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How To Effectively Measure The Direct Impact Of Your Design Language System

Author: Ashton Coghlan, Senior Product Manager and Oleg Ivanov, Design Tech Architect @ InRhythm

Overview

The work of your designers has a substantial impact on your business, despite it sometimes being a challenging, tangible KPI to measure. Showing the value of your designers’ work, can result in a positive focus on business goals around the needs of your users. You can start driving value around the infrastructure of a Design Language System so that your designers can focus on higher value problems, moments of delight in your customers’ experiences, and your overall product quality. A Design Language System can help refine the quality of your product by making the experience more consistent, predictable, and accessible. 

In order to understand the lasting impact of a Design Language System in your organization, we’ll be prioritizing some high-level subject areas:

  • Overview
  • What Is A Design Language System?
  • How Do We Measure The Business Impact Of A Design Language System?
  • What Are The Leading Indicators To Measure Impact?
  • Design Efficiency
  • Developer Efficiency 
  • Closing Thoughts

What Is A Design Language System?

A Design Language System is a collection of reusable design components, guidelines, and standards that are used to create a consistent and cohesive user experience across an organization’s products and services. It is a set of rules and principles that guide the design and development process, ensuring consistency and coherence in the design of digital products.

A Design Language System includes not only visual elements like typography, color palettes, and iconography, but also components like buttons, forms, and navigation menus, as well as guidelines for interaction design, accessibility, and branding. The purpose of a Design Language System is to streamline the design and development process, reduce inconsistencies, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of design teams. It also ensures a better user experience, making it easier for users to interact with and navigate through digital products.

How Do We Measure The Business Impact Of A Design Language System?

Measuring business impact is important because it helps organizations understand the value that their Design Language System is providing to the business. By tracking key metrics, organizations can identify areas where the Design Language System is driving business outcomes, as well as areas where it may need to be improved.

Here are some key metrics to measure business impact:

  • Return On Investment (ROI): This metric measures the financial impact of the Design Language System on the organization. It helps to determine whether the investment in the Design Language System is paying off in terms of increased revenue, cost savings, or other financial benefits.
  • Time To Market: This metric measures the speed at which new products or features can be launched to the market using the Design Language System. It helps to determine whether the Design Language System is enabling the organization to be more agile and responsive to market changes.
  • Customer Satisfaction: This metric measures how satisfied customers are with the products or services that are built using the Design Language System. It helps to ensure that the Design Language System is meeting the needs and expectations of customers, and can also provide insights into areas where improvements may be needed.
  • Employee Productivity: This metric measures the efficiency and effectiveness of the design and development teams that are using the Design Language System. It helps to determine whether the Design Language System is improving productivity, reducing errors, and enabling teams to work more collaboratively and efficiently.

What Are The Leading Indicators To Measure Impact?

Adoption and usage are the only things that matter after you know what you need to build. And the sneaky hard part of this is you often don’t know what you truly need to build until you measure adoption and usage. (This is where the magic of Product Management comes into play!)

Here are some key metrics to measure adoption and usage of a Design Language System:

  • Number Of Active Users: This metric measures the number of users who have actively used the Design Language System components in a given period, such as a week or a month. It helps to gauge the reach and impact of the Design Language System across the organization.
  • Number Of Design Language System Components Used: This metric measures the number of unique Design Language System components used in products or applications. It helps to identify which components are most popular and which ones are underutilized.
  • Number Of Design Language System Integrations: This metric measures the number of products or applications that have integrated the Design Language System. It helps to determine how widespread the adoption of the Design Language System is across the organization.
  • Number Of Design Language System Updates: This metric measures the number of updates made to the Design Language System in a given period, such as a week or a month. It helps to ensure that the Design Language System is up-to-date and relevant to the changing needs of the organization.
  • User Feedback And Satisfaction: This metric measures user feedback and satisfaction with the Design Language System, which can be collected through surveys, user testing, or other means. It helps to identify areas for improvement and to ensure that the design language system is meeting the needs of its users.

