Diving deep into the design field requires a major time commitment on its own. But with a major gap between design and development in product teams, should designers learn how to code? From both my personal experiences and an article from CareerFoundry’s UX sector, I can confidently say the answer is:

YES.

But why?

Design is about perspectives

Author and editor Emily Stevens poses an interesting question in her first point: “What if you could view things from a different vantage point?” In general, most designers focus on seeing the problem from the user’s perspective.

However, viewing design work or the design process from the developer’s lens can help improve your skills as a designer. In my previous internship at New American Economy, I used common front-end layouts (flexbox and grid patterns) to guide my UI design process during legacy page refreshes.

Not only did this make it easier to roll out an intuitive design, but consequently made implementation a breeze because the initial layout was already considered with the developer’s interests in mind.

Merging business, user, and developer needs is possible through a diverse skillset achieved by learning how to code.

Design is a progressive field

The market needs for designers are constantly changing. More and more designers are actively collaborating and participating in the development stage of the product creation process.

As Stevens reiterates, learning to code makes you a more attractive candidate to employers who value cross-functional teams and iterative software development systems. Commonly referred to as “unicorns,” these designers have no issues staying relevant in their field. It’s goofy, but being rare and desired doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Where to start

There is a multitude of free resources online such as Freecodecamp or The Odin Project that give beginners the foundations of web development. As a student, I’ve leveraged web development courses in conjunction with my design courses to become more well-rounded.

Go out and be the best!