What Are UI Design Tools?

It’s almost an unspoken agreement that UI tools need to be a quadruple-threat to compete in today’s design industry, offering screen design, prototyping, and design handoff features all in a single app, or at the very least, integrate with third-party services to make this full-featured workflow available. As we’re starting to see the benefits of lean UX design, it’s also clear that UI design tools need to be collaborative.

The App Design App. Flinto is a Mac app used by top designers around the world to create interactive and animated prototypes of their app designs. Design UI right. The modern interface design tool Figma is a free, online UI tool to create, collaborate, prototype, and handoff.

Wait, what do UI design tools actually do?

Screen design features help us mockup the visual design
Prototyping features help us demonstrate interactions
Handoff features aid with handing off designs to developers
Collaboration features facilitate feedback and workflow tracking

And when do we do this?

When we’re ready to mockup the final design, after usability testing and wireframing.

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By the way, if you’re more interested in learning how to create these final high-fidelity mockups, check out our free ebook that teaches you how to do so with InVision Studio.

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the best UI design tools in 2020.

Sketch (macOS only)

Photoshop lost its crown to Sketch as the most-used UI design tool back in 2015.

Sketch literally revolutionized UI design, inspiring a whole new wave of intuitive UI design tools with now-standard features like artboards, symbols, and exporting.

While Sketch has become a victim of its own success, with rival apps mirroring their foundations on Sketch, being “the first” has had its advantages since it’s still the most commonly used design tool today. It’s certainly one of the cleanest and most intuitive, and can be a mighty force for those willing to extend their workflow with integrations.

Regarding design handoff, the options are InVision, Zeplin, Marvel, Avocode, Sympli, and Framer X, all of which allow UI designers to handoff specs, fonts, and image assets to developers — these design handoff tools also facilitate feedback from stakeholders.

Sketch vs. InVision

Comparing Sketch vs. InVision, some may say that Sketch has stopped innovating — Sketch only introduced interactive prototyping features in mid–2018. Plus, Sketch still doesn’t offer any design handoff features, whereas InVision does, so some might find the reliance of such integrations somewhat frustrating. Sketch by itself is $99/year, whereas InVision is free for light-use/solo designers, and InVision Studio is free forever.

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InVision Studio (macOS only)

InVision recently released the long-awaited InVision Studio, making their design collaboration suite now the most complete solution on the market today, with screen design, prototyping, design handoff, and even advanced animation features. Check out the free ebook that we wrote, which also covers other tools like InVision Freehand.

InVision vs. Sketch

Comparing InVision vs. Sketch, InVision Studio boldly leads the way with more native features and a free lite version that lasts forever. In the months to come, InVision will overtake Sketch in terms of support as well, as they release their app for Windows.

All-in-all, with not many native collaboration features, Sketch relies heavily on integrations, which is totally fine if that’s your thing. InVision Studio enables collaboration through comments, workflow tracking, and finally, design handoff.

InVision vs. Figma

Choosing either InVision or Figma may come down to collaboration style. Where InVision has workflow tracking, Figma has live collaboration where everybody can comment and design all at once. That being said, InVision Studio sports advanced animation features whereas Figma relies on an integration with Principle, although, Figma has support for web, mac, and Windows, but InVision Studio is mac-only.

InVision vs. Adobe XD

Choosing between InVision and Adobe XD comes down to two things: animation features and Windows support. InVision Studio has timeline animation features, however Adobe XD has a Windows version — other than that they’re both fierce competitors being two of the most-funded UI design tools on the market today, both offering a design fund to help boost the ongoing development of their respective tools.

Adobe XD CC (macOS, Windows)

A huge reason to use Adobe XD is the Adobe ecosystem, which is not only heavily equipped for designers, but if you’re a veteran designer it’s likely that you’re deeply familiar with Adobe, and honestly, the best tool is the one you know how to operate.

Adobe XD CC ships with many of the same features as InVision (screen design, prototyping, design handoff, and so on), although Adobe XD is no stranger to innovation either, coming up with time-saving features such as repeat grids.

Adobe XD vs. Sketch

Best Ui Design

Comparing Adobe XD vs. Sketch, not only does Adobe XD offer more native functionality, it could the best UI design tool for Windows users so far, and even for mac users that delight in being familiar with Creative Cloud and the Adobe ecosystem.

Sketch is mac-only, so if you’re a Windows user then Adobe XD is a no-brainer.

Adobe XD vs. InVision

Adobe XD vs. InVision is a little tougher to dissect, because honestly, the only setback to InVision so far (compared to Adobe XD) is its lack of Windows support and a few minor bugs (because it’s fairly new). XD have been much slower on the release of core features like design handoff, whereas InVision is literally tearing up the UI design tool space, releasing features like timeline animation that even Adobe XD doesn’t have yet.

Windows? Adobe XD. Animation? InVision Studio.

Figma (Web, macOS, Linux, Windows)

Figma is so far the first and only UI design tool to ship with multiplayer design functionality, which essentially enables designers to collaborate in realtime.

Figma is another excellent Sketch alternative for Windows, although there are now mac and even Linux versions available, making it super for OS-flexible design teams.

Like many of the best UI design tools, Figma enables screen design, realtime device mirroring, prototyping, commenting, design handoff, and all of the other usual features, but massively excels when it comes to creating adaptive layouts and design systems.

Figma vs. InVision Studio

Comparing Figma vs. InVision Studio is a tough one, since they’re both offering mighty features. Ultimately, if your team needs multiplayer design/live collaboration, Figma is the better option, whereas InVision Studio is better for larger, feedback-driven teams.

However, as mentioned before, Figma lacks advanced animation functionality.

Figma vs Framer

Although Framer is mac-only, Figma and Framer are otherwise relatively similar, both sporting top-notch adaptive design features that help designers build smart responsive layouts. However, Framer doesn’t rely on Principle for animation like Figma does, with Framer being a JavaScript-friendly tool that can achieve dynamic, interactive layouts.

Multiplayer design? Figma. Motion design? Framer.

Framer X (macOS)

Historically touted as an app to help JavaScript nerds design with code, Framer has since entered the ring with a visual editor, introducing Framer Studio (now Framer X).

While it compares well with InVision Studio, XD, and Figma in terms of features, its history as a code-based design tool

Ui Design Apps Mac