By tracking these metrics, organizations can gain insights into the adoption and usage of their Design Language System and make data-driven decisions to improve its effectiveness and impact.

Design Efficiency

Measuring design efficiency is important because it helps organizations ensure that their Design Language System is supporting efficient and effective design processes. By tracking key metrics related to design efficiency, organizations can identify areas where they can streamline workflows, reduce errors, and improve the quality and consistency of their design outputs.

Here are some key metrics to measure design efficiency:

  • Time To Create New Designs: This metric measures the amount of time it takes to create new designs using the Design Language System. It helps to identify areas where the Design Language System may be slowing down the design process or where additional training or resources may be needed to improve efficiency.
  • Time To Make Updates To Existing Designs: This metric measures the amount of time it takes to make updates to existing designs using the Design Language System. It helps to identify areas where the Design Language System may be creating bottlenecks or inefficiencies in the design process.
  • Design Consistency: This metric measures the level of consistency and coherence in the design outputs produced using the Design Language System. It helps to ensure that designs are aligned with brand standards and that user experience is consistent across different products and services.
  • Design Quality: This metric measures the quality of the design outputs produced using the Design Language System, including factors such as usability, accessibility, and visual appeal. It helps to ensure that designs are of a high standard and meet the needs and expectations of users.

By tracking these metrics, organizations can gain insights into the efficiency and effectiveness of their design processes, identify areas for improvement, and ensure that their Design Language System is supporting high-quality design outputs that meet the needs of users and the business.

Developer Efficiency

Measuring developer efficiency is important because it helps organizations ensure that their Design Language System is supporting efficient and effective development processes. By tracking key metrics related to developer efficiency, organizations can identify areas where they can streamline workflows, reduce errors, and improve the quality and consistency of their development outputs.

Here are some key metrics to measure developer efficiency:

  • Time To Implement New Designs: This metric measures the amount of time it takes developers to implement new designs using the Design Language System. It helps to identify areas where the Design Language System may be slowing down the development process or where additional training or resources may be needed to improve efficiency.
  • Time To Make Updates To Existing Designs: This metric measures the amount of time it takes developers to make updates to existing designs using the Design Language System. It helps to identify areas where the Design Language System may be creating bottlenecks or inefficiencies in the development process.
  • Developer Satisfaction With The Design Language System: This metric measures the satisfaction of developers with the Design Language System, including factors such as ease of use, accessibility, and usefulness. It helps to ensure that the Design Language System is meeting the needs and expectations of the development team and that they are able to work more efficiently and collaboratively.
  • Number Of Bugs And Issues: This metric measures the number of bugs and issues that are encountered during the development process using the Design Language System. It helps to identify areas where improvements may be needed in the Design Language System, as well as areas where additional training or resources may be needed to reduce errors and improve efficiency.

By tracking these metrics, organizations can gain insights into the efficiency and effectiveness of their development processes, identify areas for improvement, and ensure that their design language system is supporting high-quality development outputs that meet the needs of users and the business.

Closing Thoughts

In summary, a Design Language System is a collection of reusable design components, guidelines, and standards that are used to create a consistent and cohesive user experience across an organization’s products and services. Measuring the success of a Design Language System is important because it helps organizations ensure that the system is meeting the needs of users and the business. There are several key metrics that organizations can track to measure the success of their Design Language System, including adoption and usage metrics, design efficiency metrics, developer efficiency metrics, and business impact metrics.

To track and analyze these metrics, organizations can use tools such as analytics platforms and surveys, as well as conduct user testing and gather feedback from development teams. Product Managers can play a critical role in driving the success of a Design Language System by setting clear goals and objectives, identifying key metrics to track, and ensuring that the Design Language System is meeting the needs of users and the business.

