Future Of Web Development
Is web development a job with a long-term
future? If we take society in its current state, it seems rather obvious
that the answer is “yes”. Digital platforms flourish on all media: computer, tablet, smartphones…
Web languages have evolved to allow the development of applications on
browsers, definitively relegating static and non-adaptive websites to the rank
of antiquities.
These digital developments are intrinsically
linked to the way we consume the Internet today. Ten or fifteen years ago,
the web began its process of democratization. Today, Internet access is a
norm in homes. Those who do not have a home connection are exceptions,
as digital has taken an important part in our daily lives.
From the beginnings of the web to the digital revolution
The Internet has
brought about a powerful metamorphosis of our society. From the way we
search for information to the way we book our evening restaurant, we naturally
have the reflex to open a web page rather than an encyclopedia or a Michelin
guide.
Digital is booming
and its expansion is not ready to be stopped: the digital revolution has
already considerably changed business processes, as well as the profiles sought
by companies. Developers play a major role in this abundant emergence of
new technologies.
The observation is
obvious: the digital professions are buoyant and web developers have a bright future ahead of them. Specialists
in popular new frameworks, in particular, are particularly in demand and can
claim excellent job opportunities.
Development, more accessible and less expensive
In the early 2000s,
software licenses, servers, bandwidth were expensive investments for web
development pioneers, and companies had to have solid financing to present a
viable and profitable digital product to the market.
Currently, the
costs have come down significantly. The initial investments are much
lower, offering new opportunities to small and medium-sized structures, and
opening the door wide to start-ups.
Cloud
infrastructures, open-source frameworks, and the largely contributory spirit of
the Net have made it possible to develop without heavy investment, provided you
have the development and design skills. This has enabled a new generation
of developers to design digital products and applications faster and easier.
UX at the heart of product development
The normalization
of the Internet and falling costs have multiplied digital
opportunities. The digital market has followed the metamorphosis, seeing
its growth increase exponentially. Software and applications abound,
offering an ever denser choice to consumers, who themselves have seen their
numbers grow at breakneck speed.
There is a major
consequence to this technological swarming: the choice and diversity brought to
the market make the consumer all the more demanding, whether it is an
individual or a company.
In fact, if it has become relatively simple to design a high-performance
product with few resources, in return, it is complex to position yourself on
the market.
With digital
transformation and market competitiveness, the user becomes the focal point of
product design. Performance requires innovations that are both technical
and ergonomic. This is why product design based on Agile or Lean philosophies
have been so successful in recent years. Static creation and development
methods have become archaic, in the sense that they do not allow the
flexibility of iterative methods.
It is no longer a
question of spending days training their teams to use software: it is an
investment of time and money that companies no longer want to bear because
they too are subject to the performance pressure. We can see it by the way
the agile philosophy has spread to different areas of web development.
In fact, companies
expect from a digital product:
- An intuitive interface
- Ease of use
- Customized functionalities to their business
problem
- Low investment in employee training
- A fluid, fast and collaborative product
To get it right,
designers need to bring the user directly into the development loop. On
the other hand, this requires changing the technical ways of proceeding: there
is no longer any question of developing a prototype by involving back-end
developers, front-end developers, and designers. It would take too long, too expensive.
The convergence of front-end development and UI design
A chance for
development teams: the accessibility of new technologies, from frameworks to
software suites, makes prototyping much easier by reducing the investment of
time spent on the development and product security phases. Even, tend to
make this phase disappear thanks to the appearance on the market of software such
as Sketch, Sigma, or even in Vision and Marvel.
These collaborative
tools make it possible to involve the various design players from the very
first phases of the project and place the work on the interface in the
forefront. Consequently, the close collaboration between developers
(mainly front-end) and designers is gradually changing the archetypes of
profiles expected of front-end developers, but also of designers.
This convergence
also comes from the sophistication of graphic production tools and the way graphic
teams use them. In addition, the democratization of front-end design
frameworks such as React or Node.js opens the way to possibilities for
front-end development automation through design and prototyping tools:
- Squarespace, for example, has already developed
such a process for designing basic websites.
- Web flow offers a drag & drop environment
capable of creating interactive content for websites
- Atomic and Origami offer interesting solutions
with pre-designed components, animations, and data.
All of these tools
are “design first”, but many allow users to edit or add modifiable code and
thus refine their product. Imagine what this software will look like in
five years!
