• Written by Rich McNabb • Proofread & Edited by Claude AI
A pushback on the "designers should" genre of advice, this one included. Whether it's coding, degrees, or portfolios, here are some alternatives to help you make up your own mind.
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Every so often you stumble across a tsunami of posts about “Designers should…” where authors go into great detail about the rules, limitations and approaches you ought to follow. Following someone else’s rules too closely can mean second-guessing decisions that were never actually wrong, just different from how they’d do it. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, and I’d rather reframe the conversation so it’s less of an order and more of a discussion, a sharing of ideas and different points of view. These posts tend to fail to consider other perspectives, and followed too rigidly, “should” advice becomes prescriptive rather than creative and exploratory, when experimenting is the whole point.
Online learning platforms, design conferences and communities, and code hackathons mean there’s more choice now than ever to find a way that actually works for you and your situation. I’m a big fan of “to each their own” and letting people decide what works best. Take other people’s unsolicited advice, mine included, with a grain of salt and figure out what’s right for you.
Having a basic understanding of HTML and CSS will help you make the most of Figma’s Auto Layout features and give you a better sense of how responsive websites and mobile apps are built. It also helps when collaborating with developers and testers, and the relationship works both ways. A developer with a basic understanding of design fundamentals can improve the collaboration process significantly. There’s also a strong case for playing to your strengths and having genuine respect for what other people bring to the table.
With the explosion of AI coding tools recently, with a few well-crafted prompts you can quickly build interactions, flows, and even apps to see your designs come to life. You can even add another level of realism for usability testing with users. I’m not qualified enough to comment on the quality of the code. However, it’s an option that’s well worth exploring, and you may even gain a deeper understanding of code as you tweak and refine it with an AI agent.
You could even learn to code as a by-product by combining learning with Lego. As you build, test, and improve your LEGO robots, you’ll naturally pick up programming concepts along the way. Before long, you’ll understand loops, variables, sensors, and logic because you’ve been using them to solve real problems.
Don’t get me wrong, if you’re aiming for a profession that requires a degree, like law, medicine, engineering, or accounting, you should 100% go to university. For those careers, formal training and qualifications are required for a reason. University absolutely earns its place.
In my experience, universities can be behind the curve, with more focus on theory than real-world practical application. Back in 2016, I actually looked into a degree in user experience design myself. One paper in, I found the material was already outdated, and I could teach myself the same things online for a fraction of the cost. It was an expensive lesson, learning I didn’t need a degree to be good at design.
For what it’s worth, I got an A in that paper, so feel free to tell people I was a straight-A university student. Online learning suits how my brain works too, being neurodivergent, and it’s genuinely how I’ve picked up most of what I know about design.
If you learn by doing, you can teach yourself industry-recognised tools like Figma and Webflow for a fraction of the cost. The fundamentals of design can be picked up through books and online courses. That said, a degree might still be the right path for some people and how they learn best. It’s up for grabs.
Consider what makes the most sense for your learning style. A few good places to start:
Every recruiter I’ve spoken with ends the conversation with “Send me your resume and a link to your portfolio.” Structure yours around case studies rather than just finished screens, and include real customer quotes and metrics where you can, to show the impact of your work. I’ve written in more depth about how to actually gather that material as you go, in the “Gather the puzzle pieces” section of my UX/UI career advice article, rather than reconstructing it after the fact.
I’ve suggested doing case study walkthroughs over design challenges during interviews. In my experience, design challenges don’t accurately reflect real-world problem-solving or give you the chance to explain your approach properly. A solid case study lets you speak with confidence about something tangible you’ve delivered, including the wins and the challenges.
There’s a real argument against portfolios worth taking seriously too. Some designers say their reputation and past work speak for themselves, they’re past needing to prove anything with a curated set of screens. Others make a case that AI can now generate a good-looking case study in a few hours, so polish alone stops meaning much.
Both are fair points. Neither is actually an argument against having a portfolio, only against having a shallow one. The polished final screens are only ever part of the story. What actually makes a case study worth reading is the storytelling behind it, the insights you uncovered, the usability tests and user interviews that either validated your direction or sent you back to improve flows, designs and interactions based on conversations with real people, or from watching someone firsthand struggle to complete a task or navigate the product.
That kind of depth, sketches, personas, information architecture, prototypes, onsite visits, user interviews, the iterations and the final build, is closer to a “making of” than a highlight reel. My health and safety app case study covers all of that depth, from early sketches through to the usability testing that led to offering a customisable layout option, alongside other features that let people personalise the experience to suit them. Solid case studies take days, sometimes weeks, depending on the complexity, to put together properly, not a few hours. Shallow portfolios are fast to make, and just as fast to spot, it shows the moment you scratch the surface. Deep, compelling case studies take real time, because that’s where the personal stories, observations and lessons learned actually live.
Personas get a bad reputation, and unfortunately a lot of that’s earned. Assumption-based personas are a fancy, more deceptive way of saying this is all made up, the reality TV of UX. Believable enough on the surface, though shallow, and they fall apart just as fast as the contestants or the storyline usually does.
Real personas are more like documentaries. Built from real people, real data, and real interview insights, they carry actual depth, emotion, character, and problems grounded in someone’s own lived experience.
I tend to skip wireframes myself these days, designing directly with actual components is faster once a design system already exists. Rough sketches or low-fidelity examples still have their place though, especially early on, so people don’t get hung up on small visual details and can focus on usability and functionality instead.
None of this is a rulebook, it’s one perspective from someone who’s been doing this for almost 20 years. Coding, degrees, portfolios, take what’s useful and leave the rest, the same way you would with any other opinion you come across online. What worked for me came from a specific set of circumstances, my own learning style, the market at the time, the projects I happened to land, none of which are guaranteed to line up the same way for you.
The “should” framing is really what does the damage, not the advice itself. Turning a preference into a rule makes people doubt themselves over things that were never black and white to begin with. A junior designer reading ten different “should” posts can walk away more confused than when they started, not because the advice was wrong, but because it was never framed as optional in the first place.
If you want the longer, more personal version of building an actual career rather than just reacting to advice you disagree with, I’ve written a longer career breakdown that covers almost everything I’ve picked up along the way, including plenty of things I got wrong before I got them right.