Should designers learn how to code?
This is by far, one of the most common questions asked when speaking to budding designers. You might have also wrestled with the idea a couple of times and may have even picked up Udemy coding courses at some point. A few burning questions still linger.
“Does learning how to code make me a better designer?”
“How much of it do I need to learn?”
“How much of an advantage do I get?”
As a product designer and front-end developer who has explored both sides of the divide reasonably well, together can put this matter to bed once and for all. Shall we?
Should designers learn how to code?
Short answer, Nope. Long answer, it’s complicated. Hear me out.
Figma released a couple of features like Variables and Dev Mode that bring the underlying mechanism of front-end implementation closer to the prototyping process.
There are a ton of AI tools launched, and springing up by the day that can spin up a complete product mobile and web user interface, together with brand guidelines from a single prompt.
Scary times.
It sounds plausible to want to jump to the “winning side”. However, demand for designers, mostly more experienced and senior roles has been on the increase. One explanation could be businesses are slowly recognizing the value of an autonomous team with an ownership mindset.
So no, designers need not learn how to code, but the market demands require you to upskill within the sphere of design, and quickly too. The design role has evolved from just pushing pixels to taking on key responsibilities and how your designs drive valuable change for businesses and their users.
What are the benefits of learning how to code?
Now that we have the hard part out of the way, if you are still interested in writing a bit of code, have started writing, and wonder what the benefits are, shall we again?
Better communication with developers
The gibberish (terminologies) spoken in those long unending meetings starts to make more sense to you. You can easily grasp the full context of projects, understand how they would most likely be implemented, and can anticipate and address issues well beforehand.
Designing with robust context
For example, if you understand that a screen would require getting a large amount of data which would take some time to do so, you would design skeleton loaders to show the loading state and “load more” for paginated results.
Designing more feasibly and realistically
Understanding how designs are implemented gives you an idea of how much work and time it would require to achieve it, and if it is even achievable in the first place. You start to focus on the core user flow and how exactly you want your users to interact without jeopardizing creativity.
How much code should a designer learn?
As a designer or UI/UX designer, it makes more sense to learn or start with front-end development for obvious reasons. Understanding how your designs are directly translated to interactive elements on the web would serve a lot more than backend development.
So you should be fine with HTML, CSS, and a bit of vanilla Javascript. Going neck-deep into frameworks like React and Vue as a designer may be considered a lot, but this is entirely up to you. Take note that front-end development is not just limited to web technologies. Many designers equally explore native app development and low-code technologies.
In summary, identifying what your strengths are is key. Some multidisciplinary designers tend more towards crafting visually appealing works and interactions and pick up illustration and motion design skills. While others who are more technical inclined, tend towards software development. The end goal however is to achieve optimal personal growth and give as much value as we can.
See you in the next one.
