Question
What is the best tool for software design in 2019?
Figma? Sketch? Illustrator? Other?
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Sketch or Figma
As a product designer, I personally favor Sketch and have used it daily for the past several years. As long as you're going with Sketch or Figma you're pretty much set. I could write essays about the positive features of both.
The reason I prefer Sketch is that I don't like people looking over my shoulder while I'm in design mode and seeing multiple people inside the document I'm working on just makes me feel anxious and less inspired to experiment. Plus, I have found more resources for Sketch than other design tools.
At the end of the day, pick the tool that works right for you in your context.
Interesting point about "people looking over my shoulder" in Figma. Without exactly thinking about it, I feel the same way about writing in shared Google Docs documents. I much prefer to write in other apps (often offline native apps like iA Writer and Ulysses), then copy finished copy into Google Docs and share it when the copy's ready for feedback.
Plus there's the advantage of being able to work offline, which even when it's supported in a web app always feels risky.
What do you use for collaboration on nearly-finished designs in Sketch? Do you end up sharing them with InVision or a similar tool, or just sharing the Sketch file itself old-school style?
For design handoff it really varies.
If I’m trying to work with another designer, I will upload the file to Sketch Cloud and have them download from there. Once they make edits and save, their changes will exist for me and save as a new version in Sketch Cloud.
When it comes to developers, I like to make an area in Notion that contains truly a bit of everything from fonts to colors to Principle prototypes to show off interactions of the design. Those that can use Sketch will sometimes just download the file from Sketch Cloud and for everyone else that doesn’t, files are neatly organized in Notion.
I tend to use Sketch Cloud for general feedback on a design too although some prefer to receive a PDF they make notes on
Oh that’s a clever idea to use Notion as an in-progress style guide!
Figma
We've just moved from @sketch to @figmadesign
at @Smarkup because of collaboration and scalability. Plus there are several other smaller reasons. It was a pragmatic move for us. We’re happy we did it.
Here's the full post: https://blog.smarkup.com/why-we-moved-from-sketch-to-figma-fa65ee202dd
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I agree with all of this, big time! The one thing I'd add is that I love that they have full-featured browser support. It's amazing to be able to use such a powerful design tool directly in the browser.