What is the Front End Stack?
By: Chandima Karunaratne
Tags: Design, UX Design, Product Design, Front End Development, Growth Hacking

The “Front-end stack” is not a job role. It’s not a sister to full-stack development. It’s more of a checklist of skills for designers and developers to be competitive in the ever-evolving job market.

I guess it’s fair to say that the last decade has been the golden age of UX design. (I’m not going to get into this any further, I’m sure you read a sh*t ton of Medium articles about that. 😉)

The point is, it’s no longer the case. There are so many “UX designers” out there now. It’s challenging to stand out and be competitive in the job market. Just a few years back, there was not enough designers to fill the high demand, but things have changed. The same goes for front-end developers.

Introducing thefrontendstack.com

This is why I built thefrontendstack.com — a collection of resources for designers and developers to learn product design, front-end development, and growth strategies.

(I’m talking about the main stack below, so keep on reading 😊)

These are resources like websites, online tools, books, courses, and more. An organized collection of resources with easy access.

And of course, access to this site is completely FREE.

This publication, “front-end stacked”, will be a different product to that and it will contain content that I create to help other designers and developers to become front-end experts.

What it is and what it’s not

Disclaimer: Just to clarify, this is not some “unicorn role” where you are an individual who’s responsible for carrying out tasks related to all these topics. Being a front-end expert is about mastering a particular field while having skills in various other related fields.

Being a front-end expert is about mastering a particular field while having skills in various other related fields.

Jonathan Courtney at AJ&Smart recently wrote a brilliant read on why you should become a Product Designer rather than a UX Designer. I highly recommend you give it a read.

This brings us to the point of arming ourselves with a set of skills to stand out and be a valuable commodity in the industry.

So what does the stack look like?

So how do we do that? What are the necessary skills to become an attractive front-end expert?

The holy trinity of the Front-end Stack

We have divided it into three parts; UX Design, Front-end Development, and Growth.

1. UX Design

To define UX design, I’d say it is the process of collecting user research data, evaluating it, and using it to create user-centered products. This process includes user research itself, creating empathy, designing micro-interactions, UI design, and various other things.

As you can see, UX is an umbrella term. In order to perfect the experience the user will have with our product, we need to master a whole array of areas related to the app.

To put it simply, UX is what makes a product enjoyable for the user. And this is very crucial. In my opinion, the company that does it best is none other than Apple.

It’s common knowledge that Steve Jobs wanted Apple to not be just a computer or tech company, but for it to be one that produces brilliantly designed products that will change lives(and the world).

Take a look at their recent successes; the Apple Watch, iPad Pro, Pencil, or the Air Pods. These weren’t revolutionary products that disrupted industries as the iPhone did. They didn’t have to be.

Apple took a few use cases that people face every day and created products that not only help them get through the day but leave a lasting impact on them.

If you’re looking for some great book to read up on UX, I have you covered. Check out this article I recently wrote about it:

2. Front-end Development

A group of people UX designers will be closely working with is front-end developers. After the final UI designs and the interactive prototypes are finalized, you need to hand it over to the front-end developers.

It is no longer just better to have an idea about implementing your design but it’s a requirement in some companies.

As UX designers, you will create what you think is the best experience for your customer based on the qualitative information you gathered about them. But it’s also important to know if your solution is actually doable within the timeframe and resources you have.

In order to have a great idea about that, designers need to have the basic front-end dev technologies added to their skillset.

These will slightly depend on the company you’re working for and the type of projects that you do, but the basics are pretty much the same.

We came up with the following front-end technologies for you to aim for:

HTML & CSS

Vanilla Javascript

Modern Javascript (ES6)

Frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue

Mobile — React Native and SwiftUI

These are some of the basic skills to add to your arsenal. I highly recommend you check out Hackernoon’s 2019 Web Developer Roadmap to get a more in-depth path for front-end developers to follow.

At Front-end Stacked, we will publish content about all of the above technologies and more. So do follow us if you want to stay updated.

3. Growth

And the third ingredient to make you a kick-ass front-end expert is growth.

Actually, we included several things under “growth”. This is the section that looks at your entrepreneurial skills. You no longer will be just designing a feasible product, but you will now know how to kick it off and prepare it for sustainable growth.

The “growth” section will include your skills in project management, product strategy, and of course, growth hacking.

The effectiveness of traditional marketing methods has plateaued over the years. You need to adapt to the digital era and think out-of-the-box to come up with ways or “experiments” to grow your userbase.

A great place to start learning about growth hacking is the book Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis. Sean is an entrepreneur and founder of growthhackers.com

Sean has worked with some of the biggest companies in the world including Dropbox, LogMeIn, Eventbrite, Uproar, and Lookout. In the book, he talks about how to build a growth team and a growth hacking playbook you can use to grow your products as well.

I did a small comparison between traditional marketing and growth hacking a while back and you can check it out below to get a good idea about it.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the fields of UX Design and Front-end development are becoming saturated and flooded with talent. In order to be competitive in this market, it is vital that you stand out from your competition with additional skills.

At Front-end Stacked, we will help you build the foundations for becoming a front-end expert so that you will be a valuable fish in this vast ocean of designers and developers.

I highly recommend you follow us on Medium and sign up for our newsletter where we’ll send you hand-picked content related to the front-end stack once a week. There will never be spam 😗