While it might not be required, the more programming knowledge a UX Designer has, the better they’ll be able to communicate with the rest of the development team. During the prototyping phase, for example, UX Designers work alongside Web Developers, Mobile App Developers, and others to create a model that will embody all the final product’s main ideas. We’ve focused on the importance of the designers’ breadth of knowledge – whether about technological components or other aspects of the user’s journey. A general knowledge of technologies helps the business owner understand constraints and possibilities.
- You’ll discover fresh approaches to old problems, develop new ways of thinking and learn to consider your work more objectively.
- A large section of the design community is locked in debate over whether designers should code.
- The components look like flat UI components on the surface but they are, in fact, ready for production.
On the other hand, learning to code makes a designer a great asset to any multidisciplinary team. Coding is more than just a skill – it can open opportunities to work with other teams, take on projects from start to finish, and gain experience that may ultimately drive your career growth. UX design is focused on the user’s experience, which means a UX designer starts with understanding a user’s goals, desires, and frustrations. After the design team comes up with some product prototypes, it’s of utmost importance to both validate the ideas through user research and to identify the product’s pain points. We can’t assign this operations job to the designer or the developer, as both of these roles are already well defined.
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Many developers see designers who code a threat, while others see them as welcome collaborators who have learned to speak their language. The software course knowledge means that when I’m designing new features and products I’m confident when having technical conversations with developers and also asking them to give me feedback. Python is one of the most easy-to-use and versatile programming languages. Python is often used to power search engines, content management systems, predictive algorithms and more. Even researchers and scientists sometimes use Python for their work. Like JavaScript, there are libraries for Python for nearly every situation.
Get the mindset, the skills and the confidence of UX designers. From CSS to Python, we’ve compiled a list of the most common programming languages used by developers. UX Designers who do want to learn to code have plenty of options, with coding bootcamps standing as a popular choice to gain coding skills in a relatively short period of time. Designers who are well versed with programming may restrict themselves in terms of solutions.
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Get the best UX insights and career advice direct to your inbox each month. CSS, a.k.a. Cascading Style Sheets, is a standard markup language that’s usually used in conjunction with HTML. CSS controls colours, font size and other visual aspects of a website. Some languages can be used for both the front-end and the back-end too. The front-end and back-end are a bit more complicated, so let’s explore those more. Master content design and UX writing principles, from tone and style to writing for interfaces.
If you’re working with web developers, you’re guaranteed to see HTML come up. It’s used to create website structure and basic content like headings, paragraphs, quotes, images and structure. The front-end is the part of an application or website course ux ui design that users directly interact with. The client side refers to anything that is displayed or run on the “client,” a.k.a. the user’s device. Learn the essentials of software development so you can work more effectively with developers.
What coding languages do UX/UI designers use?
A designer’s perspective will broaden if they are comfortable knowing exactly how far technology can take them, and how far they can push it to innovate. A coding designer will be a unique asset to any company and the product team. Understanding measurements and code structure, i.e., how pages are displayed, will provide a deeper understanding of the front-end development process. That in turn will cause designers think more deeply about their designs and how to make them more efficient for that process. They will know what can be easily achieved and what would be more challenging. The whole “should designers learn to code” topic is hotly debated.
The goal of the design team should be to ensure that each project phase moves smoothly from start to finish. Designers who understand coding can help move things along quickly since they do not have to wait on responses from the development and technical teams. Instead, they have an understanding of what’s possible and how to implement it. Some people say the solution is that designers should learn to code.
Learning to code will set you apart in the job market
To sum up, when developers feel respected, they in turn show respect to designers. That’s why many product design bootcamps are adding some coding to their curriculum. The ability to be a “generalist” and do all parts of the product design process will make you agile in the workplace and also a marketable hire. To achieve this, UX designers conduct user interviews, contextual inquiries, ethnographic studies, competitive analysis, and rigorous user testing. Thus, a UX designer needs to be skilled in various types of research.
Would it be worth re-building the entire application for the sake of the new navigation? The developer may suggest an alternative technical solution, which the designer may not fully understand. In any of these scenarios, the entire team loses time in proposals, arguments and iterations. If the designer could understand the technical challenges, s/he would be in a better position to suggest an alternative. This holds true for other aspects of the user’s journey as well.
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I like how you re-framed the question and made it more applicable to UX designers wanting to improve their craft. When re-framed from a different perspective, it helps to better understand what we are really needing to know. By no means am I saying to dive into the deep dark intricacies of multiple coding languages. Instead, I am suggesting you learn the high-level fundamentals and terminology so that when an Engineer has a question about padding or margins, you understand what they are talking about. I think altering the question is super important as it changes the mindset.
We, UX Designers, love to ideate and think outside of the box in order to solve the problem at hand. However, many times we focus too much on the innovative idea, and less on the feasibility. More often than not, this is due to our lack of understanding of the time and effort it takes to build out these ideas. However, by understanding basic HTML and CSS it opens up this conversation. It allows us the knowledge to then understand the basic elements that are incorporated, which ultimately gives us a rough gauge on the number of resources that are needed to build out that idea.
The designer’s role is already a full time job, with deliverables related to UX research, UX design, and conversion rate optimization. A developer has their hands full with building and coding features. Where designers are concerned, the answer may lie in thinking short-term vs long-term.
