Choosing the right tools in your work is vital. The less time you spend on inconveniences and additional clicks, the more productive you can be – and the more work you get done. We know how hard finding proper UI/UX design tools often is: some may have too many features you’ll never need, while some don’t have collaborative or prototyping tools you can’t work without.
With that in mind, we’ve decided it’s time to share our top eight tools for UI/UX designer. So, get comfortable, and let’s start!
Top Design Creation Tools
Figma
Link: figma.com
Figma is a capable design tool that is, however, quite easy to start working with while it is also free - no upfront cost for an awesome opportunity to start getting deeper into the UI design. A peculiar feature of this piece of software is that it treats component changes as overrides (component overrides), which allows for better scalable component system building opportunities.
Featuring collaborative editing capacities and an extensive vector network, Figma makes for a great practical tool that comes at no price at all, yet delivers fruitfully.
Adobe XD
Link: adobe.com/products/xd.html
Our list of UX design prototyping tools would be incomplete without the almighty Adobe XD. It’s praised for its simple interface where you just can’t get lost, the ability to create high-fidelity clickable prototypes without leaving the app, and the Repeat Grid and live preview features. Besides, it stands out among other iOS UX design tools as you can live-preview your design right on your device (if you work on a Mac, though).
Yet, Adobe XD comes with an animating UI that was proven to be more difficult than it is in Sketch. Besides, if you need to create complex custom objects, you will still need to use Photoshop or Illustrator.
Zeplin
Link: zeplin.io
Zeplin is the next on our list of the best UX design tools. Although it’s relatively young, it has a lot to offer: no more redlining, faster documentation creating, easy asset export, commenting right on the layout, and more. Its collaborative tools are the ones getting the highest appraisal.
As for its cons, Zeplin can’t shy away from them. Some find the in-app navigation trickier than in other website UI design tools, while other designers point out that slicing and exporting SVG still needs to be improved. Besides, it may be a con to you that Zeplin isn’t integrated with Jira.
Top Wireframing Tools
Sketch
Link: sketch.com
We know – who hasn’t heard about Sketch among all the mock UI design tools? Well, there’s a good dozen of reasons why it’s so popular. Here are just some of them: grid functionality will make sure all objects are aligned perfectly, while pixel one will ensure there are no half-pixel renders. Furthermore, there are a variety of screen templates and libraries with Android, iOS, and Mac icons to speed up your process. And, if you use symbols, changing one of them will result in changes in all reused objects.
Yet, nothing is flawless. The key one is that Sketch runs only on Mac – so, if you’re a Windows user, you may try some third-party solutions to make it work on your computer, but the result may be too frustrating. Besides, if you need to create complex illustrations or custom logos, you’ll need to find another tool for this purpose – Sketch is great only for web and mobile app designs.
MarvelApp
Link: marvelapp.com
With great advanced user experience at its core, extensive prototyping capabilities available right out of the box, and novel collaborative features, MarvelApp serves as a top-notch solution for creating mockups, experimenting with design and such. Hotspots are easy to create and manage here, it is overall very accessible in terms of UI.
With a free MarvelApp plan you get an unlimited number of projects to be created and stored as well as collaborative features access to work on the 3 projects simultaneously.
InVision
Link: invisionapp.com
A neat-looking InVision is among the leading titles in the wireframing and prototyping niche of the useful application market. Right off the bat, the software features a wide selection of hotspot templates to choose and use from the get-go, there is a handy advanced ‘liveshare’ feature to keep cooperation in real time when deadlines are fast approaching.
It will cost you $13 a month - with an ability to create 3 prototypes, enjoy nice collaborative capacities, and use additionally Inspect and Boards features of InVision.
Top Mockup Creation Tools
Justinmind
Link: justinmind.com
Justinmind is a quite powerful all-in-one prototyping tool available for both desktop and mobile platforms. It is great for UI/UX design, with the simplest way to create low or high-resolution click-through prototypes.
It is priced monthly and is totally worth its cost with a great pool of exclusive features to explore and a powerful platform-flexible engine.
Moqups
Link: moqups.com
Moqups is a web application for flexible design of user interfaces and engineering of optimal, efficient user experience. Despite the name, it is not by far exclusively a mockup tool - wireframes, diagrams, mockups, and prototypes - create it all using Moqups as an accessible framework available at the length of opening a browser tab.
You can get yourself a free account with basic features availability and pay the fixed price to also get access to multiple power-enhancing add-ons.
Conclusion
Of course, our list of mobile and web UX design tools is not exhaustive – there are more PHP UI design tools out there that you may find great or even the best. Yet, these eight tools have proven to be the most convenient and robust in use from our own experience. Have an opinion? Share it with us below!
