I recently needed to create wireframes for a project and decided to take Adobe XD (also known as Adobe Experience Design) for a spin. Here are my “play-by-play” impressions. *
*note: Some of the issues in this article were addressed by Adobe in recent patches. I wrote the original version of this article several months ago for a user experience group
Overall impressions while working
I took some quick notes while working and right after of what I experienced while using Adobe XD.
- I really liked the repeat grid – it was very easy to use and saved me a lot of time.
- Drag and drop photos from computer into a shape worked ok. (question – are the photos optimized? does it matter?)
- The photo drag and drop into a shape had a negative side though – it did not let you edit the “mask” after dropping in, which means cropping the photo before you use it.
- Editing text was OK but would have liked some type of easier layer management like Sketch.
- The “pink space adjustment” was not quite intuitive. It took a moment for me to understand I needed to finish doing my repeats then click in the space between one of the repeated items to adjust. (Question: what if you need to keep a specific padding in place? – Ah you can edit that in the tool bar on the right.)
- The zooming did not work quite right initially when I tried command 3, but the touchpad did. It could be custom settings I have for other applications, but I found it awkward.
- I would like better feedback on padding of outer area as I work / do alignment
- The “select by art board name” was not quick for me. Art board name always exposed as a possible solution?
- Lack of glyphs / font glyph support was a big pain point since internally there is a special UI set we use for these. I have a glyph font set in all other Adobe tools, but it refused to work in XD.
- Grabbing objects behind other objects was a bit of a time suck.
- Prototype mode: The linking was pretty easy, but disconcerting when it “disappeared” when I clicked away. How can I easily see what is linked and what is not? Is there a dimmed/alternate view to show what is linked?
- Prototype mode: Creating video – super easy. Pro tip: The video recording starts on the art board you have selected.
- Not being able to separate guidelines that come with the default templates out from the rest of the mockup is irritating.
- Why do I have to choose mobile or desktop or whatever? Sometimes I need to work on all three or other form factors side by side.
- Easy to export to PDF
- Need a way to link the movie to the PDF so people know it exists.
- Needs better integration with Illustrator via an export function in Illustrator or an import function or better Libraries support.
Con vs. Balsamiq:
- XD suffers from not having a preset menu of tools/widgets that are always there.
- It does come with Google Materials and iOS prepackaged, which is nice, but sometimes I just need to quickly throw down some widgets that aren’t too polished.
Cons vs. Sketch
- I like the layers in Sketch. Sometimes my wireframes or mockups end up having a lot of layers or sections and I want to organize and move things around.
- Sketch has better font support
- Sketch gives me full control of masking
Conclusion
I’ve also used the iPad Pro version of Adobe Comp CC and it has some features similar to Balsamiq that I would love to see in the desktop version of XD. It looks like there is an app version of XD so I need to test that out and see what differences there are.
Overall pretty nice. I am going to use it for a few more projects and see how that goes.
Similar to Invision app about a year ago. I did not try to preview on my phone, so I need to test that next.