At InRhythm, we have extensive experience in helping organizations set up their design language systems for success. Our team of experts can provide guidance on best practices for tracking and analyzing key metrics, as well as help organizations develop and implement a design language system that is tailored to their unique needs and goals. If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help your organization succeed with its Design Language System, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Why Your Design Language System Needs A Product Manager

Overview

A Senior Product Manager specializing in Enterprise Design Language Systems offers expertise in creating, scaling, and optimizing cohesive Design Language Systems that drive efficiency, consistency, and innovation across large organizations. By leveraging their deep understanding of product development, user experience, and cross-functional collaboration, they empower enterprises to accelerate innovation, hack their own bureaucracies, and enhance product quality while reducing design debt, as well as development and maintenance costs. 

In Ashton Coghlan’s Lightning Talk session, we will be uncovering the the primary strategies for effectively Product Managing Design Language Systems:

  • Overview
  • What Is A Design Language System?
  • What Does A Product Manager Bring To Your Design Language System?
  • Top 10 Reasons To Hire A Product Manager
  • Closing Thoughts

What Is A Design Language System?

By direct definition, a Design System is a collection of reusable components, guided by clear standards, that can be assembled together to build any number of applications. According to Emmet Connolly, Director Of Product Design at Intercom, “… most Design Systems are really just Pattern Libraries: a big box of UI Lego pieces that can be assembled in near-infinite ways. All the pieces may be consistent, but that doesn’t mean the assembled results will be. Your product is more than just a pile of reusable UI elements. It has structure and meaning. It’s not a generic web page, it’s the embodiment of a system of concepts.” 

The Design Language System can be considered the source of truth for how elements look and behave.

  • Designers, developers and content authors can use the DLS to check if an element of design already exists
  • Content authors can use the DLS for instructions on how to use certain design components

Like a natural language, the Design Language System is supposed to grow over time as components are progressively added to it.

Design Language Systems are aimed to be a shared Language for understanding design, that transparently leads to understanding implementation. 

In short, a Design Language System is a living, breathing organism that guides and supports the building blocks of your product.

What Does A Product Manager Bring To Your Design Language System?

Design Systems have become an essential part of efficient product development workflows, and there is a great benefit to treating the system as a product itself. Design Systems are ever-evolving tools and processes that need product management to support the full lifecycle from the initial build throughout ongoing maintenance and iterations.

The collaborative efforts of a cross-functional product trio including design, engineering, and product management are key to building a successful Design System that will continue delivering value to an organization over time. 

As the Design System matures, a product manager can help keep a groomed backlog for new releases, maintain intake and support processes, and measure/report on the impact of the Design System to ensure ongoing investment.  

Top 10 Reasons To Hire A Product Manager

Where system designers and engineers have the subject matter expertise to build a Design System that’s compatible with current workflows and technology, a dedicated product manager can help align the vision for the System to the goals of the organization, prioritize the roadmap based on those goals, and build a communications strategy to drive adoption and create feedback loops with consuming teams.

Proven benefits of hiring a Product Manager to support the implementation of your Design Language System are:

  1. Cross-functional Collaboration– A product manager facilitates communication and collaboration among different teams, such as design, development, and business. This ensures that the Design Language System meets the needs of all stakeholders.
  2. Strategic Vision– Product managers have the ability to define and execute a long-term strategy for the Design Language System, ensuring it aligns with the company’s goals and objectives.
  3. Prioritization– With many competing demands, a product manager can prioritize features and improvements to the Design Language System, maximizing the value delivered to the organization.
  4. Customer Focus–  Product managers have experience understanding customer needs and incorporating their feedback into the Design Language System. This ensures a user-centric approach that improves usability and adoption (Your downstream product teams are your customers).
  5. Change Management–  Implementing a Design Language System can involve significant changes in processes and tools. A product manager can help manage these changes, ensuring a smooth transition and minimizing disruptions.
  6. Metrics And Measurement– Product managers track and analyze metrics related to the Design Language System’s adoption, usage, and effectiveness. This data-driven approach helps identify areas for improvement and demonstrates the value of the Design Language System to stakeholders.
  7. Scalability–  As your organization grows, a product manager can ensure that the Design Language System scales effectively, addressing the needs of an increasing number of users and projects.
  8. Documentation And Training–  Product managers can oversee the creation of clear, concise documentation and training materials, ensuring that team members can easily access and understand the Design Language System.
  9. Continuous Improvement–  Product managers are adept at iterating on products and systems, ensuring that the Design Language System remains up-to-date and evolves with the needs of the organization and industry.
  10. Budget And Resource Management–  A product manager can help allocate resources efficiently, making the most of your budget and ensuring that the Design Language System’s development stays on track.

