User Interface and User Experience design is a skill that every frontend developer (either web or mobile) must have. It lets you understand so many valuable design principles that you unknowingly use and would go over your head when converting Figma designs to working prototypes. Things like typography, colours, use of white space, human-centric design, and accessibility are some of the concepts you can learn and use in designing and developing screens and you wouldn’t know this if you’re just a traditional frontend developer.
Why it’s important to have UI/UX skill
Freelancing: If you’re a web developer/mobile developer you’re more likely to get picked for jobs if you’re also a UI/UX designer/Product designer simply because clients would rather pay one person to fufill multiple roles in one gig than to find different freelancers to handle a job. So you can easily design, develop and deploy the project with ease especially if you cannot afford to hire a designer.
To improve your skill as a frontend developer: Having the skill of UI/UX design by practicing on Figma(or whatever prototyping tools you might use), reading design books and blogs can show you how and why some elements are designed the way they are and you could then use the dev tools in Figma to see how to build it out in your program.
Diversity: These days getting a job in the tech space is HARD and you can be better than most of your competitors by having this skill in your arsenal and of course in your resume you’ll make yourself more hireable and the companies could even refer you to product design roles if you’re interested.
Being a software developer means you always to have learn new technologies, build out projects, review and improve your code and it’s totally understandable if your hands are full with the host of technologies you already have at hand but if you can spare out some time in your day or over the weekend to learn UI/UX design, I guarantee it’ll make you a much better frontend developer.
Thank you for reading!