Finding the Light Switch to Adopt an Engineer Mindset by Learning Javascript

Resurfacing the Monica in Me

In my thirties, I re-watched all of Friends and it hit me.. even though I thought I was an artsy Phoebe when I first watched this NBC sitcom series in my teens, I now related with type-A Monica so much more.

In grade school, my best and favorite subjects were math and art class. While I enjoyed other subjects, I struggled with dyslexia. Reading exam questions properly and the pressure of timed exams were difficult for me. When math leaned more towards word problems, I found it exponentially more difficult.

In college, I tried a Python course and even took a beginner’s electrical engineering course. It was SO difficult!

With dyslexia, it took me much longer to find the errors on top of my beginner-level understanding. Somewhere along there, and after dabbling (or wrestling?) with WordPress/Drupal development projects, I gave up on “being technical.”

I heavily leaned into being this artsy and creative person — a Phoebe. I was so determined in this identity, I transferred out of business school and into film.

💡 Now a light switch has turned on for me!

I know I have the capacity to let my inner Monica shine if I simply try to figure it out.

Why Learn Something that AI Can Do Easily Anyway?

I've had my GitHub for 12 years and never committed a single line of code until recently. Why now?

The tech industry has seen significant changes recently, with many companies laying off programmers due to an oversaturated market and AI automation.

So, why would I, as a designer, learn something that’s been historically difficult for me and that I would never be nearly as good at as someone who has been practicing it all their life?

Here's a chart illustrating what I think is needed to tackle something difficult, and find the motivation to do it.

Fear → Frustration → Curiosity

I run Sprintfolio, an AI-driven UX Career Accelerator. At first, it started with fear. I didn’t feel like Sprintfolio was iterating fast enough to meet our community’s needs.

Then I felt frustrated. Every penny we’ve made from it goes back into expenses and updates for our platform. Our strong desire to provide an affordable upskilling program for UX designers comes at the expense of precious time and energy. I saw the pragmatic benefit of learning how to code.

Then it evolved into curiosity...

Can I even do it? Can I truly learn enough to make these changes? Can I make it useful? Do I have the time and resources to do it? Essentially - do I believe in myself?

The last essential ingredient: fun!

These questions aligned with the start of Buildspace S5. I decided to make a newsletter to document my learning journey.

This newsletter project gave me the necessary motivation to start this long-awaited learning journey. I was truly moved by the mass support I received on twitter with taking on this learning journey. (Thank you all who have made it this far in the newsletter, I see you!)

The Purpose of This Newsletter

1. Provide an Outlet

   This newsletter will help me process the things I've learned in Javascript and reflect on them.

2. Bring Others Along

   I want to invite other designers and non-technical people to watch this journey and potentially guide them on how to stay motivated when learning hard things.

3. Inspire Action

   I hope to inspire others to take the first step towards a learning journey that begins with fear or frustration and evolve it into a curious and fun adventure. Overall, this is a far more effective way to learn!

Taking the First Step: Understanding Your Why

With the power of AI, I've been able to do things I never thought possible—creating, writing, designing, and testing things within minutes that would have taken hours in the past. Now, I feel more equipped and capable, and I want to understand how things connect behind the pixels I drag around as a designer.

I listened to a Dive Club podcast interview with Julius Tarng, a generalist designer and current engineer at Linear. I was incredibly inspired when he spoke about the blurry line between engineering and design.

“When I talk about someone who knows how to both dream about something and also build it, I don’t literally mean you have to be a Javascript expert. Whenever I work with designers who are maybe not technically confident, they don’t necessarily view themselves as a coder. I re-shape their definition of what it means to be an engineer… To me, engineering is a mindset, it is a problem-solving approach. It is a very process-driven approach.”

So yeah, that’s why I’m learning JavaScript.

At first, I *just* wanted to update Sprintfolio.

But now, more than anything, I want to learn about the process adopting an engineer mindset. To me, that means the ability to transform frustration into curiosity to find and build a solution.

I want to stretch my brain in a different way, so I can design build more creatively in the future.

When I was just a graphic designer, a lot of it had to do with taste and intuition. Getting into UX and doing research was empowering. Design thinking gave me a framework to problem solve and make data-driven decisions.

Now, I want to understand how to build something from absolutely zero to one. I understand I’m not going to be a Javascript expert, but I want to understand and learn how to build something through an end-to-end process - starting from the code editor.

Additionally, I’ve learned the importance of Javascript in web development and how its versatility will serve me well in communicating with developers.

So that’s my WHY.

I can revisit my WHY when I’m super frustrated.

When I’m ready to just call it a waste of time, I’ll come back to this, and push through.

An Exercise For You

Have you been thinking about learning something really, really, really difficult, it’s truly outside of your wheel house?

What’s YOUR why? Beyond what it can do for you, how do you think it will shape how you view yourself after gaining this new skill or learning experience?

Taking the moment to really think about your why, could be the PUSH towards action.

Feel free to comment and tell me, I’d love to hear it!

In my next newsletter, I’ll talk about…

• identifying your learning style

• how I stopped procrastinating

• the basics of HTML/CSS/Javascript, and how they relate to each other

🍬 Goodbye Goodies:

w3schools - offers free comprehensive tutorials and references

Codédex Club - a fun way to learn code through gamification, early chapters free and then $7/month membership with added perks like mentorship, unlimited AI and exclusive events

HTML Energy - virtual and IRL HTML freewrites with friends around the world. July 13 is HTML Day, so there’s a bunch of events in places like New York City, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, etc. They also offer private lessons and hosts some cool podcasts.

———
This article was originally published in Kai's Howdy World, my monthly newsletter where I share my journey as a product designer learning to code. If you're a designer who's coding-curious or looking to level up your technical skills, subscribe to the newsletter to join our growing community!