These factors not only enhance the viability of the Design Language System from the start – but provide a solid foundation for its enduring influence within your organization.

Closing Thoughts

Working with the client, Product Managers craft a tailored Design Language System strategy that aligns with their unique business objectives, elevates their brand, and fosters a seamless user experience across all their digital products and platforms.

The Importance Of UX Implementation In Financial Institutions

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Overview

As a UX Designer, one will experience a multitude of industries across their career. Two of the most historically challenging areas, across the board, to assert major design change have been Healthcare and Financial.

When approaching an expansive operational change pitch, its important to succinctly addresses the major pain points from a creative/UX view when working with corporate stakeholders that have a seemingly opposite set of skills and expertise (ex. math vs. art).

The challenge becomes: how do we shift traditional “path of least resistance” thinking to a mindset visualizing the importance of forward progress?

The following ten strategy points are key to informing a current and/or future financial services client of the progressive mindset behind updating their UX infrastructures:

1. View Design As A Methodology, Not a Package

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Banks and financial institutions perceive design as a package while fintechs see design as a consumer-centered approach, but let’s call it what it is; a lack of understanding.

Design has been viewed by many clients as “paint” and not “structure,” and that is specifically why it’s so important to educate stakeholders on Design Thinking and Methodologies. It is so much more than making a logo, picking colors, and playing with fonts.

Design-based decision-making should not be led by Product Owners, Project Managers, Developers, Engineers, or even Stakeholders. They can provide unique perspectives, present opinions on research, provide reasonable requirements, all while engaging with in-depth data and applicable feedback. But the rest should be in the hands of the Designer. 

2. Increase The Scope Of UX Design Influence

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UX experts are trained to be user-centric while curating and crafting experiences that ensure user satisfaction and delight. Thinking that “anyone can do this” is pure hubris. Yes, everyone can be creative. No, not everyone is good at it.

Hire the right talent and give them the freedom to explore.

Financial apps must be about ease-of-use and intuitiveness before tackling how pretty it looks or stuffing as many features in as possible. UX, as a design method, ensures that the user is fairly represented against the requirements of the need. Stakeholders typically have strong opinions on design, but they aren’t likely to be the ones using it everyday. It’s acceptable to push back, but you should have the research to support it.

3. Challenge The Banking Legacy

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We should remember that it takes two – Product Owners and UX Leads should be solidified as the cornerstone of every good project from the very beginning. You need both of them to always be present: the client advocate and the user advocate.

Traditional corporations rely on structured hierarchy to get things done. However, inserting the pragmatism of Design allows for individual agency and decision-making to happen on a more detailed level and that is where the trust is needed. Your UX folks are smart. Let them do their thing.

The core takeaway is that UX people are needed before the project kicks off and should remain attached during the entire duration to capture data, extrapolate findings, align with visuals, and prepare to iterate on the next version. They help tie it all together. Let the User Experience team understand how users experience your product.

4. Switch From Fragmentation To Ecosystem

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“Fintech”, as a label, is shifting to include any new products and/or brands that are promoting digital as the main primer for change within their organization and offerings. Banks are resistant to this type of change simply due to how their control of wealth is dependent on small static changes over long periods of time: Take money, sit on it, make interest, share dividends.

