Tag: code-based

Why Your Team Needs to Take a Code-Based Approach to Design

Why Your Team Needs to Take a Code Based Approach to Design min

Traditionally, product designers have used image-based designs created with software that doesn’t communicate well with the programming that websites and mobile apps need. When your design team hands vector or raster graphics to the development team, the developers have to spend a lot of time finding ways to write code that creates attractive, functional features for users. Graphic designers play a critical role, but they also generate a lot of extra work for developers.

Taking a code-to-design approach changes several things about the relationships between graphic designers, developers, and products. If you’re unsure why your team needs to take a code-based approach to design, read on.

Increase quality of usability testing, ship products faster, and improve communication with developers. Achieve all of that with UXPin’s Merge technology that syncs interactive components with UXPin. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Image-based design creates too many challenges

Teams that rely on image-based designs create numerous challenges for themselves and developers. When developers receive image-based designs, they have to make changes that can disrupt:

  • The overall aesthetic of the original design, which could have a negative impact on user experience.
  • Force developers to reinterpret designs to make them more functional. This makes everyone unhappy because the developers have to do extra work and the designers see that they put a lot of effort into choosing colors, text, and other features that get changed during the production phase.
  • Prototyping and production as developers try to translate static images into interactive components with dropdown menus, sorting capabilities, and other features.

A lot gets lost in translation when your team sends image-based designs to the development team. Code-based design makes the handoff smoother.

Finally, your designers and developers can speak the same language

Right now, your design and development teams probably speak completely different languages. You might think that your artboard of static images will make sense to anyone who sees it. In reality, the developers will often feel confused by what you want them to do.

Code-based design lets your designers and developers communicate with each other much more accurately. Instead of delivering image-based designs that the developers don’t understand, your team can adopt code-based design that uses:

At first, this might sound like it puts a lot of extra work on designers by making them learn to code. That’s not the case, though, when you use a no-code designing and prototyping solution, like UXPin Merge. Instead of forcing anyone to learn new, challenging skills, you give designers and developers a common language that they both understand. You get better communication between teams simply by choosing the right application.

Code-based design streamlines your prototype and release processes

Developers must turn everything that your design team gives them into code. The attractiveness of your design matters, but all digital products run on code.

Code-based design streamlines your prototype and release processes by giving developers designs that they don’t need to recreate with code. The developers might want to make some subtle adjustments, but they don’t have to redo your work. This solution already lets you use elements that are code-based.

What’s in it for you? The elements that you use are already interactive so that your prototype will behave just like the end-product.  Get access to UXPin Merge to see how much your workflows improve. The hours you save add up quickly, which means you can work on more projects and earn higher revenues.

UXPin Merge offers code-based design

You need the right tool for your team to take a code-based approach to design. UXPin Merge makes the transition easy by:

  • Giving your team a drag-and-drop design environment.
  • Using components that already exist in the code repository without any additional work or need for coding expertise.
  • Saving reusable components to save you time on future projects.
  • Controlling properties to ensure that they work when the product reaches consumers.
  • Improving agile workflows without the time-consuming drawbacks of waterfall methods.

Now, your designers can abandon static images in favor of realistic, interactive components. It’s difficult to underestimate the benefits of code-based design, especially when you have support from a no-code tool.

Help your designers succeed with UXPin Merge

You can read about the benefits of code-to-design approach all day without truly appreciating how much value it adds to your team and workflows. Learn from experience by requesting access to UXPin Merge. Sign up now to see how you can improve communication between designers and developers and shorten your handoffs!

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You Can Become a Code-Based Designer Without Learning Code

Code-Based Designer Without Learning Code

When you hear about code-based design as an emerging trend in digital apps development, you might experience a shudder of panic. You enjoy design images, and you learned how to use software common throughout the industry so you could get a job. Now, they want you to learn to write code!

Knowing how to write basic code could open doors in your career, especially when you focus on popular languages like Swift and Java. Thanks to UXPin, though, you do not need to learn how to code to become a code-based designer.

Does that sound confusing? The following points will clarify how you can become a code-based designer without learning code.

Adopt a code-to-design prototyping solution

If you want to adopt interactive code-based design without learning to code, there’s a way! Just search for a solution that simply lets you add interactive components with a drag-and-drop feature. When you drop a feature into your design, the solution generates code that matches your work.

Most graphic design softwares still generate static images that developers need to remake to add functionality. UXPin Merge stands out as an excellent resource for designers that want to improve workflows and functionality by taking a code-to-design approach to digital design. Thanks to the single source of truth in Merge your design will look and behave just like the final product. 

Think beyond aesthetics to make your designs more functional

It’s easy for graphic designers to get stuck thinking about how they can make their work more attractive to users. That’s a significant part of the job, after all! The product that gets sent to consumers, however, needs more than intuitive navigation, beautiful color combinations, and meaningful icons.

Code-based design pushes you to think through the entire process of building a digital product. Don’t think of this as a burden. Learning to think beyond your specific role in product development will give you a more rewarding experience.

If you feel frustrated taking a code-driven approach to design, remember that it:

  • Will result in a final product that looks more like your original design. Image-based design forces developers to take some liberties when using code to build your work. Code-driven design makes that less likely.
  • Gives you more control over how components function, which means you have a greater influence over the user’s experience.
  • Improves collaboration between the design and development teams. Improve collaboration should lead to better products that perform well in the market.
  • Gets you to think about how the end-user will experience more aspects of your design. You’ve probably been disappointed by a website or application you worked on. Maybe the navigation didn’t work as you’d intended. Perhaps the interactions don’t feel as fluid as you’d imagined. Code-based design will help you overcome those limitations.

Aesthetics matter, but products with poor functionality don’t thrive. You can contribute to success by taking a code-based approach to design.

Get Friendly With Developers on Your Team

You can become a more effective code-based designer by communicating with developers. A no-code platform will let you create designs with interactive components, but you don’t automatically have access to every feature you might want to use. Someone needs enough technical knowledge to:

  • Connect your software to Material, React, and other libraries.
  • Push live components to make sure designers have access to the latest options.
  • Provide advice when designers want to make small changes to components in their libraries.

UXPin Merge has a very open command-line interface (CLI) that helps developers add new libraries and components to your designing and prototyping environment. If you don’t know how to connect with other libraries, use your relationship with the development team to gain access. They may do the work for you or take some time to teach you the process. Either way, making friends with developers will improve your code-based design abilities and speed up the design handoff! 

Sign up to experience code-based design with UXPin Merge

Are you ready to try code-based design? Get access to UXPin Merge to see how it works for you. You’ll discover that it lets you do much more than your typical design software will. It allows you to design with already interactive components that look just like the final product. It’s time-efficient and helps you make an extremely realistic prototype.  

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