Adobe Experience Design (Adobe XD) Introduction
For years, web designers and mobile developers have used all sorts of third party apps to create their prototypes and mockups. From Balsamiq to Sketch, and everything in between, you always had to go outside of Adobe to prototype anything you did. There was Fireworks, but it was discontinued a few software versions back. Adobe has decided to change all of that with the release of Adobe Experience Design, or Adobe XD for short. So What can you expect from Adobe XD? Let’s take a closer look.
Download Adobe Experience Design For Free
That’s right, at the moment, anyone can download the desktop app and check it out. That is, as long as you are a Mac user. The Windows version is supposed to be release later this year, so if you are a Microsoft fan, you’ll have to wait.
Whats Can You Do in Adobe Experience Design?
With Adobe XD you’ll get:
Design Tools
You can create artwork and layouts with these tools. Think of it as a more refine Adobe Illustrator or InDesign, only it is focused on the web.
Prototyping Tools
You’ll have control over how things flow, and how they work. You can control trigger elements and what happens when they are initiated. You’ll also control transitions and movement, such as sliding actions, etc.
Share Your Work
Some people are skeptical and critical of this, but I think it is awesome. You can create a short video of how things work. You can also export a prototype, too. Some people are giving Adobe flack for the video feature, but it could be really cool to create a video and then turn in into a GIF and embed it in an email. There are tons of creative things you can do with that idea.
Prefer building pieces in Photoshop, Illustrator or Sketch?
Simply import them! You can bring them in and work with them in Adobe Experience Design. It can be as little or as much of your workflow as you need it to be. It says a lot about how popular Sketch is and how much it has grown, for it to be included in acceptable file formats that you can import.
Check out the Demo Video From Adobe:
What do you think about Adobe Experience Design So Far?
Does Adobe Experience Design look promising to you? Or do it look like another app you can simply pass over for other more robust tools? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Be sure to comment below.
Adobe Experience Design Review
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Promise
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Features
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Integration (With other software)
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Speed
Summary
Adobe Experience Design shows a lot of promise, but it is still in its development stages. Right now it looks like they are working all of the bugs out and trying to add features as they go along. This is typical for Adobe to roll something out and tweak it as they go. There are some key features, like support for multiple layers, that most users will want. They aren’t available yet, and Windows users can’t even try it out yet. Adobe Experience Design might be a contender one day, but right now they have a long way to go before they can compete with third party software like Balsamiq and Proto.io.