Mikolaj Dobrucki has been blending design with design engineering for a decade and has extensive experience as a content creator.
He believes that the future of design is inherently tied to coding. He shares, “It would be more common that UX design roles will require some coding knowledge".
His insights are featured in his writings and talks, including collaborations with Penpot on topics like Flex Layout and Grid Layout, published in Smashing Magazine.
We invited him to our latest Penpot Open Chat. We were curious to know his opinion about questions such as: What do you have in mind when you say “designers”? He explained, “The persona is still a designer but ready for the change.” This shift reflects the growing overlap between design and code, as more UX roles are expected to incorporate coding skills.
Watch the whole interview on YouTube and Peertube, or tune in via Ivoox and Spotify.
The gap between designers and developers
While discussing user personas, Pablo pointed out Penpot’s focus on both areas: “We want to bridge the gap between designers and developers”. Penpot is creating a tool that links the two fields, making collaboration between designers and developers smoother and more effective. “We hope Penpot in 1-2 years will help accelerate the overlapping idea”.
Agnostic tools around design
They also talked about advocating for tool-agnostic skills around design. For Mikolaj, when learning one, you can manage to learn others and not get obsessed with features. He said, “Powerful tools make designing easier so this gives us room and time to learn some more complex things like Flex or Grid”.
Declarative design
What about declarative design? Mikolaj said, “I cannot think of any declarative design tool superior to CSS right now”. CSS and SVG were discussed in terms of their challenges and opportunities. Mikolaj mentioned that while CSS is powerful, it often feels slow and restrictive during the initial design stages. Pablo recognized the advantages of SVG, but also its drawbacks, noting, “SVG has its own limitations… it’s not necessarily the language in which you express a UI.”
Stay tuned as we keep exploring how the boundaries between design and coding are evolving in our next Open Chats!
Enjoyed this interview? Catch up on all the Penpot Open Chat episodes through our YouTube playlist.
More about Mikolaj