I still remember how afraid and scared I was to begin coding professionally. I was hesitant. It was way back in 2008 when I was asked to write my first lines of HTML and CSS for a local nursing home in Carbondale IL at The Printing Plant under the direction of Jason Buehner Master of MultiMedia Design. Using Dreamweaver Jason walked me through the HTMl update. I performed the CSS and HTML update, and off it went “shipped” as they say. Web Design was not our main design service but times were changing, and we were getting more and more requests overtime. Now, how did I learn how to code?
Well, since a young age I needed to use MS DOS to get programs to run on a Tandy computer in the early 90s. I watched my step father type the commands, and I memorized them so I could play whenever I wanted. Perhaps this was the fertile soil I needed to be so brave. Yet, I was still hesitant years later at a Fashion eCommerce startup in San Diego.
In 2011, I was a graphic web designer at Erynz LLC based in San Diego, CA. I designed marketing collateral for email, website, and print. Then one day Victor, the CEO, came in and asked if I could code. I said yes, but was very nervous. Although, my code was accepted graciously, Victor showed me how to use an old HTML TL TR TD structure compared to my CSS and Divs. This was my first nerve racking foray into coding professionally without much aid. I clutched my old workbook from Computer Graphics class taught by Professor Mark Pease at SIUC. One of just two coding classes I took between 2008-2011. Another one was taught by Professor Robert Lopez, and it was a graduate level course. In that class, we got a local apartment complex client to work on. I’m still embarrassed by both my coding and design from that experiment. Regardless to say, I can empathize with those of us “designers” that often contemplate “Do I need to know how to code to be a UX Designer?”
My short answer is always “No.” Maybe because I’ve always had the chance to learn on the job. Maybe because in the actual day to day grind as a UI UX Designer you often communicate to developers your design through Figma, or Zeplin rather than actually code. Or, maybe it’s because with the ample amount of “no-code” tools today like Bubble, there’s very little “need” to know how to code. Nevertheless, coding can come in handy.
Code has helped make me indispensable as a designer in my career. There’s no two ways about it. When layoffs, reorgs, or the like come about as they inevitably do from time to time because of economics, the designers that can code will likely stay, and others will get voted off the island as they say. I’m not a fan of these type of business decisions, but management is given little wiggle room and choice or it’s their own head on the chopping block. Another area that knowing how to code can come in handy is in tech feasibility.
You may not know how to code perfectly, but if you know how things work this can get you 80% of the way. The Pareto Principle of coding if you will. As a designer I would almost always recommend learning HTML, CSS, and then Javascript and in that order first. However, reading up on APIs, OpenAI, Chat GPT, and other tech trends as they come in and out of favor will help you prepare yourself for a conversations with engineers both during interviews, and on the job. One of the clearest examples of that is Apple Human Computer Guidelines, Google Material Design, and/or Twitter’s Bootstrap.
These 3 design frameworks are the bee’s knees when it comes to getting an app accepted in the app store, or helping accelerate production by building upon an existing framework rather than building from scratch. As a designer do you need to know how to code, no, but if you know how to design for these frameworks your golden! More and more I see other frameworks or platforms seeping into the limelight.
Those platforms are Salesforce, Shopify, Squarespace, and others. I see entrepreneurs get these platforms up and running and then hit a bandwidth threshold where they have to delegate design to well a designer. As an entrepreneur myself, I totally understand this, because I can get a quick start on big picture, but when it comes to granular details, I need my team mates to pick up the slack. Nevertheless, knowing how to “skin” or design within the confines of these platforms does help when applying to jobs, or indeed starting your own startup as a UXPRENEUR.
Well, I hope you enjoyed today’s blog article on “Should Designers Code?” It’s a question I get often, and although, my short answer is “No” my long answer might get your curiosity churning to explore the world of code as it pertains to delivering to developer counterparts. Another resource I would say is to subscribe to the magazine “Web Designer Mag” by CreativeBloq. It’s an exceptional resource with tutorials inside that are quick and easy to digest for beginner UX Engineers. Cheers!
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