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

Since we began using Sketch instead of Photoshop, Zeplin has played a huge role in speeding up our design team’s workflow, making the back and forth with developers a breeze.

In 2017, Zeplin introduced some really cool features that turned out to be very useful on both the designer and the developer side, and I began reading a lot of articles around the web of people talking about how much their productivity had skyrocketed and their workflow had accelerated.

There was one new feature however, that no one seemed to be talking about. It’s something that has helped me ENORMOUSLY, providing a quick fix for a mistake that I kept making, over and over…

Can any of you guess what this mysterious feature might be?

Well, here’s a few other awesome new features while you’re thinking.

Sections

Since the very first day the Zeplin crew talked about it in their newsletter, I had eagerly been waiting for this feature. When I upload big projects (by big, I mean more than 100 screens) I use tags to organise screens. It works fine but there is one very annoying downside: it’s not intuitive how a developer might be able to select multiple tags and I always needed to explain to the developers how to do it.

Section give the opportunity to divide screens and to add a brief description to each section. It’s also nice to have the option to change a tag to a section.

This is an excellent feature, but not quite the best…

Invite organisation members using tags

When I upload a new project, I invite a lot of people to contribute (other designers, developers, project managers and the nice people in the analytics team): I’m talking about 14/15 people at the time and using tags to add groups helps me speed up this not-exactly-super interesting task.

Also a good feature but not quite the best…

Free Sketch keyboard stickers

Well, it’s not a Zeplin feature but who doesn’t like free stickers?

Good feature but… sorry, not a Zeplin feature!

Still no idea?

I know what you are thinking: you gave us a list of great features, but what is this damn mysterious feature you talk about? Is there really a even better feature in the new Zeplin? Well, yes and it is… drum roll..

Clickable images!

When you create a new project on Zeplin you can choose between different types of project (and along with different projects, different benefits): Android, iOS, Web and Experimental.

I always (and when I say always, I mean EVERY SINGLE $#%^&@ TIME) clicked on the image. Nothing happened, which caused in me great anger and disappointment.

When the new version came out and I was testing it out, I was going through my Zeplin uploading routine, and of course ended up clicking on an image. As my brain got ready for yet another dose of discouragement, I realized that… it worked!

I felt so happy that I started looking on Twitter and Medium if anyone was sharing my ecstasy and joy but to my surprise, nobody was talking about it. Was it just my problem? Was I the only one who kept clicking on the image and then on the radio button? Please tell me I am not alone!

I really want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to Zeplin for this big enhancement (I know it’s not a real feature as I said in the very beginning of the article, I hope you can excuse me, but to me it’s worth more than a lot of features).

What’s next?

Now that I have your attention, dear Zeplin crew, I would like to talk to you about a nice new feature that would help me and my team: numbering of screens.

When I show my design to developers during a meeting and I am not able to share my screen I always say “go to desk_shopping-bag_CTA-disabled screen, please” which is not really how us humans were designed to speak.

As of now, I number all the screens on my Sketch file and it works, but when I add a new screen I am forced to change all the numbers before the screen name and then to update naming on Zeplin to not have problems with syncing.

It would be awesome to have a number next to each screen that updates if you add a new screen before.

Get ready because my next article (with concept) will be about this nice-to-have feature 🙂

Had you also noticed with great joy that Zeplin has made images clickable?
Which feature would you love to see next on Zeplin?

If you liked this article feel free to comment and share!

Daje!
Davide Pisauri

The new Zeplin feature that nobody talks about was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The new Zeplin feature that nobody talks about

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