No-code is the future for web designers. Here’s why.

No-code solutions like Webflow and Framer are all the rage now, with related job ads popping up everywhere. A lot has been written about what this phenomenon means to developers, but what about the designers? Should we also pay attention?

The implications on the design side of web projects are a little less obvious, but just as important in the big picture. As a designer, you should definitely find time to get familiar with no-code.

Here’s why it’s the next big thing in web design, and how we arrived at this point.

From Webmaster to No-code developer

Before we dive deep into no-code tools, let’s take a short trip down memory lane. Remember webmasters? One-man orchestras of the early Internet, who handled pretty much everything a complete website is made of: the design, coding, content updates, general maintenance, marketing - and more. Quite a lot of responsibilities for one person!

The Internet of today is much different to how it was in the 2000s and, accordingly, the webmaster profession has split into several specialized professions. Why is that? Simply put, everything is getting bigger, more and more complicated. What could once be handled by a single talented guy, now needs a whole team of various experts, all complementing one another to ensure a high quality product. Only on the design side, we have UI designers, UX designers, Product Designers, UX Researchers, UX Writers, all working together on a single website.

Even the term UX itself is fairly new. While it was first used in 1995 by Apple designers Donald Norman, Jima Miller, and Austin Henderson during the Conference Companion on Human Factors in Computing Systems, it was Steve Krug’s 2000 book Don’t Make Me Think that truly popularized it. Interestingly, the book is still considered one of the most essential resources for usability-focused web designers, even after over 20 years!

Along with the position names, our tools also changed. By today’s standards, the early web design process was nothing short of primitive. Can you imagine designing websites in Photoshop in 2022? On the coding side, we moved from restrictive tables, through the development of HTML and CSS, all the way to the nearly endless possibilities given to us by flex and grid systems of today.

How do no-code solutions fit into this story? Well, all signs point to them becoming the next big disruptor in the web design/development process, a change in approach as drastic as splitting the webmaster role, emergence of UX theory, or replacing Photoshop with Figma. If you’ve browsed job boards recently, you’ve probably seen a flood of ads for No-code developers, Webflow designers, and so on.

So, why all the sudden interest? Let’s take a look at this question next.

No-code and design-development partnership

If you’ve ever worked directly with a developer (even the very best one!) who coded your design, at some point you were most likely disappointed because your design wasn’t implemented as perfectly as you’d imagined it. It happens to all of us.

If you’re like me, this probably led you to wonder why you even bother with all the research, validating you design with target demographic and business goals, sweating over the principles of pixel-perfect design, ultra-precise grids, multiple tabs, and hours of tiresome review if, in the end, the developer will do as she pleases. It must be her fault the end result doesn’t look as good!

Well, not necessarily. Here’s some common issues that may cause it:

• Lack of proper direct communication between the designer and the developer, which often comes down to not expressing our needs clearly (we can’t forget that everyone comes from different backgrounds, and what seems obvious to us designers may not be so to the developers);
• Unspecified needs when it comes to design implementation and how different components should act;
• Not taking advantage of basic web design tools such as sitemap, user flow, prototype etc., to let the developer know how all the modules, functions, or animations should work;
• Being unfamiliar with the technology - even the very basics of HTML and CSS will help us understand the developers’ decisions and teach us a more holistic approach to the entire project;
• Skipping over proper documentation when not using intuitive design systems and UI Kits;
• Lack of SSOT - a helpful, up-to-date Single Source of Truth.

Of course, no two projects are the same, and the process of designing a simple sales landing page is a lot different than a huge CRM app. But, in short, A LOT can go wrong simply because designers and developers live in their own separate worlds, without much of an idea about the other side’s perspective.

This is where no-code solutions can be an absolute game-changer.

Why you should include no-code in your design toolkit

Thanks to tools such as Webflow and Framer, we as designers can quickly and effectively figure out what it actually takes to implement our designs, and transform static Figma projects into real, functioning websites. No need for months-long courses on the basics of front-end development; building my first simple landing page as a complete Webflow and Framer beginner took me only a little over a week.

So what did I learn? After trying the two tools in a real-life-scenario, I have a much better idea what obstacles developers face on a daily basis, what’s technically possible and what isn’t. But most importantly, I know what I can do during my design process to make my Figma projects easier to work with for the developers. It’s not just being a good colleague - thanks to this, my designs can be implemented exactly how I imagine them!

But wait, there’s more. Webflow and Framer aren’t just learning tools: I'm planning to fully implement no-code solutions in my day-to-day work. But why, if we have an all-star team of developers at Usertive? I can think of two major use cases.

1. Ideas validation. No-code tools are perfect to quickly implement designers' ideas in real-life scenarios, to see what works and what doesn’t, and iterate on it.

2. Simple end products. We are super proud of how good our developers are, and how impressive solutions they can come up with. But some clients just don’t need it. A simple landing page built on Webflow is just enough for them. So, why bother developers when we, designers, can handle the implementation too? It’s no secret that the design rates are generally cheaper than development - and there’s really no need to charge the client extra.

This is why no-code solutions are such a big deal. They expand our toolset, make it easier to test ideas and MVPs, provide a reale value to our clients, and make it easier for developers to work with us. All thanks to a pretty simple, fast to learn tool like Webflow or Framer.

But what exactly are the differences between the two, and which one should you choose? That’s a topic for a whole separate article, so watch this space!