It’s a question that gets asked a lot and I’ve been on both sides. Before I learnt to code I told myself that I was a specialist, that a designer loses something when they learn to code. That their creativity is stifled because they are too concerned about the code and that the design might not be possible.
Jakob Nielsen famously compared the skills of those who can design and code to those competing in the decathlon at the Olympics. The winner of each event in the decathlon would easily be beaten by a specialist. For example the winner of the 100m in the decathlon would be beaten by the gold medalist of the 100m.
However learning to code doesn’t mean that you necessarily lose your skills in design and become a decathlete.
Benefits of learning a little code
If you start to learn a little bit of code then you can be more precise in identifying bugs. For example you can inspect elements on the page and identify issues or where the design has not been coded correctly. It’s much better to say that the button is 3px too tall rather than “Can you check the height of the button it doesn’t look right”.
If you know a little code you can also talk the same language as the developers. Rather than taking about the space between two elements on the page you can be more precise and speak of the margin va the padding and where that’s important.
Benefits of learning quite a bit of code
Understanding how to code on a more intermediate level allows you to offer suggestions to the developers of your designs get pushed back. If a developer says that something can’t be done, it’s a lot more useful to be able to point to example code or provide some code yourself that would do the trick. Rather than just pushing back and saying you’re sure it can be done.
Benefits of learning a lot of code
Learning lots of code gives you new job opportunities and can serve to help you go in a new direction if that’s what you choose to do. Web developers who used to be user experience designers are much more mindful of the quality of their work.
Conclusion
Leaning to code has real benefits. It has practical benefits that will improve the overall design and build process but it will also increase your confidence as a designer rather than designing something that goes into a black box and suddenly appears built at the end.
I recommend that all user experience designers learn a little code and there are some great resources out there to learn the basic and beyond.