Hey, I coined this unfortunately. It's like a regular designer but with more anxiety.

Full Stack Designer means you get paid as one person to do a 4 person's job :)

It refers to a designer that can not only design, but also has the skills to make pancakes.

I believe this is referring to the UX design stack as outlined in The Elements of User Experience Design by Jesse James Garret.

So a full stack designer would have skills in: Strategy, Content, Interaction design, Information architecture, Information design, UI design, Visual design

It basically means a you're a design generalist rather than a specialist.

It's vague. Steer clear of whoever thinks that is a good bucket.

Andy, I'd stay away from any company advertising for a role with that title. It sounds like they just want one 'design' guy to do anything and everything, rather than actually invest in their team. Any organization that values and understands design realizes that it takes a proficiency in various skill sets in order to wholly solve their problem.

Based on my observations/experience, it seems like a term that's catching on among younger, more junior designers as a means to make themselves sound more valuable in the marketplace. Now, the trend its trickling up to companies who think these types of people can save them capital. On a side note–anyone making the claim of being "full stack" is probably not actually proficient in one of the insinuated skills.

My understanding is that it means pre-launch UX (content analysis, IA, wireframing etc), UI and front-end dev. So you take the design from design thinking to on-screen finish, before the back-end dev's start their work.

Having said that, designer titles are all over the place at the moment, so it could mean less, it could mean more, it all depends on what the employers think it means and what they want you to be able to do.

It's a made up title and the requirements will differ depending on whatever company is advertising. If your turned off by it just move on :)

I think the disconnect is the lack of a defining industry keyword in the title. Having only "Full stack Designer" is vague, but something like "Full stack Web Designer" is much more clear.

Really though, titles are always relative. The expectations of a visual designer within one company could be vastly different from that same role in another. Titles are simply an efficient way to market yourself and what you do in one line; Sometimes it's hard to boil down a diverse skill set into a few simple words.

People say Full Stack Designer when they don't want to say Product Designer (which they actually are)

It refers to the requirements for a generalist role typically seen at technology startups. At a minimum, it means interaction design + visual design + front-end engineering.

Sounds like a startup.

All titles are bullshit. Especially ones like this. Responsibilities and job description are what matter.

Hi Andy,

Thanks for asking this. We posted an ad here on DN for a "full stack" designer because we're looking for someone who doesn't necessarily limit themselves to one of graphic, visual, or UI/UX design.

We're a brand new startup, and I'm humbled by the great team of engineers, product people, and non-technical business people that we've built so far. That said, we feel the need for the eye of a talented designer in pretty much everything that we do.

It comes up constantly. From PDF materials we give to our customers, to our blog, to the UX of our product itself, and to the illustrations on our home page.

We're looking for a designer who could join us with an attitude similar to our first engineering hire. Someone who can see and contribute to the design needs in all facets of our business, as well as prioritize among them and find places to apply design that we haven't already thought of. If this person can serve as a product manager or do some light front-end dev, all the better.

As a developer, I've felt the pain of dealing with people who aren't fellow programmers try (and fail) to speak the language of code to me. By putting out a call for a "full stack designer" and leaving aside specifics, we hope to communicate that we don't really know what our ideal designer looks like, but that we're excited to find out, and give that person the same kind of resources and compensation that a great engineer could expect.

I hope that answers your question! Come to think of it, I think this comment may make a better job description than our current one. :) If this sounds interesting, I encourage you to reach out!

A designer with a lot of experience, a wide range of capabilities and willing to work for the wage of an intern.

I know what I do but the current flux makes me question EVERYTHING I do! Fact is, terms and language have changed but those that do have kept on doing!

Sometimes I feel like there is a competition to create the fanciest titles just to be "trendy"...

To me it means the ability to collaborate company-wide to design, release and test a feature.

Meet with customer to see what they actually want. Meet with design stakeholders and product team to prototype and spec. Pair with engineering team to build the feature. Launch, and then loopback to measure performance.

There is no stack.

I replace fullstack with full'o'shit wherever I see the word. It's usually more accurate.

SV bullshit

Chris from Uber wrote a good article on the subject. https://medium.com/@chrismessina/the-full-stack-employee-ed0db089f0a1#.g11awv715

Check this out http://fullprocessdesigner.com Should answer your question I guess. Cheers ;)