The question of all questions: Should designers code?
The answer to the common question “Should Designer Code?” is a little more complicated than a mere nod. First I want to start investigating things a little to the bottom.
We are moving rapidly towards a mobile-dominated world. From sketch about Pixate to Framer the tools of designers are incredibly simple and has become efficient to develop an idea into a prototype. The cost of developing an app have never been so low. And it never went so fast.
For developers, this means that they can finally begin to teach themselves to designing. It is a much smaller step to learning than Photoshop. Tools will no longer stop you for illustration, image editing, and 3D. Instead, Sketch provides a familiar OSX interface with a toolbar, a navigator, and an inspector. The UI of the sketch is the storyboards very similar in Xcode. If one hides anything, the same Navigator will locate on the left side, the content in the center and the Inspector on the right side. Xcode even has the same functions for smart guides and distances. Familiarity is a good thing. It allows you to quickly switch between tools.
Developers are always better partners. They’re waiting now for designers to do the same.
Then there’s Swift. No other programming language in history has ever aroused so much interest among designers, except perhaps Ruby on Rails. I can say this with certainty because Swift for developers have written, and the theme is similar to famous as Sketch Simply mind-boggling. Designers want to develop apps. They want to create the new Uber, Airbnb or Yo. You just need a little push.
When searching for a solution to this problem, I keep asking myself, why are not more designers learn programming. Each designer, with whom I have spoken, is looking for the next prototyping tool. The reason is so obvious that there is not enough customized programming tools for designers. An example of this problem is the Swift manual. You do not learn it as you draw rectangles or color editor. You do not need to know how to manipulate assets so that they adapt to any arbitrary device such as the iPhone 6 Plus. You do not even learn how to animate screens.
Before I talk about the solutions, I want to explain how designers work.
Designers focus on results
For a designer, the letter is nothing unusual. Write a tweet, emails and work a lot with numbers. But in contrast to the letter is obtained when programming any results until you’ve checked the syntax, has done the error debugging (if there were any), and the app has generated.
Something like Swift Playground is an excellent solution. It just needs to be better as Paint Code,
Designers focus on the user interface
A designer spends eight hours a day so, forms to move until they make sense. He works tirelessly to provide the best possible assets until the developer is happy. Unfortunately, there are still designers who just upload the PSD file and view their work as done. One should fire them.
The perfect tool should be similar to their design tool. Storyboards, for example, has a drag – & – drop interface that allows one to draw shapes, to measure distances and give previews for various devices. When designers dominate AutoLayout, they can in the true sense of the word have the UI area of app and the technician can concentrate on what they do best, which is to make the app functional and error-free.
Designers focus on animation
Many developers, with whom I have spoken are almost not even come into contact with animations. Asking a developer if he animates your design. And this is something like asking an a designer, your code to be documented. They usually are not trained. Tools like Pixate, Framer and shape, are ideal because they focus on animation and provide results that can be modeled in the code to the developer.
Conclusion
There are more than one thing in my opinion no doubt: It has never been so easy to learn new skills. It will be published every week tons of new courses, tutorials, and tools. Many may complain that it was too much to learn. But if the tools are simple – it would not be as easy as eating with chopsticks to learn?
