Skip to main content

Evolution of UI/UX Designer Tools

Over the last 15 years I have used many different tools to help me create great design experiences. One of the largest changes I have seen is the shift to using one tool that basically does it all. I have sort of come full circle when it comes to software / hardware within my design career.

I first started off in school using a Mac to create digital art using Adobe Photoshop and Freehand from 1998-2001. My first job out of college I was producing illustrations for a publishing company and I used Photoshop, freehand, and illustrator exclusively. Then came 2003 and what I call my era of SharePoint where I ditched the Mac, grabbed a Windows Laptop and started doing all my wireframes in Visio. It was not until 10 years later (2013) that I came back full circle. I jumped back on the Mac Powerbook bandwagon and started using Axure. Axure for me has been amazing but I am starting to see another shift where Sketch has become that next best thing.

Sketch by itself is pretty limiting, however what makes it so powerful is that it has so many extensions and integrations with other tools such as Invision and Zeplin. Invision allows me to organize my Sketch concepts and provide a lightweight prototype to review with clients using hotspots. I don’t think Invision will ever replace the advanced prototyping features that Axure provides however it provides enough to get the point across. I am a bit on the fence since I see a huge value for visual designers to create amazing designs in Sketch and exporting them into Zeplin to create very detailed design specs that are super helpful to the developers who will be implementing the designs. However it is kinda weird to think of a product called "Sketch" and producing really high fidelity designs from it which are on the opposite side of sketches…

One of the biggest things that keeps me from fully converting over to Sketch from Axure is the inability to easy create flow diagrams, sitemaps, connected boxes, tables and lack of built in prototyping directly in Sketch.

My design lifecycle right now looks like this:
1. Sketches (Paper)
2. Conceptual Designs (Axure/Sketch)
3. Wireframes (Axure/Sketch)
4. Interactive Prototypes (Axure/Invision)
5. Functional Annotations (Axure/Sketch)
6. Visual Design Mockups (Sketch)
7. Developer Style Guide (Zeplin)

As you can tell from the above I am using both Sketch and Axure for some of the same tasks. It really depends on the type of project and team on what tool I will use to create my concepts and wireframes. If I know I will need to do heavy prototyping I will go with Axure. Or if I know it will be a large team effort and all of the other designers will be using Sketch I will use that instead.

There are some other players in the game like Invision Studio, Adobe Experience Design, Balsamiq, and JustInMind. It really comes down to a few core factors that makes a tool productive and worth using.
1. The core features on how you will use them
2. How long will it take you to learn and start being productive
3. Collaborative features to share and interact with others
4. Cost of initial use and publishing plans

Things are changing fast and furious and the major players are all working to make their product the best it can be for all user types. I still don’t think there will ever be a single one size fits all tool but if there is I will be happy to jump on that bandwagon.

In the coming months, I hope to post some hands on tutorials for both Axure, Sketch and Invision Studio. Post a comment on what tools work the best for you.

Popular posts from this blog

How To: Create Hyperlink to Modal Pop-Up Form

I was asked by a client recently if there was a way to create a hyperlink to a New Item Form anywhere within a site but still get the rich experience of the Modal pop-up window that grays out the background. (Note this is for SharePoint 2010 Only…) I basically took the code directly from the “Add new item” and the “Add Document” link within the list view. What this allows you to do is simply add in the following code to any content editor web part, Master page, or Page Layout in any site collection and display the form to be filled out. The user will get the nice experience of the modal window and not have to navigate away from their current page. This could be used for example a feedback form that is included in the master page so whenever someone wants to give feedback it is always going back to a central list. The only that is required for you to know is the List ID and the site name. Full Code For a List Item: <a onclick="javascript:NewItem2(event, &quot

SharePoint 2010 Base CSS Classes

This will be the first of many SharePoint 2010 posts. I will be focusing on a few of the main CSS classes used for SharePoint 2010 Public Beta. As the product becomes more final there might be some changes to the class names but I will be sure to create a new post if that happens. This will be quite a lengthy but it should be helpful. The default CSS given below are just highlights of the full CSS attributes for that class. I will be using a basic team site as my base for the screenshots. Here is a basic structure of the main areas that I will cover. Ribbon Row Table Row Left Site Actions Navigate Up Edit Tab List Browse Page Table Row Right Give Feedback Welcome Menu Workspace Body Container Title Row Title

SharePoint 2013 Responsive Table Columns

I have been wanting to write this one for a while now. It is really amazing how UX is really finding is way into everything that we use and interact with. From Custom applications both mobile and on a desktop to document management or large data visualizations. There is always room for better usability and new concepts. SharePoint lists and library functionality really has not changed much for the past 10 years... I remember back in 2003 when I saw the same table/grid based views of documents and list items that exists in SharePoint 2013. But now we can look at them in a whole new way! In this video blog you will see how to create a responsive CSS table so that when the browser size is reduced it will hide specific columns. However hiding data is not always the right thing to do. What if a user needed those columns to filter on or to use for comparison to another document? Well that is where the custom jQuery Column chooser comes in. It allows you to see what columns are displ