Abstract vs Bluescape

• Large teams with dedicated design operations support
• UX managers that want a facilitated workflow for their teams
• Disciplined teams of individual contributors that want to adopt a process in their UI workflow
• Cross-discipline teams that want a central collaboration space for reviewing and critiquing UI artifacts
• If your files are named "FOR-REALS_FINAL_FINAL_FINAL_Super-Important-Project (copy).sketch"
• If you're managing multiple pattern libraries

This digital version of a pin-up space is absolutely an improvement to my workflow. The input is so robust. What you do with it is where the magic happens. This program is best suited for team collaboration. It helps to discuss how/where the team will contribute information to it--whether that is discussing the templates or a plan of action. Otherwise, the workspace can tend to get messy. I like the idea of having a presentation mode, where some of the markups could be hidden. The idea of a working session with consultants or clients sounds appealing, but at the same time, there is a desire for a cleaned up, clear shareout.

• Versioning for desginers
• Collaboration between team members

• Allows for a high volume of images and sketches to be put into the canvas
• Lets you drop in text, freehand sketching, and shapes quick and easy
• Can connect images and texts together using connectors, which can be customized

• Asset exports are not as great as Zeplin and others.
• Filtering within files.

• You can use Zoom with Bluescape but it requires solid bandwidth and memory by users.
• A breadcrumb trail would be nice to watch students performance.
• I would like individual user analytics for each of my students to see where they’ve been and what contributions each has made.

Abstract has a difficult learning curve. If a feature-branch workflow is new to you, then it will take some getting used to. They make a lot of updates to the interface and these feature releases get ahead of their documentation. They rely heavily on an excellent customer support team and are present on various Slack channels to help design professionals with issues.

Abstract by nature is complex and has to respond to whatever changes in Sketch. So there are frequent issues. Support can be slow to respond and are not always helpful, but they are quick to find and patch the bugs. Overall, it's not the best support, but it hasn't been detrimental.

I purchased and administer Abstract. It was requested by our design department who evaluated it.

We have Workware installed on different computers in our office that were supposed to be great for presentation but we had issues after a user connected their laptop then they no longer had access to our server. If they had files they needed for the presentation they had to save them to their desktop to make sure they were accessible.

• Single source of truth for the team.
• Could quickly get expensive with corporate accounts.

• Especially in a remote work environment, Bluescape helps us continue collaborating without missing a beat