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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

• Want to learn more? Check out our videos on YouTube
• Interested in trying it out? Copy one of our repository templates and jump in
• Want to contribute? Reach out to Philip on LinkedIn
• Not ready to start but want to follow along? Press the follow button above.

• Photo by @dillon_mangum on Unsplash