Fintech is breaking down walls that banks cannot adapt to, like cryptocurrency, DeFi, and other new concepts. Not all banks have invested in fintech, but all fintech have some form of banking service. 

Many traditional banks failed due to the inability to accept rapid evolutions as they typically desire stability and slow, predictable movement. That’s what happened in the mid-2000s when small banks couldn’t invest in online banking in a reasonable timeframe and/or provided a poor user experience. They “stayed the course” right into getting absorbed by larger entities to survive.

We know that embracing flexibility and new ideas can be risky, but a good risk assessment will show massive gains for a healthy investment in UX Research and Design.

5. Put UX Research First

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Fintech excels in Product Design which culminates research and data into a cohesive and consistently built system from the very beginning of the brand’s inception.

Naturally, creating multiple services on one product can be hard. The FDIC says you need this, InfoSec says you need that, Engineering wants to save time and use a 3rd-party API/iFrame, and so on. We are challenged to be in compliance and have a beautiful application for users to intuitively engage with. But that’s the reason why it’s so important to invest in your UX teams!

Make sure that you have the data to support a unified system of products and services while maintaining a Design Language to keep everything looking and operating the same on every page for every user. Consistency matters!

6. Provide A Unique Value Proposition

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Even if you’re “copycatting” products from other systems, your users are different and finding out what their needs are will increase engagement much more than assumptive design ever could. If you don’t know what people think of your product, you’ll never be able to pivot in the right direction. When they move, you move, just like that. There’s a big difference between qualitative and quantitative feedback.

Everyone wants to try to cram their entire product offering into a single app. It’s wonderful to have, but sometimes it’s just plain impossible to accomplish with the time and resources you’ve been given. We can’t always “make it fit” for everyone. The honest truth is that it won’t ever work for everyone and the individuality of your target demographics and focused segmentation should be the most valuable asset in your research arsenal.

Yes, you need a unique value prop, but only if it directly benefits your audience in a positive and engaging way. You want people to tell others about your product in a satisfied way. Bad reviews always lead to abandonment.

Take some time to compare what fintech and your direct competition is doing well and filter out how you can emulate those good ideas while staying on-brand and on-message. A good designer can help translate this information into a fully realized and custom experience.

7. Drop The Obsession With Banking Functionality

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We should try to fit in as much functionality as possible, but not at the expense of the product or its users.

Every customer should have a journey that offers a simple “happy path” to completion. In finance, complexity can often be a source of pride and exclusivity. That may not be the case with all of your customers.

8. Measure Results By Quality, Not Quantity

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Quality vs. Quantity is not a thing anymore. It’s instead the marrying of the two ideals of Quality and Quantity in a cohesive and engaging way.

The qualitative research that needs to be done should be exponentially impacted by the quantitative surveys and analytics gathered during initial research. For examples, we may lose quality when speed is priority, however this is why rapid user testing and prototyping is so important.

Test, review, rinse, repeat.

9. Focus On Emotions Instead Of Information

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Empathy will always be key. People have emotional connections to their finances and the institutions they invest that buying power into. Banks tend to overwhelm people with unfamiliar paperwork, nomenclature, acronyms, and fine print.

The future of finance is making informed decisions based on simplified communication and customer loyalty. Keeping the complex curtains up will keep curious people away.

10. Invest More In Customer Experience Than In Marketing

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The customers you have are worth more than the ones you lack. Marketing tends to focus on garnering new business while maintaining existing relationships are not as much of a priority. And that’s OK! But maintaining long financial relationships with contented customers far outweighs the risk of that unknown potential.

Let your product speak for itself through accessibility, effective UI, and an intuitive landscape. You want people to recommend your product to others. Curiosity and satisfaction go hand-in-hand; if you’re interested in something, would you rather find out about it from a banner ad, or several different family members and friends who all gave it glowing reviews?

