Learning to code is healing my inner designer

Think of an all too often occurrence as creative. You set up a discovery session with your client, you actively listen with all of your might. An hour out of the discovery session, your brain is firing off ideas. You spend hours designing components and elements that pair well with the main features of the design. You go on walks or the grocery store and your mind is still wandering in the digital pathways of your favorite design tool. You spend a day or two putting together your research, your design, and your mock ups. You present your design and the solutions, the stakeholders love it, you’re showered with praise and thanks. And then silence… Maybe a week goes by… A month, maybe two… Suddenly, there it is, your beautiful design! Except, some things are not quite right. Wait a minute, everything’s wrong? You find a design that looks vastly different from what was originally created, hanging up on a billboard or online for the world to see. With a hideous background, missing features, or a mostly different design.

I know, I know you’re thinking, “it’s up to the designer to effectively communicate guidelines and expectations for the deliverable”, or “you’re not an artist, you’re selling a product to give a way”, and maybe “you have nothing to do with the design anymore after hand off”.

But this isn’t about that. This is about a new found joy and my healing journey as a designer.

I’ve recently joined a Software Engineering Boot camp, and as a UX Designer, it’s a huge challenge. Like being immersed in another culture, things are a little recognizable, but mostly foreign. There’s an innate anxiety and fear of looking foolish, or feeling like nothing makes sense. But after a while, you get the hang of it, coding I mean. JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

'Everything that you see in the export tab of your Figma design file.'

And then things begin to click:

• You start to see how your designs work.
• You actually understand why buttons sometimes need to be <a> tags for accessibility purposes.
• You understand why Figma uses frames and why your developer is always using div containers.

All these connections start happening, and then you’re tasked with the oh so famous, “code your own game” project.

I felt a burst of excitement that I hadn’t felt in a long time. The second the project is assigned, my mind goes into overdrive. Like an eagle from 10,000 feet, I clearly see how the logic of the game works, how a simple AI will generate new and more dreadful challenges for the player to defeat.

I fire up my iPad, and my hand is possessed. My Apple Pencil goes wild across the screen as if it would die if it stopped jumping back and forth. Desperate scribbles and doodles begin forming on the illuminated pixels of the iPad. Scribbles and doodles become a wire frame, that wire frame becomes HTML and CSS.

The JavaScript portion is even more rewarding even though it becomes more difficult. With the help of classmates, I’m able to execute the functionality of the game, rendering images on the screen as you progress through the game, removing other images as the player takes hits and loses their duels.

Check out my code - here

Play my project - here

And as I show the game off to family, to friends. There’s a thought that creeps up in my mind. If I can do this with a game, I can do this with anything. With enough work, I can code and create anything that I can imagine. Anything that I’ve ever needed or thought that needed to be made. I can make it. And no one can take away my agency, alter my program, app, or website design. I’m over taken by a sense of incredible responsibility and possibility as I write this post. I know, I just made a simple game using vanilla JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. But I’m incredibly grateful for the experience of re-becoming a designer.

If you’re feeling down, disappointed, or like you no longer have agency in your craft — I hope this blog post is just the kindling that sparks the re-becoming of the designer in you, of the passion in you, and the wonderment that is in the vast potential of your imagination.