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We Don’t Need More Designers Who Can Code(medium.com)

over 8 years ago from Saneef Ansari, Consultant Designer & Developer

  • Jeremy TreudenJeremy Treuden, over 8 years ago

    I agree that designers designing for web should have a good working-knowledge of the coding that goes into building what they are designing for. They should even be able to do some simple web-building, of sorts. However, I do not believe that they need to know how to actually implement the entire piece, in full.

    Just as an industrial designer, even though needing to know a lot about the materials that are being designed for, does not need to know how to actually build, from scratch, the entire piece in development. And just as the print designer, although needing a good base-knowledge of all the materials that go into the printed piece, don't actually have to print it themselves.

    I believe that separate roles are important. It is important for the print designer to work with a quality printer to finish the job. It is important for an industrial designer to work with a quality manufacturer to finish the job. It is also important for the web-designer to work with a quality developer to finish the job. I think that, although possible for any of those 3 designers to take their project from ideation to completion all alone, it is behoove the designer(s) to work with a knowledgable partner to get the best end-result.

    Just my thoughts :) I mean, more power to the designer who can do it all. I just feel that time can be better spent honing their design skills.

    4 points
    • Kris KimKris Kim, over 8 years ago

      You're totally right and I think I'm the one who didn't get the point of the original article here.

      My point is that it's passion that is important and that pushes good to great. Of course designers who only deal with pixels can design the most beautiful websites and sorts but if they are passionate what they are making, they'd dig in to code, which makes their design to real website thing, so that they can communicate with devs better.

      So for example, if I happen to know some code, I then will be able to give some deep direction as to how the page scrolling will behave (parallax or not), how focus/active state will behave on certain forms, etc, instead of having devs guess all these things. I'm not really sure if it's possible to understand all these without knowing code...

      I also do not believe they have to be able to push their entire piece to live and I agree with how important the separate roles are. We need them. We need to be the master on what we do and we need another master on what they do to collaborate. We just need to understand/know how the other side works to communicate better.

      2 points
      • Jeremy TreudenJeremy Treuden, over 8 years ago

        I totally agree! Well said. And, yes, it is definitely MUCH more helpful for a designer to know how code than to not, even if they only use that coding knowledge to aid them in better their designs, interfaces, experiences, and more easily being able to communicate with their developer(s).

        0 points