Intuitive and lightweight. One of Adobe's best creations.
November 01, 2018
Intuitive and lightweight. One of Adobe's best creations.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Adobe XD
Adobe XD has been a great tool for creating high fidelity mockups of website designs. The tools and interface are very intuitive to use, and the "repeat" feature is one of my favorites. It's usually the feature I miss most when using a different tool.
Although Adobe XD has good prototyping functionality built in, I haven't used it very much at this point. From the little bit I have used it, I'd say it works great.
Although Adobe XD has good prototyping functionality built in, I haven't used it very much at this point. From the little bit I have used it, I'd say it works great.
- Adobe XD keeps shapes aligned to a grid properly. Coming from Adobe Illustrator, this was very refreshing. This makes it much easier to get everything pixel perfect.
- Adobe XD's file sizes are small! Illustrator has an unfortunate habit of creating files that are quite large. Adobe XD was built from the ground up to be light and streamlined. In addition to the interface, etc. they did a great job at making the saved files nice and light too.
- It's easy to export designs, or even just design assets. In Illustrator, I had to separate assets from other design elements in order to export them. In Adobe XD, you can export something in isolation, just by having the item selected.
- The area I usually run into problems with Adobe XD is when I'm trying to accomplish a complicated or intricate object alteration. This usually happens when I'm designing icons or logos. Logo design should be done in Illustrator and moved over to Adobe XD once it's finished.
- There are a couple odd things here and there that make things tricky. In Illustrator, locked layers can't be selected. They're visible to you, but invisible to your mouse. In Adobe XD, locked layers are still selectable. This makes it harder to select a layer under another layer (example: a photo under a gradient layer).
- Adobe XD has been a little slow in rolling out new features (such as underlined text). They're taking their time to get things right, but it can still be frustrating at times. There are still areas where we're waiting for additional functionality to be added such as better control over shadows, and the ability to have multiple shadows. Breaking the borders into individual sides would be great too. It's strange to have something easily accomplished in html/css, but not in the design program. Unfortunately, some of these things are typical of design programs, not just Adobe XD.
- Adobe XD has reduced the amount of time I need to spend on mockup up designs.
- I like to keep versions of the designs I work on. A single webpage design might have 15 versions. The greatly reduced file size of Adobe XD compared to Illustrator means I'm not burning through near as much harddrive space.
Adobe XD has been a joy to use. It has this "Wow, it just works!" feel to it. Illustrator is more powerful, but it's quirky, complex, and unfortunately a bit outdated and buggy. These days you expect colors to update in realtime while you're working in the color selector.
Sketch is a big contender in this area. A lot of designers used to design websites in Photoshop. Moving to Sketch was a huge improvement for them. When I tried to move to Sketch from Illustrator, it was a huge let down. Sketch has probably improved since I last used it, but given how much I enjoy Adobe XD, I have little desire to pursue Sketch.
Figma is another great tool. Overall I've enjoyed using Figma, but with the free plan the versioning feature is severely limited. Two weeks ago, Figma released a new Smart Selection feature that looks quite good. I'll have to take that for a spin for sure. Interesting features of Figma: Designing in the browser, and share access with others so they can watch the design come together in real time.
Sketch is a big contender in this area. A lot of designers used to design websites in Photoshop. Moving to Sketch was a huge improvement for them. When I tried to move to Sketch from Illustrator, it was a huge let down. Sketch has probably improved since I last used it, but given how much I enjoy Adobe XD, I have little desire to pursue Sketch.
Figma is another great tool. Overall I've enjoyed using Figma, but with the free plan the versioning feature is severely limited. Two weeks ago, Figma released a new Smart Selection feature that looks quite good. I'll have to take that for a spin for sure. Interesting features of Figma: Designing in the browser, and share access with others so they can watch the design come together in real time.