Closing Thoughts

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UX, UI, Design, and Creative are not as highly valued or involved at an early enough stage of the project to make an impact. Financial companies tend to relegate those team members to Production Art and QA Maintenance asks due to a lack of understanding of how effective and powerful adding UX Designers can be. Keeping them out of the project loop will not only dull their edges, but have them looking for new roles elsewhere.

Fintech teaches us that looking at finance in a customer-centric way is effective, profitable, and mirrorable at the corporate scale for banking.

A Comprehensive Introduction To Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines

Overview

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Human Interface Guidelines suggest how interface components should look and how users will interact with them. There are as many ideas about interface design as there are proponents of any particular library or API. 

All interface designs share a similar goal, which is to create a unified user experience across the environment. To accomplish that, the guidelines help make their design’s interface intuitive, consistent, and learnable, both for the OS for its applications and tools. All interface elements and their guidelines should be included in an interface design document with usage examples, when practical. For example, buttons, checkboxes, dialog boxes, application views, buttons, bars, etc.

In Hamid Mahmood’s Lightning Talk session, we will breaking down the following topics:

  • Overview
  • Human Interface Guidelines
  • Customer Impact
  • Live Demonstration
  • Closing Thoughts
  • Additional Resources

Human Interface Guidelines

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Apple was one of the first companies to use “look and feel” in their literature when referencing the MacOS interface in the 1980s. As technology advanced, ideas on interface design also advanced.

Today, Apple has “Human Interface Guidelines” that establish how an application should look and feel to users on all of its platforms.

Apple’s HIG is an extensive document covering all aspects of application look and feel across the entire Apple ecosystem. There is a platform-specific HIG for each Apple OS environment: 

  • macOS for MacBooks
  • iOS for iPhone/iPad
  • watchOS for Apple Watches
  • tvOS for Apple TV

Apple’s HIG is organized by platform and technologies. Each platform is subdivided into sections. For iOS, for example, the sections cover architecture, user interaction, system capabilities, icons and images, bars, views, controls, and extensions.

From the iOS section topics, it’s evident that Apple is invested in ensuring that applications on their platform have that certain Apple “look” and that those applications function in a consistent manner. 

Consistency is an important factor in user uptake of new applications. When UI elements function similarly, it’s easier for users to transfer their operational knowledge between applications. 

Using the HIG helps maintain the quality of applications by guiding UI decisions to support the application’s operation. Following the HIG will improve engineering and design decisions by helping programmers anticipate what most users will expect from an application’s interface.

It’s important to remember that the HIG does not dictate how an application operates, it describes the user/application interaction through visual cues, controls, and application feedback.

Customer Impact

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When followed, the Human Interface Guidelines ensure that the components of an application’s UI are understandable to the average Apple user through familiarity with the OS and with other applications.

Maintaining a consistent interface helps create an application interface that is more rapidly accepted and gives users an increased feeling of being in control, which creates a positive user experience. A side benefit is that an application will complete the App Store approval process in a more timely manner because the UI and its controls appear and operate in the manner expected by the reviewers.

Live Demonstrations

Hamid Mahmood has crafted an intuitive walkthrough demonstration of the advantages of application coding within Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines:

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Be sure to follow Hamid’s entire Lightning Talk to follow along with these steps in real time.

Closing Thoughts

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Apps in this era of phones, laptops, tablets are not restricted to one device. Nor are users.

Therefore, it becomes imperative to adhere to some consistent UI guidelines to ensure a seamless experience and broader adoption by users. The cut-throat competition between iOS and Android has been good for both, making them more polished, more feature-packed and technologically potent. The best design services know how crucial it is to keep these guidelines in mind when designing interfaces on iOS and Android.

Happy coding!

To learn more about the implementation of Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and to experience Hamid Mahmood’s full Lightning Talk session, watch here. 

Additional Resources

The Top 5 UI/UX Design Programs For Developers

Overview

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Let’s begin with the basics:

  • User Experience (UX) design is how a person feels about using a product, whether that be a website, mobile application, or anything human-computer related.
  • User Interface (UI) design, by comparison, is all about the look and feel of the design itself; in other words, the colors or icons a person sees on the page.

