where and how different elements work. If IA told them how to organize an app, IxD provided insights on how users and apps interact.

At best a regular designer was one who could only talk about UX or UI while a versatile designer could both envision and articulate how a complete product is built in a systematic way, employing critical thinking, special techniques and tools and all manners of design pattern.

Institute of Product Leadership Defines Full Stack Designer Afresh

With businesses transforming at breakneck speed and design taking centre stage, it is now abundantly clear that the designer has to undergo another metamorphosis. S/he has to embrace both product design and business design to be able to deliver the goods to all stakeholders. By blending user  needs with business goals, design clarity will make room for consistently successful products. Such products that optimize user experience through sustainable solutions will also serve long-term business needs. So the Institute of Product Leadership has redefined the term full stack design and tailored a design certification program centered on the belief:

Full Stack Designer = UX Design + UI Design+Product Design+Business Design

The ICUX-Flex course will prepare you to :

  • Go beyond wireframes, information architecture and prototypes to sync your design knowledge with business imperatives
  • To inter-mesh your understanding of UX research and UI design with user centered design that elevates business value of design
  • Follow best practices taught by the IPL ICUX design course to solve problems and design products that align with the business brand.
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