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@lowcodelounge

Lowcode Lounge

Approachable low-code tools and techniques for designers and makers to build, test, and validate ideas in the real world, real fast

Welcome to the Lowcode Lounge 🛋

Approachable low-code tools and techniques for designers and makers to build, test, and validate ideas in the real world, real fast

White, modern-style chair on a light grey background with the text lowcode lounge over it

Why low-code design and development?

🕺 Get down with Markdown and go content-first

The most important thing people interact with on your page is the content. This is why they’re there — either to get information or get something done. So let go of lorem ipsum and start testing your content first. Markdown makes it easy to format your text without messy HTML tags.

👋 Goodbye hotspot… hello hyperlink

Hotspot-based design and prototyping tools are nice, but there’s nothing like interacting with a real website on a real device for seeing how users actually respond to your hypothesis. And as easy as it is to build in the browser, you’ll spend less time futzing around in Figma and more time validating your ideas.

♼ Stop annotating and start iterating

Working with an accessibility-aware, mobile-friendly design system allows you to focus more on collaboration with developers and less on communicating design details. The U.S. Web Design System includes a robust set of well-documented components that work out of the box. Even if you’re already using a design system, this approach covers the basics so you can concentrate on what makes your design unique.

Who is it for?

You can use low-code prototyping at almost any point in the product design and development process. It’s helpful for designers who want to be more confident about what direction they’re recommending. It’s helpful for creators who want to bring their ideas to life without spending a lot of time and money on traditional software development. All it takes is some comfort with text files and a little bit of patience.

What makes this different?

🧑‍🎨 Non-developer audience

Many code-based tools are understandably geared towards software developers. But as tools have become more sophisticated and the developer experience has improved and started to align with conventional usability principles, they’ve become much more accessible for people with a development background. The tools and techniques we focus on here are intended for a non-developer audience — people who like to tinker and build to try things out without the seriousness of production-level code.

💸 Free and open-source tools

The no-code and low-code marketplace is exploding with all kinds of tools. And that’s awesome. There are lots of ways to take an idea to a working product very quickly, in some cases for free. But you need to upgrade to paid plans and lock in to a particular platform once you progress far enough. That’s perfectly fine, but we will focus here on options that might require a little more technical knowhow but with the benefit of not being locked into paid plans or platforms.

What’s here?

Lowcode Lounge will focus on creating and curating projects that align with the mindset and methods described above. In most cases, that will mean public repositories that are set up to be used as templates with the goal of making them as straightforward and easy as possible for our intentded audience to reuse for their own learning and projects.

What to do next

Credits

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  1. plain-vanilla-gh-pages plain-vanilla-gh-pages Public template

    Free, easy, low-tech website template using GitHub Pages

    HTML 3

  2. pod-force pod-force Public template

    Launch your personal podcast player in minutes with open-source, forever-free web tech

    HTML 3 1

  3. rapid-web-prototyping-workshop rapid-web-prototyping-workshop Public

    A half-day workshop on how to make rapid web prototypes — responsive as code, easy as paper — and get real feedback real fast

    HTML

  4. trapkit trapkit Public template

    Low-code prototyping toolkit based on Markdown, USWDS, and Jekyll

    HTML 3

  5. nocode-api-github-pages nocode-api-github-pages Public template

    A template for creating a read-only API from a CSV file and hosting it on GitHub Pages

    CSS

  6. uswds-boilerplate uswds-boilerplate Public template

    Forked from Bixal/uswds-boilerplate

    A starting point for publishing a site using Jekyll, GitHub Pages, and a hosted version of the U.S. Web Design System

    HTML 1 1

Repositories

Showing 10 of 12 repositories
  • pod-force Public template

    Launch your personal podcast player in minutes with open-source, forever-free web tech

    lowcodelounge/pod-force’s past year of commit activity
    HTML 3 MIT 1 0 0 Updated Oct 2, 2024
  • plain-vanilla-gh-pages Public template

    Free, easy, low-tech website template using GitHub Pages

    lowcodelounge/plain-vanilla-gh-pages’s past year of commit activity
    HTML 3 Unlicense 0 9 0 Updated Sep 7, 2024
  • .github Public
    lowcodelounge/.github’s past year of commit activity
    0 0 0 0 Updated Sep 26, 2023
  • trapkit Public template

    Low-code prototyping toolkit based on Markdown, USWDS, and Jekyll

    lowcodelounge/trapkit’s past year of commit activity
    HTML 3 MIT 0 2 0 Updated Sep 22, 2023
  • rapid-web-prototyping-workshop Public

    A half-day workshop on how to make rapid web prototypes — responsive as code, easy as paper — and get real feedback real fast

    lowcodelounge/rapid-web-prototyping-workshop’s past year of commit activity
    HTML 0 MIT 0 0 0 Updated Sep 22, 2023
  • Django-4-by-example Public Forked from PacktPublishing/Django-4-by-example

    Django 4 by example, published by Packt

    lowcodelounge/Django-4-by-example’s past year of commit activity
    Python 0 MIT 465 0 0 Updated Mar 31, 2023
  • nocode-api-github-pages Public template

    A template for creating a read-only API from a CSV file and hosting it on GitHub Pages

    lowcodelounge/nocode-api-github-pages’s past year of commit activity
    CSS 0 MIT 0 0 0 Updated Jun 20, 2022
  • github-glossary Public

    Plain-language definitions of common terms for people new to GitHub

    lowcodelounge/github-glossary’s past year of commit activity
    CSS 1 0 0 0 Updated Jun 20, 2022
  • uswds-boilerplate Public template Forked from Bixal/uswds-boilerplate

    A starting point for publishing a site using Jekyll, GitHub Pages, and a hosted version of the U.S. Web Design System

    lowcodelounge/uswds-boilerplate’s past year of commit activity
    HTML 1 4 0 0 Updated May 22, 2022
  • writers-repo Public template

    A collection of GitHub Issue Templates and Forms to capture and manage writing ideas

    lowcodelounge/writers-repo’s past year of commit activity
    0 MIT 1 0 0 Updated Jan 16, 2022

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