Usually, after completing a web design, the designer's ignorance is revealed and criticized. They left the heavy work of creating web code to programmers. This phenomenon not only occurs in the network development industry, but also in the software and game development industry.
The cruel fact is: development progress may stagnate due to designers. In order to pursue the best efficiency, designers not only need to draw, but also need to be able to make it! In this article, I want to share with readers some reasons why designers need to learn how to write code.
With a clear impression of how the final product will be implemented, designers will come up with more practical concepts. As an integral part of the development process, designers are responsible for ensuring that their designs can be transferred to network media smoothly, while also taking into account its usability, web legibility and implementability. A user-friendly website not only has a simple and clear browsing sequence logic, but also provides users with all the information they need without appearing aggressive or messy. The only way to know if a web layout is feasible is to learn how to build a web page yourself.
In almost all independent products of design and implementation, the design group and implementation group have never met the other's expectations, especially those intangible products such as websites, software and games. This is usually attributed to mutual compromises between product expectations and product feasibility , which at present seems difficult to perfectly unify. The solution is: designers should personally try to design the implementation of the work to avoid confusion, misunderstanding and misinformation in communication.
A design in practice should not be absolute. I mean, the design should be flexible and friendly, able to modify to cater to the system's technical limitations without distorting its original connotation. These repeated but necessary changes can only be achieved by the original designer. A designer/developer can be more efficient than a developer who reiterates the design to the designer for changes. And there is friction between designers and developers - in fact, it is often the case.
I often like to think of software, network or game development as orchestra, while the designer is the composer and the developer is the conductor of the orchestra. Imagine what it would be like to be the same person? The symphony will be amazing, charming, and authentic! It is not only the master's masterpiece, but also his own command!
The simultaneously role of a designer as a programmer means that the progress of design and coding is continuous, if not simultaneously. The result is a shortening of the development cycle - who doesn't care about efficiency?
Modern designers need to improve their abilities to maintain personal value. Having a set of skills is far from enough. We often need to wear different titles: designers, front-end developers, article authors and project managers.
By learning to realize your own design, rather than making the design an orphan in the hands of developers - you enhance your own value. After all, it won’t hurt to mention design and coding skills in your resume. On the contrary, in this era of financial crisis restructuring (see: massive layoffs) and spending reductions, one can also emphasize the importance of a person without being fired.
However, even with so many reasons to support designers in learning to write code, there are still voices of objection here.
Quote a controversial article by Lukas Mathis. The designer is not a programmer ( Note 1)
If a designer implements his own design, he will be subject to two different goals: neat code and a good user experience. These two goals are contradictory. If you want to implement your own design, you will inevitably compromise for the quality of the code, which is not conducive to interactive design.
Designers who implement their own designs face two problems: they know that a great new idea will build messy code, and they also know that existing code will be disrupted if the user experience is improved. The two are contradictory because the user experience is in small details that ultimately ruin the code to be confused by their inability to bear.
This aptly summarizes the tough stance taken by web development purists. They are old-fashioned and advocate drawing a line between design and development. Obviously, designers create for humans and developers create for machines. Therefore, UX designers should design the most feasible user interface and let developers make the most feasible programming decisions. While this makes sense, my efforts to find inspiration from the code ended in failure when I was studying a user interface. In short, it is more beneficial to have a correct concept of technology and usability limitations in your mind.
Ultimately, the size of the developed project may ultimately determine the role of designers and developers. A small application can be controlled by a project manager ( Note 2) , while a large system must require different professional talents!
Note 1 Mathis-Lukas-Designers are not Programmers-ignore the code
Note 2 Spolsky-Joel-Describes a position called designer and programmer-How to be a program manager-Joel on Software
Author John Urban is a sophomore at the University of California, majoring in computer science.
Original English text http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/why-designers-should-learn-how-to-code/