You have to learn Code to be a UX/UI Designer? 6 reasons why is a great idea.
👉 Short answer: You don’t need to learn how to program. 👉 Complex answer: It’s not necessary, but it would help you a lot in your work to know the basics of programming.
Important: I’m not a code expert or anything like that, but the truth is that it has helped me a lot in my career!
👋🏻 Hello, I’m Dara, a designer and here is my point of view on whether it’s necessary to learn to program to be a good designer (I assure you that you will love the last reason 💸).
My code background is very simple: I obviously learned HTML, CSS, the basics of Javascript and how to work in React and Next.js. And TailwindCSS. I don’t know about backend, I barely understand the theory, I’m always in frontend, and even this little information has opened many doors for me 🚪.
1st Reason:
→ Understanding the programmer’s perspective.
Why would a designer want to understand a programmer’s logic? Because it is that person who will build his product. The product is like a building that exists on the internet. The designer is the architect and the programmers are the engineers and bricklayers 🪓🔨.
When you understand the basics of how a programmer builds, it’s much easier for you to design. You begin to understand what things not to add to a design because even though it looks pretty, it’s sometimes incredibly complex to create. Understanding simple things like that elements should be divided into equal parts and that percentages are generally used to scale elements across devices will save the programmer a lot of headaches.
For me it’s essential to understand the logic of CSS 🔍. I’m not saying that if you don’t know how to use it you can’t design, but you have no idea how things start organizing in your head when you understand how they will be organized by the programmer. CSS is the language with which you create the visual, the size, the shape, the color, the border radius, everything.
I can’t tell you how much it helps to understand how Flexbox and Grid work in CSS. And if you manage to layout and build your own design with HTML and CSS, your brain will expand like crazy.
2nd Reason:
→ You can explain your vision to the programmer 🤝.
Now that you understand how they build, you can have more relaxed chats with the programmers to discuss the idea you have.
Many times these talks stay halfway or are poorly explained because the designers don’t understand the problems of the programmers and cannot simplify the product for them.
You can tell them,“hey, I made this section thinking that you can do it with absolute position, and inside that element divide it into 8 parts.” The programmer would love to hear that you thought of a way to make their job easier.
3rd Reason:
→ Knowing the specific vocabulary helps you learn the design software.
Software like Figma can be used very easily, making little squares and putting text on top of them, or they can be used professionally. You can create components, variants and build, using “Auto Layout” for example. These concepts are not new, they are the way things are programmed, based on components that can be reused.
“Fix position” “Drop shadow” “Grid” “Absolute position” These are not design software terms, they are programming terms. It’s CSS. Learning CSS will make you have a general understanding of all these concepts. Of course it is not mandatory to learn CSS to understand Figma, but I always say that knowledge never hurts.
4th Reason:
→ You become kinder to the work of others.
You realize that the things that you do not make clear in your design are things that the programmer will have to invent.
For example, if you don’t tell the programmer that you want the button to look amazing in the hover effect, the programmer will simply change the color. He/she is not a fortune teller.
You also realize that you should leave documentation to the programmer ✍️, nothing complicated, some notes, and even more so if the flow of an app is complex. If the navigation bar is designed to stay at the top of the screen while the user scrolls, leave a note saying that the bar is placed in a sticky position. How do you know what sticky position is? learning css.
If you don’t tell the programmers what to do, they will have to invent. They won’t know if the navigation bar is in the sticky or fixed position.
5th Reason:
→ If you learn the basics of Javascript and React you will understand how interactions are created.
You may think of an amazing menu drop-down, but is that movement really practical? With this I don’t mean that you should never do complex things, maybe that’s what the client wants, but if what matters is creating a basic product, each complex thing will only take away the programmer’s time to do what they really should be doing.
If you learned, for example, the basics of javascript, you could imagine how they can animate that menu so that it looks beautiful but not that complicated to make.
6th Reason:
→ A designer who understands programming is HIGHLY valued in the industry 💸
Since these types of people are so rare, someone who understands the visual creative part, and the creative part in the code, is impressively valued in companies.
What’s more, if you look closely at the job searches, you will see that at the bottom it often says “preferably: someone who knows html, css, etc.”
It doesn’t have to be something that difficult, it can be a simple web page that you learn to make, like I made mine. Just a couple of minimalist animations and that’s it.
Just as there are not many designer programmers, there are not many programmers designers. It’s really difficult to find people who knows both, and that’s where you can add value. And if you share that value, the pay can be even better. 💵 💶 💴 💷
‼️ This is not a statement that, to be a real designer, you have to know how to code.
It just that I learned to do basic code before designing because I thought it was the only way to work online, until I realized that I could do millions of things on the internet. But it wasn’t in vain and it worked to make me grow faster as a designer.
What I mean by all this is that I would never have decided to learn to code if I hadn’t thought it was absolutely necessary. And now that I understand a little about that, I can tell you that it’s not necessary, but, knowing design and code at the same time will make you advance in your career faster ✨.
Knowledge never hurts, your brain will expand and with it, job opportunities 😏
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