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šŸŽØ Do solo makers need a UI/UX designer?

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For solo makers, wearing every hat is almost unavoidable - developer, marketer, support, productā€¦ 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 Iā€™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 youā€™re using AI for design, do you feel itā€™s enough to get you to a good product experience?

Would love to hear how other makers approach it.

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As a product designer myself, itā€™s never really an issue to build something with thoughtful UX and polished UI. But for non-designer builders, I think itā€™s 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.

Ā Yes, from a designerā€™s point of view, itā€™s much easier =)

Wow, I saw your product! The thing I adore - postcards! Iā€™m old-school =D

Recently, I saw a launch for a postcard app, but it was iOS-only. So Iā€™m really happy to find your product.

Trying it out right now.

Ā Thank for the kind words Adana, much appreciated! let me know what do you think :)

Ā I liked it very much! But can I share a couple of honest thoughts, if you donā€™t mind?

ā€¢ I couldnā€™t find my country on the list - are you planning to expand the country list?

ā€¢ And as a designer, Iā€™d 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.

Ā Thanks for the feedback, Adana! Absolutely, since this is a hobby project, Iā€™ll 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 Iā€™m 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 šŸ˜‚

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

Ā Happy to see that the value of a really good designer still exists in the AI era =D

I would out source taste before i outsource product thinking.

Ā Are you building any product?

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.

yes! And what problem does SteadFolio solve?

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.

Ā Great! Iā€™ll give it a try, and if I have any feedback, Iā€™ll come back. Iā€™ve already signed up!

Ā 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?

Ā 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 havenā€™t seen before.

Honest answer from someone who just found out the hard way in the last few weeks: it depends what ā€œneedā€ 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 ā€œDIY the daily stuff, but hire a real designer for the foundation, thatā€™s expensive to redo.ā€ I get why people say it. I just donā€™t buy it anymore.

Hereā€™s why: brand foundation isnā€™t actually one skill, itā€™s 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 donā€™t need to hire it out, you need to run the process well.

I know this because itā€™s 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 elseā€™s calendar. Same rigor, same order of decisions, none of the overhead.

So my actual answer: no, not even for the foundation, if youā€™re willing to treat it as a real process instead of a vibe. Where solo makers get burned isnā€™t skipping the designer. Itā€™s skipping the discipline the designer would have brought, and assuming a simple logo generator replaces both.

Ā 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.

Ā Thatā€™s a fair complication, and probably the honest reason ā€œhire a designerā€ advice exists in the first place, not because DIY canā€™t work, but because attention is the scarcest resource a solo maker has, and brand work competes with the actual product for it.

Where Iā€™ve 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 isnā€™t ā€œDIY vs. hire,ā€ itā€™s ā€œwhichever you choose, do it BEFORE the building consumes all your bandwidth, not after.ā€ Retrofitting a brand onto a product thatā€™s already shipped is a much bigger lift than building it in alongside.

Ā Yes, thatā€™s 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.

Ā I think you have a designerā€™s eye, because youā€™re able to evaluate the final result, make changes, and shape it toward your vision. Not every maker can boast those skills.

Ā Thank you for your encouragement.

For MVP, I'd rather have a founder with good product taste plus AI instead of hiring a designer too early. Once users actually start to use the product, hiring a designer makes more sense because we know what problem worth designing.

Ā 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?

Weā€™re preparing for our first product hunt launch. Havenā€™t brought in a designer yet, but itā€™s definitely on my mind

Ā 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 doesnā€™t require much creativity.

Ā This is really good. In this case, youā€™re 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.

Ā Interesting pointā€¦ How do you act in this situation? More focus on description, visual identity, or something else? I donā€™t know ... =D

Ā  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.

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