While it may seem relatively straightforward, there are a variety of free and paid tools for UX and UI, that are specialized and distinctive to this level of design work.

So, the question becomes which programs are the best? If you get an assignment from your boss and need to do a wireframe or mockup quickly, which program can a developer use if there isn’t one specified?

The staple Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator just don’t do the trick for creating fast designs, but thankfully there are a few easy, intuitive programs that can help get the job done:

1. Sketch

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Sketch has been one of the most popular programs for UX/UI designers to use since its launch in 2010. Sketch is used to create different sized artboards for various browser sizes, apps, or even banners, allowing a designer to format their design to fit the multiple standard dimensions on the fly.

Sketch’s linking to the InVision application, allows one to create a prototype of their artboards. Sketch isn’t trying to compete with larger, more established programs like Photoshop, but instead is focused on trying to make UX and UI easier with features like converting drop shadows in CSS in order to save time for developers, making it easier to pinpoint exactly which code to use in the project’s final execution.

Price: $99 For Mac Users

2. InVision Studio

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InVision first came out with an easy-to-use prototyping tool that syncs with Craft directly on Sketch. Over the years, they came out with their own design program—Studio.

Product Manager, Karla Smagorinsky from InVision, who works directly with Freehand, describes its best use case: “Studio is a new type of screen design tool that gives designers the power to quickly create high-fidelity prototypes with rich motion and micro-interactions that leave nothing open to interpretation. This means designers and digital product teams can have higher quality feedback sessions with both internal stakeholders and external users, allowing companies to move faster and release higher quality products.”

Studio differentiates itself from Sketch by rapid prototyping, and adaptable layouts; overall, InVision has an ecosystem of great tools like Freehand, Inspect, Design Manager System (DSM) and more!

Making it a great tool for designers needing to link up two items (like wireframes and prototyping) in the fastest way possible for a low cost.

Cost: Free for both Studio (only on Mac) and prototyping tools (web-based)

3. Adobe XD

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Adobe had to put themselves back on the market in 2015 after the launch of Sketch.

Adobe XD has a number of features that position it as an evolving staple for UX/UI designers, including, but not limited to its repeat grid structure, so a user can select objects and then repeat those objects along an x- or y-axis.

Adobe has also created reusable symbols, so it’s easier to place objects in multiple artboards. The best part of having a product like Adobe XD is that it’s integrated into one platform primary platform (Adobe Creative Suite), therefore making it easier to receive feedback and allow follow-up iterations based on primary prototype designs.

Price: $9.99/month for the standalone product (works on Macs and Windows) or $49.99/month as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite

4. Figma

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Figma lets designers build dynamic prototypes and mockups, test them for usability, and sync up all of the progress.

Figma allows for a collaborative environment where multiple people can work on a project at the same time, much like Google Docs — letting designers see which exact team members have it open in order for real-time collaboration. Designers will see who’s working and what they’re doing.

It’s browser-based, making it accessible to everyone in an instant.

Price: Free for individual use, $75/month for team editing subscriptions

5. Axure

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Axure functions in prototyping and keeping track of the workflow. It features a smooth interface to document as developers progress. High fidelity drives this app, resulting in prototypes full of details.

Axure offers many of the other features of popular prototyping and UI design tools. It allows for testing of functionality and puts everything together for an easy developer handoff. This, combined with an emphasis on communication, ensures that everyone on a project is kept up-to-date with progress and changes as they happen in real time, making Axure a solid choice for UI design.

Price: $25-$45/month based on specific team subscription needs

Closing Thoughts

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The best UI design tools can help developers create realistic, functional prototypes quickly and easily. Each designer has their own favorite, and many use more than one tool since each option has its strengths and weaknesses. 

Whether a designer’s primary focus is on UX or UI, or they’re trying to marry the two together, having quality tools in their toolbox will both streamline and bring ease to the accomplishment of tasks.