Adobe XD has been out for just over 2 years now and the application has evolved since its release. If you have ever used XD, you'd know that this program is really easy to use. The simplicity of the tools allows the user to create a design with professional and fast results. This post will discuss the best XD features offers right now and what can be improved or added.
Best Adobe XD Features
There are a lot of great features that XD has to offer but here are a few of what we think the best features are:
Repeat Grid
An amazing feature, with the repeat grid, you can easily create a list of repeatable elements and manage its style and content in a blink of an eye, as stated by XD Guru. Which means it saves a heap of time when designing an interface. Aligning and restyling repeated elements is easily manageable with the repeat grid.
Prototyping
Allowing the user to create a prototype as they are designing is a genius idea. This features allows you to change view and link artboards/elements with another. Essentially, you are able to create a working prototype with transitions and navigation. Medium have created a guide for Learning the basics of Adobe XD in one hour.
Assets
Colours, character styles and symbols can be easily saved in the assets of the document so that every element is following the style guide. Users can add colours, fonts with styling and symbols for future use and makes designing faster and easier.
Plugins
Some might say that XD has limited tools to use for UX designing, but luckily there are a number of plugins that are great for interface design. Here's a short list of some awesome plugins:
- Lorem Ipsum
- UI Faces
- Color Ranger
- Icon Drop
Design Sphere has listed some more plugins that would be worth looking at.
Improvements
There isn't much for XD to improve on. Lots of the plugins that are available fix/add some missing features. Introducing videos elements on prototypes could really make the prototypes come to life. Exporting elements or views into code would also be super useful. There may be a plugin for this but introducing it as a base feature would also be a great improvement.
References
Design Sphere (n.d.). The Best Adobe XD Plugins For Designers. Retrieved from http://www.designsphere.info/2018/11/02/the-best-adobe-xd-plugins-for-designers/
Rodriguez, T. (2018). Learning the basics of Adobe XD in one hour. Retrieved from https://medium.com/drill/learning-the-basics-of-adobe-xd-in-one-hour-3537f3ac02a3
XD Guru (n.d.). Repeat Grid. Retrieved from https://www.xdguru.com/adobe-xd-guide/repeat-grid/