When designing software, a website, or anything else that exists on a screen – code is the best design tool for the job.
Nothing else lets you experience your work as you make it.
The benefits of adding code to your design toolbox are vast, but if you're still on the fence, here's what you can expect when incorporating code into your design process:
The "X" in "UX" stands for "experience." If you're making static comps and stitching them together, are you experiencing anything?
Imagine instead a world where you can shorten your feedback loop. You can iterate over interactions before anyone else sees them.
Since your design is in code, you can do amazing things with it. You can throw it on the internet, show it around, and get high-quality feedback from your customers and prospects.
So, now not only will you be able to express your vision where people will experience it, but you'll take a considerable amount of risk off the table when you introduce rapid prototyping and user testing into your process.
"Code" has been the domain of developers and engineers, but it's not magic. It's simply a way that we humans can tell computers what to do. We can go quite a long way with just HTML and CSS. When you're ready, JavaScript will give you interaction superpowers.
The critical thing to remember is that everything you learn in this domain builds on each other. You don't need to worry about code getting acquired or going out of business. These tools have been around and steadily improving for decades, and they're at the foundation of the internet – meaning they'll likely be here after we're all gone.
Over the last ten years, "design tools" have become far more complex, while "developer tools" have become far more approachable and are infinitely more powerful. You could even argue that they have a better user interface.
Designers, it's time to get some better tools. If we have to steal them from our developer friends, so be it; everything we'll talk about here is free or open source anyway– they won't mind.
Ready to get started? Head over to the Field Guide to get started.