Getting the right tools for your UX/UI career is essential. The market has many options suited for various design needs. However, they slightly differ, making some ideal for one designer and unsuitable for another. Selecting the correct tool enables you to develop products (get more details in Eleken’s article about product development) that satisfy your clients’ needs.
Our discussion shares the top five tools you can use to give your customers and end users great value. Keep reading to learn more about some of the top designer solutions in 2023.
Adobe XD
Adobe XD is one of the most popular design platforms. This solution is excellent for designing and prototyping. Adobe created it to assist UI/UX design teams working on similar projects. It works on Windows and macOS, and you can use it in a free trial or a full premium version.
This tool has many valuable features you can optimize to serve your clients better. Below are some of its core features.
- You can easily reuse or repurpose its UI components, such as buttons and navigation bars.
- You can sync and share its prototypes with your network of designers via Adobe Creative Cloud.
- It alerts you when a team member updates the design, keeping every team player on the same page.
- It lets you design master elements with customized properties for use across your website or applications.
- The tool has optimized vector tools, responsive asset resizing across platforms, and layout grids for accurate design.
- It’s the best choice for designers in large organizations needing consistency among their assets.
- Its asset library permits rapid graphics and style adjustments.
- Its Repeat Grid enables designers to set styles.
- You can integrate it with Photoshop and Illustrator.
UXPin
UXPin is a prototyping tool focusing on a single design process’s dimension. The platform gives you excellent high-fidelity prototypes that make you feel like you’re using finished products. It also has numerous UI elements that make designing things fast across teams easy. Some of its prototyping features include:
- These features allow you to create and store user inputs across the design process. They’re customizable into specifications from which you can build other elements throughout your prototypes. The feature also allows you to gather data and use it elsewhere.
- This feature allows you to reuse functions in various ways throughout the design. For instance, if you have a button, you can use it in different forms across the design by creating a “state” for it, which you can conveniently flip through depending on your desired state.
- Conditional Logic. Conditional logic allows you to set up specific conditions for interactions. Meeting these conditions allows predetermined actions to occur.
These features make prototypes come alive, significantly aiding designers in usability testing. They also help developers and other stakeholders understand your intentions clearly. Eventually, a product or website’s development moves on smoothly.
Credit: from Acquisition International
Figma
Figma is a popular cloud-based tool UI/UX designers can leverage to ply their trade. It works well on Windows and macOS. The tool has many excellent features you can use to satisfy your customers. It is perfect for ensuring everyone gets on the same page, speeding up design processes. The platform also boosts real-time collaboration, allowing several team members to work on a project simultaneously.
It’s available as a free trial and premium subscription starting at $12/month per designer. Some of its key features are:
- Bulleted lists.
- Zeplin integration.
- Community files.
- Plugins library.
So, the benefits of Figma you can reap as a designer are as follows:
- It is suitable for creating wireframes, prototypes, and UI designs.
- It allows uploading approved reusable elements/icons, fonts, and styles.
- Its developer workflow lets team members inspect code and export visual assets and CSS from design files.
- It integrates with the firm’s identity provider with SAML-based SSO integrations.
FlowMapp
FlowMapp is another invaluable tool for making and managing site maps and user flows. It lets you quickly and conveniently create detailed diagrams for visualizing user journeys throughout websites or apps. Its drag-and-drop interface promotes easy diagram creation and editing. The tool’s collaboration capabilities make it an excellent pick for team designers.
This wireframing and web design tool works on different browsers and is available in premium and free trial versions. Monthly subscriptions start at $15. Its core features are listed below:
- Extensive premade templates.
- Elements library.
- Easy integration with Sketch and Photoshop makes it convenient to incorporate existing designs into diagrams.
- User research functionality.
- A simple and easy-to-use sitemap tool.
- Support of collaboration and web page creation.
- Personas function for buyer persona creation.
The app has other valuable tools, including flowcharts for collaboration, content planning, and project communication.
Mockplus
Mockplus is an invaluable online UX design tool for boosting smooth designer-developer collaboration. The program is ideal for wireframing, prototyping, mockup, animation, and UI designing. The platform works well on browsers, Windows, and macOS.
It assists you in quickly creating prototypes, sharing, testing, and iterating with your team. This way, you speed up your product design by up to 200%. Its prototyping tool has over 3000+ built-in design elements and templates for visualizing things faster. You can use it as a free trial or a premium subscription starting at $7.65/month.
The app has asset libraries for designing UI layouts and patterns you can reuse across various teams, prototypes, and pages. This platform fosters team collaboration, allowing you to organize workflows and enjoy code-free and pixel-perfect designs. Its core features include:
- A no-code interface that presents ideas with drag-and-drop.
- Thousands of premade UI widgets and templates.
- Ability to export your prototypes to HTML demo packages or any image format.
- Integration with Axure, Sketch, Adobe Photoshop, Figma, and Adobe XD plugins to let you prototype any project from various platforms.
- Developers can easily inspect, copy, and download design specifications, assets, and code snippets using a single click.
- The tool can preview and test your web and application prototypes on gadgets.
Parting Shot
There you go with the top five UI/UX design tools you can use in 2023. Use this valuable information to make an informed choice based on your specific needs.