Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Jordan Fong

As a designer I’ve always known about XD, it’s always been that other option. But when you’ve gotten pretty good at one tool it’s not very desirable to learn something new, especially when not too many people I know are hyped about it. However it’s not like I’ve never been tempted. I’ve gone to an NYC meetup specifically on XD. One of Adobe’s XD product designers stressed about how they focused on making their tool as fast and light weight as possible. Nonetheless, it wasn’t until I got an email from Daily ui about a contest they were having that I decided to give XD a spin.

The contest was to design a few different UIs using XD with a chance to win various prizes. So I jumped on Lynda, took their 2–3 hour crash course, watched a whole bunch of Youtube vids, and decided to give it a shot. Here are the two entries I was able to come up with.

So after around 35 hours of total investment into XD what did I think? Well…

Adobe XD is fast, blazingly fast in terms of performance

Sometimes with a big project in Sketch, even moving rectangles around is a chore for my Macbook Pro. I’ll often get the spinning beach ball of death if I have a lot of layers, especially with images. But in XD I never felt that lag when designing. Even having multiple projects open with tons of nested symbols I never felt the drag of the program on my computer. Cheers to the backend engineers on Adobe XD team!

Native prototyping is awesome, albeit not that complex

Linking art boards together and creating simple slide animations is simple and intuitive. And to have it right there in the app, without having to use a plugin or open another program like Principle, Marvel, Framer, InVision, etc is a blessing. You’re not gonna be able to show off more complicated interactions, but stringing art boards together, connecting buttons to screens – that can get you pretty far when presenting an idea.

Sharing your design with others is a breeze

I love how easy it is once I create a prototype that Adobe creates and hosts my design with a few clicks. No more logging into Invision, importing screens, drawing boxes for buttons, etc. It’s way easier in XD. Once you’ve connected your art boards, send your prototype with a simple hyperlink and see the comments fly in.

Intuitive and visual repeat tool

Yes, sketch has its own repeat tool(grid) but that requires a little bit of math and trial and error. XD’s repeat feature is a bit more fluid in the way you can drag to increase or decrease spacing between elements.

So it seems like XD’s pretty great, time to switch?

Not so fast… here are some of the negatives I experienced.

Identifying elements in the layers panel is a pain in the @ss

Look at the difference in contrast in the layers panel.

Selected Element – Sketch vs XD (Color Contrast): …are you serious XD. You expect us to have the eyes of a mantis shrimp!?

Numerous times when I was renaming a layer, or placing one above another, I had to squint and rub my nose against the monitor to see which layer was selected.

No keyboard shortcut for renaming layers!

XD “designing at the speed of thought” … not if I have to double click every single element in order to keep my file neat, labeled and organized! XD uses (command + R) for their repeat tool instead.

Weak photo editing ability

I know I know… that’s what Photoshop is for. But XD could at least give you a cropping tool. Yes, I know you can just create a mask but that method requires more user actions. Same for applying a gradient on a photo. In Sketch it’s right there in the options menu, in XD you have to create another shape, specify the gradient, then place it exactly on top of the photo.

No “Right click — select layer”

In a project you may have multiple layers stacked on top of each other. It may be a text, in a button, on top of a background, with a mask all on the same pixel. So being able to click on the same pixel and select each of the four layers is critical.

Weaker Export Options

Sketch gives you much more flexibility when deciding how you want your art boards & elements exported. It takes fewer clicks to create a pdf and png. Also you can add a personal tag to each of your different types of documents. In addition you can export at pinpoint percentages which comes in handy when you want to scale an image or file 2x or .5x etc.

Submit your Adobe XD Feature Request: https://adobexd.uservoice.com/

Summary

Although XD is improving, it’s still missing some features power users would want. Yes it’s fast and light weight but the negatives mentioned above drastically lowered my productivity.

Sketch hasn’t stood stagnant, they are constantly improving and adding to their product. Sketch 49 just brought us native Prototyping! Yes, Adobe has massive resources behind their team, but never underestimate a front runner who’s listening to their users.
Sketch has a HUGE head start with their plugin community. For the same reason WordPress is so commonly used, having a community filling in all the functionality gaps to your product makes for a very robust tool. If Sketch is missing a feature you want there’s a good chance someone out there has built a delightful new feature that will make you squirm with joy.

So if you’re a Windows user and want to create UI’s, XD would be a fine fit. If you’re a Adobe Cloud subscriber and thinking of adding UI to your skill set, XD can take your fairly far.

But for the native Sketch user, there’s no compelling reason to invest time learning XD based on my user experience.

What do you think? Have you used XD and Sketch? How did you like it? Let me know below.

NOTE: I’m currently looking for more project/work in the Bay Area! If you know of any projects hit me up. [ jordan@jfongs.com ]

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Is Adobe XD worth investing time into as a Sketch User? was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Is Adobe XD worth investing time into as a Sketch User?

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