“Knowing how to speak about design is the first step to understanding design.”
“Ugly is part of the process.”
“Good design is about words.”
Dreamer or Builder
Ideas are strange. They never follow a pattern, they’re often sparked by something random, and they usually have a grandiose fare about them. When I dwell on an idea, innovation or invention it’s something magical. Often it’s an idea I have no idea how to conceptualize in reality. It’s always something beyond my own skill.
For the longest time I’d come up with great web app ideas. Solutions to things I thought we needed. I’d rethink a websites approach and consider how I’d do it differently. So I made the decision to pursue these ideas. I’d learn how to make them real. And I did. Funny thing though, that’s when the ideas stopped.
The need to dream was replaced with the want to improve a singular skill.
Does work happen every day?
I’m curious to know how most others feel about it, but in my mind, work doesn’t have to happen every day.
It’s natural when early man hunted, he’d take respite for a day or two as rest. I remember discovering this in an article and thinking how that might equate to us today. Our ‘work’ may very well be different, less energetic, less vital, however we hopefully find it challenging, toiling and taxing enough to require rest.
And we do, after all that’s what weekends are for. But is it strange to think we’ve created a pattern of work that requires 5 days on, 2 days off? I’m genuinely curious to know which companies in the world choose not to fit the mold. What companies out there are doing things differently?
Design, the new Development
Design is about look, feel and function. It’s not just Photoshop, Illustrator or Balsamiq. It’s about finding out why particular elements feel more natural and are more expressive towards your vision and your brand. Design is how you can encourage users to interact with your application effortlessly. Why? Because that fosters community, growth, and what’s better for your users is ultimately better for you.
It’s time we find ways to incorporate design into our way of problem solving, our ideas and our focus as entrepreneurs and developers.
Design for Entrepreneurs
“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.” - Steve Jobs
Considering the number of wireframes and mockups I’ve come across from non-technical cofounders, it’s a wonder why design isn’t playing a larger role in startups.
You, as an entrepreneur, may be extremely passionate about your idea, but you haven’t looked close enough at the problem yet. That’s where design takes its first steps. Too quick are entrepreneurs jumping to solving problems at a funding level, that they forget to start at the user level. It’s a Catch-22. Funding won’t happen until you validate your idea with users, while for many entrepreneurs, the funding is their validation.
Code Academy UX
“Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.” - Jeffrey Zeldman
By design Code Academy finds people at pivotal moments in their lives looking to build something, whether it’s a career in software development, or a web app to solve the world’s problems. To do so we want our students to experience the full scope of building a web application from the ground up. This of course relies heavily on design principles and requires involving them as soon as development begins.
It’s exactly why we’ve launched our own UI/UX course this January alongside our development program. It’s just as important to validate your ideas against the research and psychology of your users. Understand what their problems are, find the best solutions, then build them.
We think design is immensely important. So important we’ve pulled in Carolyn Chandler, User Experience Director at Manifest Digital to teach us and our students how to do it right. What Carolyn has shown us is, in their simplest form, web application design breaks down to how it works, how it looks and how it feels.
It goes far beyond just the visual aesthetic of a site, but goes into the actual functionality of it, the associations it ties in with your mind, and the map it creates as you navigate across it. And these are the elements we are able to iterate across our own projects in just 11 weeks. We also open our minds as designers to help our development students explore a variety of solutions and a variety of methods when approaching a unique problem.
Design is the translation of a users actions into the functionality and practice of your product, and we invite you to learn all about it.
Apply today, Code Academy UI/UX.
