Week 6 - Reading Week

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Before starting on prototyping for this modules assignment, I wanted to spend a bit of time exploring different software tools. Over the duration of this module, I have used both Adobe XD and Figma, the major industry standards.

I have enjoyed using both, but encountered difficulties also. Adobe XD feels more comfortable for me, having a decade of experience using Adobe products, and feeling an instant familiarity with the workspace was a bonus. I have always felt that it has a limit to it’s capabilities though, particularly when presenting a prototype. I couldn’t believe that I needed to plug my phone into my computer in order to test my prototype on a mobile device. I see other students showing wonderful 3D mock-ups, or video demonstrations, and I’m yet to understand how this is possible within Adobe XD, if at all.

Figma has always felt far less familiar to me. I work across both Apple and PC hardware, and I don’t find that Figma works well on the latter, either as a web-based or downloaded and installed application. I would find that it would crash every few minutes, though later I discovered through trial and error, that it does work better through the Firefox browser. I was very impressed by its’ plugin library, offering anything from drag and drop icons, illustrations and 3D rendering tools. I understand Adobe XD has plugins too, but they seem far more limited.

I watched many YouTube training videos for both applications over reading week. I felt this was the best use of my time, knowing what was ahead. I’ve undertook many training sessions with Adobe over the years, and I still today find that I am often looking up tutorial videos for certain tasks I’ve forgotten how to do.

I also spent some time with Framer - which at a first glance seems really wonderful. I find it interesting that you can use real code to customise components - not that I plan on doing this yet!