2022-05-30
I've wanted to write about this for a long time. Not because I have anything special to say (or am even qualified to say it). I just get asked about this a lot and wanted something I could point to.
When most people think of design, they think of how something looks. Some may even say how it works. The phrase I've used since I joined Square is full stack design.
In software development, there is the concept of "full stack engineering" — building the entire system, considering the visible and invisible components. The same applies to design. Full stack design is the integration of brand, marketing, product, and research — everything from tone & voice to pixels & flows.
Few companies understand, exhibit, and nurture this mentality [1]. The ones who do are titans, with incredibly high brand loyalty and product NPS. So why is full stack design so important?
Good design is good business.
Duh.
That sounds great and all, but how should one promote full stack design within their company? I don't know [2]. But I can share a few indicators that may suggest a company embodies full stack design.
I am not the best person to speak about this topic. But I am someone who cares deeply about it. I saw the power of it first hand at Square and will apply it in every team I join.
I hope this post can put a name to something I believe is critical to building great products and great businesses. I hope it can motivate designers to think (even) more holistically. I hope it can encourage product managers (and other disciplines) to care more deeply about design. And I hope it inspires someone more qualified to write a better post.
Thank you to Arjun Mahanti for reading a draft of this post 🤍
[1] Good examples of companies who embody full stack design include Airbnb, Stripe, and Square (yes, I'm biased).
[2] Okay, I lied. I sort of know, or at least have some ideas. But that is a post for another day.
[3] As companies grow, there is often a pendulum swing between functional and divisional org structures. Functional structures centralize each discipline to optimize for mastery of craft and global decision making. Divisional structures organize around products or services with multiple disciplines rolling up to a single business unit leader (e.g. General Manager) who is responsible for P&L, optimizing for speed and local decision making. Neither is better. Each have a time and place. And you can mix and match them. For example, Square switched from functional to divisional with the creation of Cash App. But design was centralized for several more years. Even after design became siloed between business units, it remained centralized at different altitudes in the org chart — typically longer than other disciplines. This is how I knew design held a special (or at least, different) place in the org.
[4] I intentionally used the word "feeling". It is less about having a perfectly consistent visual design. You need to feel like the promise you are being made is being fulfilled. And that goes much deeper than whether the colors are the same (though that does matter).
[5] The difference is correlation vs causation. I said the list would suggest whether a company embodies full stack design, but it does not guarantee it.