Steve Jobs said: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”.
When one asks “should designers learn to code?” what he or she is really asking is “Do you believe that design is how it works?” The answer is the same.
@awoodsnet My issue with this debate, is, what does "learn to code" even mean hahaha. Like, learn HTML ? CSS? Should they learn backend? Devops? I can do a little bit of server administration, am I good?
For me: designers (for web UIs) should know how a browser works, they should know what HTML, CSS and JS is capable of. But, we should not expect designers to be able to implement their mockups on their own those days, especially if it's complex UIs with heavy JS frameworks.
@stephaniewalter i’d expect a web designer to be able to design in browser. they should do static page designs. No frameworks! I agree on that! but to have them write a simple function with stub data to mimic an element updating? heck yeah! in browser is where a designer can solve a cross-browser decision or accessibility issue. Bonus points if they can speak to JS framework trade-offs to guide the engineers .
@awoodsnet What would be the goal of the designer designing in the browser? Like, what would they do with that? MVP? POC? Do they give the code to devs?
Also: how do they find the time to work on the design and the code?
It might depend on the industry, but I don't find this super efficient. Like: design in the browser, when you work on super complex banking finance systems, hum, it might take forever. And devs will implement it using React anyway ^^
@stephaniewalter
The more one designs in browser, the faster one will get. A benefit of a static HTML/CSS code means you have a common frame of reference when communicating with engineers. So when they re-implement it in react, and break it, you’ll know it wasn’t a failing of the design.
As for finding the time? Thats’ a weird question. The static code is part of the design. Remember: design is how it works. If you design something, and it doesn’t work in code, I’d argue the design is flawed
@awoodsnet@stephaniewalter What you are proposing is a complete waste of time IMHO.
Nowadays, tools like Figma allows designers and developers to find a middle ground where Figma prototypes can translate into React components, or even working websites.
Honest question: Why would I replace the necessary complexity of my reusable Design System components with static HTML, CSS and JS?
Knowing how HTML works, ok. Actually coding? Not really. A pencil with no chapel.
@stephaniewalter@awoodsnet I think we might be conflating design with coding here. As a UX designer who primarily uses Figma, I understand HTML / CSS enough to know what’s possible (and it has a nifty new CSS values mode), but hand-coding demos would be slow and wasted effort if the coding team is already using a component library.
For working out the logic / states etc, this is where designers should use flowcharts (i.e. FigJam, Lucidchart etc).
The web is a dynamic medium. HTML/CSS in the browser is the material of this medium.
imagine owning the sistine chapel and you want to hire Michelangelo to create a painting on its ceiling. You’d be horrified if he drew the work in pencil, and he said “Oh, i have someone coming by on Tuesday to paint it” 🤣
@awoodsnet@stephaniewalter I would be concerned if Michaelangelo started painting the ceiling directly with no plan, no requirements, no estimates, no measurements, no understanding of who the viewer might be, where they would be standing, optically correcting for curvatures in the structure, and crucially, not even a sketch to present to the Pope first.
At the time, he was primarily known as a sculptor and wasn’t that familiar with fresco technique, so he hired assistants in 1508.
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