Should Designers Code?

I hope to call myself a designer some day. I don’t know of what exactly, still working that out, but I know I enjoy creating systems and arranging them so they are best suited to be used. It’s so much fun to figure out what’s needed and then make a plan of how you hope things will go. Whether it works or not is something you usually figure out after implementing it at which point you learn more about the system than you did in your initial research.

I wanted to learn how to code because I’ve heard several times that it is an ‘important skill to have in my field’ and such, but also because Iwould love to understand atleast a part of the language that the devices I’m constantly using are based on. Before taking this class I didnt think it was particularly necessary for a designer to learn how to code, I still think you can call yourself a designer without learning it. However I can’t deny that learning this kind of logic based language gives you a number of skills that are very useful in the process of design. The most obvious is that you can actually make working prototypes of your concepts and not just leave them at wireframes, which is something I’m always worried that Ido. It’s important to know how to think of concepts but it’s very nice to be able to literally show others what you want it to look like and do.

Another skill would be the ability to break down a sequence of actions into the simplest steps. To do this when designing something means you are less likely to miss out on possibly important details and make significant changes to a system. Reasoning and logic would be another skill you develop, when you start questioning why things work they way they do and eventually become intuitive about it. Finally, a very important part of learning how to code is seeing your code fail again and again, and looking at it and fixing it till it works again. This kind of revisiting and reviewing is an extremely important step in design as it’s very easy to just throw out a solution, but to check if it really works and keep fixing it is tough.

As to the question of how a designer should learn programming, I’m honestly still figuring it out. Maths is definitely a weak point for me and so I’m very often discouraged because of my lack of understanding of basic concepts used in such a logical language. However this isn’t really a good excuse as if I want to learn to code, there’s no point in just learning a bit of it and having a vague understanding. It’s like learning how to say hello and goodbye in French and claiming you can speak French. What’s the point if you can’t even converse in the language you say you know? I’m definitely struggling with this but I will figure it out even if I have to cry my way through it like I did with maths in school. It isn’t as bad though, i’m doing this because I really want to.

So should designers code? From my very limited understanding of programming so far I would say yes, it builds your thought in a way that’s very useful in designing, and is an undeniably relevant skill in the coming future. Even if it’s a struggle to comprehend like it is for me, that struggle itself will give you a lot of the answers you need.