Why designers should learn to code.
As a designer, and someone who had code as one of their key skills it really gives me a slight edge.
Start with WHY
Let’s start with the very basic and fundamental question of why does a designer even need to know to code.
So as a designer myself what I have found that the skills that I have acquired over a period of time serve me pretty good and one of them is able to code.
Before we move forward to “WHY”, let me tell you I’m no coding wizard I just knew the average level of HTML, CSS, Javascript and React.js.
But these few languages that I have mentioned above served me pretty well when it comes to design, as now I know the basic functionality of the web, mobile application and overall internet. It gave me a very vivid perception of “what should be done rather than what can be done”.
Every designer should focus on what should be done, rather than what could be done.
What do I mean by what should be done?
Well I remember very profoundly the beginning days of my design career, most of the projects that I would get, probably involve redesigning an already built but poorly design websites, and mobile application, and for the most part many mobile application people specifically asked me for creating great micro-interactions and beautiful animation to have better User experience, and I would create some beautiful animations and micro-interactions just to get them to see rejected by their Developing teams, saying
“This animations and micro-interactions are very great, but we cannot code this in our application because our users have a wide range of phones with different specs ranging from 1 GB ram to 6 GB ram some mobile devices might support this but most of them would fail and eventually making users frustrated”
As the condition mentioned above about a wide range of mobile devices with a wide range of Rendering Power. I have to be very focused on the application I’m working on and what interaction should I create, with keeping in mind what is the targeted audience.
“You can not create a animation heavy application for a Targeted userbase from fewer fortune areas of Africa and Asia, because they might not have that a good specs and internet connection in their mobile devices”
Sometimes you would also hear stuff like “This is too complex I don’t know how to code this.”
So overall my point is if you know the fundamentals structures of how a website or mobile application is built and how the things work in the first place it gives you a deeper understanding and saves you a lot of time, plus it improves your relationship with developing teams, as now they don’t have to explain you every little detail and now whatever they make sense to you, you don’t have to Google every word they said.
How……?
Let’s now focus on how you can do it, what’s the right way of doing it.
As mentioned above you don’t need to be a coding wizard to understand the functioning of the internet, you just need the fundamentals and basics.
You can start with HTML and CSS, then jump to Javascript.
If you want you can then jump to React.js (a javascript library developed by Facebook just to create beautiful User Interface).
What are the options
When it comes to your options the Internet is full of resources, especially HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are so basic that many premium coding websites provide these courses in their free tier.
You can just type HTML or CSS or Javascript Tutorials on Youtube and you will get enough material to be able to understand the fundamentals of Internet
“Framer Web”
Framer web is a new and very powerful tool that enables users to create high fidelity prototypes using it tools and react.js
react.js plays a very important role if you create micro-interactions using react.js in Framer Web you will help developers to reduce their workload and this will give you a slight edge among all the other designer.
I hope you find this useful and worth reading.
best wishes,
