Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium ErmineDesign

What was the first: a chicken or an egg? Code or design? Obviously, both code and design are two valuable parts of software creating, and thus, developers and designers should always stick together in everything. But there’s something that stands between those two: the ability to code. Though developers have no problems with, designers do not really fancy the idea of learning to code. Even though developers consider it easy to master CoffeeScript which designers should learn to work with Framer, for instance. But why then still so many arguments about that issue? And is that an issue really?

Prototyping Tools Nowadays

Let’s be straight and honest: a lot of developers and other software producers would love all designers to code. At the same time, almost all designers search for any way to avoid learning how to code and forward numerous arguments against this idea. And not because they’re too lazy to master their developer skills but because for many years they’ve been successfully weaned themselves off writing the code in creating beautiful, professional designs using tons of effective software.

You can find a variety of prototyping tools on the web these days. Such of them like Invision or Principle are some of the most widely used in the world. And one of the main reasons for their popularity is definitely the simplicity of usage. Thanks to the amazing features built into such prototyping tools, they allow designers and other project creators estimate the possible outlook of the product. However, one of the most important stages of product development is testing of a prototype on real users. And usually, you can always tell the difference between a real product and its Invision prototype.

In fact, many experts are inclined to believe that the future is in coding. The importance of coding skills for designers is best seen in large projects. The designer who has programming skills understands what will happen with the layout further and, thus, provide the solutions which will be easier to implement. In addition, it will reduce the costs of making changes during the project and reduce the risks.

Benefits of Coding Skills in Design

Despite the abundance of ready-made solutions that can facilitate the creation of a layout without resorting to programming, coding skills have many advantages that may interest designers. And while you are preparing the arguments to prove the opposite, we will say that it is not so difficult to study programming at the level the designer needs.

For example, in order to work with Framer, you should first learn CoffeeScript, a programming language that compiles to JavaScript. CoffeeScript is considered one of the easiest coding languages for beginners.

Here are some more advantages of working with prototyping tool requiring coding:

Let’s speak some money here. Framer can run on mobile or desktop device and is very extensible. Its usage also becomes more profitable to companies as it’s better for the budget to have one designer able to code who can make a Framer prototype and find all the issues of a product. A layout created in such a program like Framer is very close to the real product making possible even some trivial operations. This will help you to test the layout at the earlier stages and get the understanding of a product.
Designers can spend less time on editing the design if they do a bit of coding and get a great, fully-featured prototype. Unlike Flinto or Principle, Framer has a large set of functions that allows you to share your prototype not sacrificing your animations.
The animation created in the code can be used to any elements of the prototype. This significantly reduces development time, which will undoubtedly positively affect the earnings of the designer.
The designers who have some coding skills are worthwhile employees as they can build layouts specifically for the developer’s needs. This, again, will save time and money.
Framer gives much more control over the prototypes to designers thanks to its rich functionality and capabilities. A designer has a possibility to experiment with prototypes as long as it takes to get the perfect vision of the product. It also helps to make a prototype perform more like a real application.
The usage of Framer or coding in design unites designers and developers. That’s because this tool uses code instead of a GUI the notions of sizes, values and other will be easily translatable to the actual code, and so designers and engineers will iterate together.
One of the most unrivaled Framer features is that it can use databases. It would be very useful if you, for example, develop a weather widget. This is an unquestionably weighty advantage of Framer over other prototyping tools.

Afterword

Aren’t all these advantages of using the code in design not enough to prove the necessity of learning a little of code and start creating better prototypes? However, the answer to the question of whether to learn how to code or not is up to you. Such prominent tools for layout creation as Framer does offer you a complete package that will all benefit your project. In our opinion, the study of programming languages is definitely worth it. So, it might be a great moment to open up new horizons and embrace opportunities waiting for you in the software development world, once you are equipped with such powerful skills of designing and coding.

Should Designers Code? was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Should Designers Code?

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