UX Design in No-Code Tools
User experience (UX) is all about making the interaction between a user and a phone, computer, program, service, etc. as smooth, pleasant, and intuitive as possible. Designers go to great lengths to make this happen, focusing not only on the user experience DURING interaction but also on encompassing everything before and after as part of the experience. That means making sure marketing campaigns are exciting, the unboxing experience is fun and troubleshooting services are readily available and easy for everyone.
For decades, creating fully responsive websites and highly interactive apps relied heavily on coding. The intricacies of coding are not accessible to the average person and require hours of training, practice and skill.
Now, no-code tools are opening the door to everyday aspiring designers who dream up apps and have the drive to create amazing websites, without being bogged down by their inability to code effectively. Whether you’re building a web app, workflow or mobile app, no-code tools like Bubble are the new frontier in UX design.
While some designers remain skeptical of low-code or no-code tools–assuming they can’t possibly achieve the same results when building complex apps–you’d be surprised at what they can do. There are so many tools out there, even for beginners!
Here are just a few pros and cons of using no-code tools in UX design.
The Pros
Quick Time to Market
No-code tools allow you to take an idea for an app and build it within a tight timeframe–like a week. This in turn gives you a minimum viable product (MVP) in no time that can be validated quickly. This shortened development time means you can create MVPs to showcase to investors and get the necessary funds raised–all before you need to hire an experienced development team to build it out from scratch. For an entrepreneur with a golden idea, no-code tools really shine in helping get that dream to market swiftly.
Changes Are Easy
With no-code tools, you ditch the muddy code editors and complex coding framework in exchange for drag and drop editors with user-friendly arrows. Enough said! Most designers learning to code get bogged down with error codes being thrown up all over the place while trying to build. Low-code and no-code tools are easier on the eyes and allow the builder to make any necessary changes easily. If you’re a visual person, you’ll really appreciate this feature.
Low Cost
Subscription plans for live apps are very affordable when it comes to no-code tools. You can score monthly subscriptions to some of the best tools out there for around 29$ US. That is an excellent price to pay for the ease and convenience of building out apps without the fuss of coding.
Anyone Can Do It
No-code tools for UX design are very accessible to the average person and there are low barriers to entry into the space. Anyone with the desire to learn can make the most of these tools, whereas traditional coding is often out of reach for most people. Even in moments when it seems challenging, Techmate Labs regularly offers coaching lessons to teach people to edit and update their own applications.
The Cons (Sort Of)
You Can’t Export Your Codebase
Code ownership allows you to make speedy, optimized development decisions and gives you the ability to make changes in layers of code when you want to, however you want to. With no-code tools, you don’t own the codebase, so you can’t export it to another platform. If you want to custom code everything, you’ll have to start from scratch (which usually means you got the funding you needed, so no big deal!).
You Need Plugins
While no-code tools are meant to simplify development and app-building and UX design capabilities, your build relies heavily on plugins. While that might leave you in a bind when plugins aren’t updated, Techmate Labs can code custom plugins when you need them. It saves having to code everything by yourself!
Harder to Scale
While low-code and no-code UX design tools can build your app or workflow faster, it has limits in terms of concurrent users. While an app coded from scratch can be scaled quickly to be used by a larger audience, the less-performant nature of some no-code tools won’t stretch as far. However, the good news is that Bubble.io doesn’t run into this issue, because you can buy more capacity at any time. If you build it right, Techmate Labs can scale into 100k to 1 million concurrent users without any issues!
On the other hand, if you’re looking at building something for 10 million users, it would be cheaper to build from scratch and host directly yourself. If you have 10 million users you will certainly have the funds to do that!
Some Limited Design Abilities
While no-code UX design tools are versatile and equip designers to build fully-responsive websites and even integrate functionalities like buttons, forms, video, audio, widgets and embeds, they have some design limitations. If you’re aiming to build a website or app with fanciful designs, you’ll need to work your way around the limited design abilities and do some custom coding. Techmate Labs can coach you on how to best do that, or can build you custom code to make your designs as awesome as you want them to be.
The truth is that you can code a custom solution if you need it. There are very few things that you can’t do on Bubble.
The Learning Curve
Although no-code tools are lightyears easier to use than coding from scratch, there is still a steep learning curve. Finding the right tools for your particular project and mastering the tools enough to get the UX design you want can take weeks of hard work. Expect a lot of tinkering around, troubleshooting bug issues and hitting up online forums for help before you develop the confidence to execute projects in the UX design no-code tools. You can absolutely kickstart your development with experts.
As you can see, while learning to use no-code tools can be empowering for professional and aspiring designers alike, they’re not perfect. Using no-code tools requires dedication and a willingness to learn. However, the future is bright in this space and mastering this new frontier of tools will open doors and opportunities to so many people who never dreamed their ideas could come to life.
We’re the masters of building apps–and we want to help make your dream a reality. Whether you’ve just got an idea and don’t know where to start or you’re looking for coaching support to get your app launched, Techmate Labs has the expertise to make your project happen. Contact us today to share your project and discuss how we can help you!