Adobe XD: Design, Prototype, and Share with Adobe’s UX/UI Solution

Today, I installed Adobe XD, Adobe’s UX/UI solution for prototyping websites, web applications, and mobile applications. Adobe XD enables users to switch from static wireframes to interactive prototypes in a single click. You can make changes to your design and see your prototype update automatically — no syncing required. And you can preview your prototypes, complete with transitions on iOS and Android devices, then share them with your team for fast feedback.

Features of Adobe XD Include:

• Interactive prototypes – Switch from design to prototype mode with a single click, and connect artboards to communicate the flow and paths of multiscreen apps. Connect design elements from one artboard to another, including Repeat Grid cells. Add interactions with intuitive visual controls to test and validate the experience.
• Publish prototypes for feedback – Generate shareable web links to get feedback on your designs, or embed them on Behance or a web page. Reviewers can comment directly on your prototypes and specific parts of your design. You’ll get notified when they make comments, and they can simply refresh their browsers to see your changes.
• Fast, versatile artboards – Whether you’re working with one artboard or a hundred, XD gives you the same fast performance. Design for different screens and devices. Pan and zoom without lag time. Choose from preset sizes or define your own, and copy between artboards without losing placement of your design elements.
• Repeat Grid – Select items in your design, such as a contact list or photo gallery, and replicate them horizontally or vertically as many times as you want — all your styles and spacing stay intact. Update an element once and your changes will update everywhere.
• Cross-platform support – Adobe XD natively supports Windows 10 (Universal Windows Platform) and Mac, with companion mobile apps for Android and iOS.
• Assets panel – Make colors and character styles easily available for reuse by adding them to the Assets panel (formerly the Symbols panel), which automatically includes symbols. Edit any color or character style in the panel and the changes will be reflected throughout your document.
• Reimagined symbols – Save time with symbols, reusable design elements that eliminate the need to find and edit each instance of an asset across a document. Update one and they’ll update everywhere, or choose to override specific instances. Symbols can be vector graphics, raster images, or text objects, and they can also be used as objects within Repeat Grids.
• Creative Cloud Libraries – With Creative Cloud Libraries integration, you can access and apply raster images, colors and character styles created in Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, and other Creative Cloud applications from inside XD, and reuse them anywhere in your documents.
• Contextual Property Inspector – Work in an uncluttered space thanks to the context-aware Property Inspector, which only displays options for the objects you’ve selected. Modify properties like border color and thickness, fill colors, shadows, blurs, opacity, and rotation, and access options for alignment, dimensions, and Repeat Grid.
• Smart canvas navigation – Easily zoom in on a specific area of your design, or make a selection on an artboard and use a shortcut to zoom right to it. Pan or zoom with your mouse, touchpad, or keyboard shortcuts. And get great performance even if you have hundreds of artboards.
• Contextual layers – Stay organized and focused while managing complex designs thanks to a contextual approach to layers. XD highlights only the layers associated with the artboard you’re working on, so you can quickly and easily find what you need.
• Layout guidance tools – Seamlessly draw, reuse, and remix design elements using snap-to grids and other intuitive layout tools that help you create relative measurements between objects, mask with shapes, group, lock, align, and distribute design elements, and more.
• Blur effects – Quickly blur a specific object or an entire background to change the focal point of your design, giving it depth and dimension.
• Versatile linear gradients – Create beautiful linear gradients using simple yet precise visual controls in the Color Picker. You can also import gradients from Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC.
• Modern Pen tool – Draw shapes and paths easily with the Pen tool. Use custom paths, add or remove anchor points, easily manipulate lines, and switch between curved and angled paths — all with the same tool.
• Boolean group editing – Create and experiment with complex shapes by combining groups of objects using non-destructive Boolean operators.
• Typography styling – Style text with precise control to enhance the user experience. Easily adjust typographical elements like font, typeface, size, alignment, character spacing, and line spacing. Change the appearance of your text the same way you change other elements in XD like opacity, fill, background and blur effects, and borders.
• Streamlined color control – Pick colors by entering exact values or by sampling from inside or outside XD with the Eyedropper. Create and save color swatches, and use shortcuts for hexadecimal codes in the Color Picker.
• UI resources – Quickly design and prototype for Apple iOS, Google Material Design, and Microsoft Windows devices using high-quality user interface components.
• Copy and paste from other design apps – Bring artwork into XD from Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC.
• In-context iOS and Android previews – Preview your designs and all interactions on the actual devices you’re targeting. Make changes on the desktop and then test them on your devices for fidelity and usability.
• Hotspot hinting – Automatically highlight the hotspots in your prototype so users can see which areas are interactive and clickable.
• Prototype management – Create multiple URLs from the same file to share different versions of your prototype. Share an unlimited number of prototypes, and easily access and delete them from your Creative Cloud account.
• Record prototype interactions as videos – As you click through your preview, record an MP4 file to share with your team or stakeholders (Mac only).
• Export artwork, assets, and artboards – Export images and designs in PNG and SVG formats, which you can configure for iOS, Android, web, or your own custom settings. Export an entire artboard or individual elements. And share assets and artboards by exporting them as individual PDF files or as a single PDF file.
• Multi-language support – Supported languages include English, French, German, Japanese, and Korean.
• Email notifications for comments – Get email notifications when stakeholders comment on your web prototypes. Emails can be sent individually or batched in a daily digest

Best of all, Adobe XD comes with my license for the Adobe Creative Suite!

Disclosure: We are affiliates of Adobe.