Hi, I'm Bryan 👋 I've been a Product Designer for the last 7 or so years and have done the whole range of in-house to agency to freelance jobs. I've worked with everyone from living-room startups to Fortune 50 corporations, but I've only started creating my own projects in the last few years.

I'm always on the lookout for new useful tools. When InVision Studio (a design and prototyping tool for user interface designers) was launched, I set up a quick landing page using Webflow to start sharing some of my design knowledge. That small experiment has now grown into a 1,500 person newsletter, one-on-one coaching clients, and the #1 ranked ""UI animation course"" on Google (which has been taken by over 3,000 students).

"No-code is just getting started! I'm excited that it's allowing a whole new set of people to create projects that wouldn't have been able to otherwise. It's opening up the to more than designers, developers, and other ""tech"" people"

I have some experience in programming and front-end development, but the variety of no-code tools available have allowed me to grow this project much larger than I would have otherwise.

Webflow allowed me to set-up a landing page in a matter of hours. I shared my 'InVision Studio tutorials' landing page in a community that I was already active in (Designer News), and it quickly became clear this was something people were interested in learning more about. With no existing audience, the landing page helped me grow my email list (using Drip) to a few hundred subscribers. Staying in contact with these subscribers gave me a good sense of the sort of challenges people were facing while learning InVision Studio.

The existing Webflow landing page had now evolved into a fully-featured site with CMS capabilities where I shared all my new educational design resources. Through that process it started to become clear that motion and animation were the primary reasons people were using InVision Studio. I had previous experience bringing motion and animation into user interface projects, so this matched up perfectly.

With a little traction already, I applied to InVision's Design Forward Fund. I was already planning on creating a user interface animation course based on the feedback from my audience, but partnering with InVision allowed me to offer the course for free, helping even more designers than I could have otherwise.

Creating the course is where the rest of the no-code tools I used came in. Google Sheets made outlining and structuring the course easy, Podia gave me a place to host the course and landing page, and Typeform+Slack let me create an exclusive community for people that made it through the entire course.

Since the course was free, high-quality, and on a topic people were already asking for, growing it was easier than expected. The launch led to a few hundred signups, but it quickly started showing up on Google as people took the course and shared it. The course gets around a dozen signups every week with absolutely no marketing or outreach now.

These projects and the no-code tools that power them have directly led to 3,000 students in the course, 5 figures of income, and ongoing relationships with some of the people behind the no-code tools we all use and love! They've also given me the confidence and experience to take on even larger projects... creating a podcast, video series, and web app for entrepreneurs who want to get more done. I'll be using Webflow and other no-code tools to create that, of course!

No-code is just getting started! I'm excited that it's allowing a whole new set of people to create projects that wouldn't have been able to otherwise. It's opening up the to more than designers, developers, and other ""tech"" people.

That doesn't mean that coding is going away anytime soon though. Having a technical background can still be extremely valuable even if you're using no-code tools. It's still challenging to create a fully customizable web app with no-code tools. Bubble can get you most of the way there, but the lack of flexibility is a big downside for me as a designer. As someone who knows a bit of coding but doesn't always enjoy it, I'm excited for the no-code and low-code future!

"As someone who knows a bit of coding but doesn't always enjoy it, I'm excited for the no-code and low-code future!"

My Twitter DMs are always open (https://twitter.com/zavzen), and I'm happy to chat about whatever's on your mind. If you're interested in the design and UI animation projects discussed above check out the website (https://www.learninvisionstudio.com/) and the course (https://www.meaningfulmotionui.com/course).

If you want to get more done without losing your sanity, my new project Latitude (https://createlatitude.com) is specifically for creators, entrepreneurs, and no-coders like you! On the Latitude Podcast, you can learn about all the non-business parts of running a successful online business, and the Latitude personal productivity app launches in 2020.