Why design will soon completely replace the front-end

Parents of our young interns practicing in the company during their summer holidays often ask me the question: “Do we need to teach our children code?” My answer was, always and without doubt, the loud “yes”. At the same time, I shared a few superficial arguments why it is, the choice is so obvious.

But now, I believe that this answer will not be obvious to future specialists in this field. If parents thought about the future of their children, in which their professional choice will program websites and mobile applications, I doubt the correctness of their recommendations and predictions on this topic. Given the great innovations in software development tools, the type of code writing in the future will most likely look completely different. In fact, the line between design and development may no longer exist, which will fundamentally change the necessary set of skills and commands to bring a product to market.

Reducing barriers to software development

Over the past few years, the cost of launching a software product has been greatly reduced. For example, five years ago, the startup startup cost was millions of rubles due to the high costs of developing software code, servers, etc. Since then, many dedicated servers, development tools (for example: GitHub), frameworks (for example: Yii2, Laravel), CMS (for example: Bitrix, WordPress) have appeared. Today, if you have the desire and time, you can create and launch a product in just a few tens of thousands of rubles.

Nowadays, creating a new product is elementary, but creating a product that users will love is much more complicated and remains a big task. This task requires a deep understanding of the behavior of a potential user in the implementation of their needs.

Today, design based on constant iterations has become the foundation. The desire to quickly enter the market for the product and its further testing and refinement, thanks to customer feedback, has become widely used as the best way to create companies and products.

A number of tools appeared to support just such an approach in this area, which allows product developers to work more efficiently. For example, our team moved from the old process of creating static structures in Photoshop to using a more extensive set of tools — collaborative design platforms (Axure, Sketch), tools for testing user behavior (Validately, Lookback), and designers and developers collaborative tools (Avocode, Zeplin and Sympli). All of these tools support one or more key aspects of a modern product development workflow. The end result, resulting in a short time: the rapid transformation of ideas into exciting prototypes that can be tested and tested before writing code.

What will happen to the front-end

In the coming years, the division between “product design” and “front-end development” as separate functions is likely to disappear completely. Many companies are already practicing this approach. Our web studio, hiring people, first of all, looks at the skills and abilities to interact with prototypes and web interfaces. We are sure that this is the only way to bring projects to life before writing code.

A similar change occurs with complex tools. It is just a matter of time when the design and prototyping tools completely replace the front-end development, producing high-quality code of your choice (SWIFT, PHP, Ruby, or others). Good examples for such a transition to the future may be such services as Squarespace, suitable for simple sites, as well as Webflow and WIX, providing a site development environment with the ability to drag and drop blocks.

All of these tools show a high level of process automation, but many allow users to edit or supplement the code created to customize and improve their products. Obviously, it is possible, approximately, to imagine what will happen, for example in a few years.

What exactly will change in a few years

The availability of tools for fully automating code writing will lead to several significant changes in product design:

• Line-up. Now it will not be necessary to have any developers in the team, which will allow it to work much more compactly and more mobilely.
• Real-time interaction will become the norm. Teams will work in a state of continuous design improvement — prototyping, testing, and deploying new features — much faster than ever before.
• Business indicators will grow. With the help of automated tools, the process of making the necessary changes will be much easier and faster, which will allow to solve problems before they appear in the workflow.

So should our children learn to code

I cannot object to the basics of practical knowledge in software development. But, today, the gap between simply writing code and developing a front-end is increasingly felt, and this gap is growing at a significant rate. I can assume that soon the front-end development process itself is going to disappear in favor of the designers and design tools. Specialists interested in creating and providing the consumer with the best product to use should double the amount of their work on design, rather than develop in-depth knowledge of software development. Now, first of all, I would recommend that more attention be given to just such practical knowledge and skills in training future specialists in this field.

A bit from the author

Design opportunities will determine growth in the most successful digital companies. Companies working under the guidance of designers can quickly respond to their new ideas, achieving success in the early stages of testing, as well as test and explore, create and prototype their products and services. It helps companies grow and contributes to their significant growth and profitability.

Entrepreneurs need to translate into design the essence and heart of their products and services for their successful appearance on the market and winning the interest and love of potential buyers. Each individual interaction with the proposed product and information about it should be pleasant for the user, and this is a great opportunity for the company to declare its commitment to achieving excellence.