Adobe XD

Softonic review

A powerful and collaborative design tool

Adobe XD is a leading design software developed by the IT giant, Adobe. This graphics design tool helps users plot down various processes with ease. With a simple, clean, and intuitive interface, you can  leverage a wide range of powerful tools  to create out-of-this-world designs.

Designed and developed for people in creative design and multimedia fields, this UX software allows several design methods, including prototyping and wireframing. People often download XD to build prototypes of Android and iOS apps, and simple websites to be published online for different devices.

Feature-packed, easy-to-use, and responsive

Most designers and developers have used an Adobe product at some point in their lives. As part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe XD has a familiar interface. While the tool panel is located on the lefthand side of the main window, the layers, styles, and symbols are on the right. There is no steep learning curve and you can be sure that it is easier to work around symbol overrides and complex design systems.

Like inVision Studio, a similar competitor,  Adobe offers a wide range of intuitive tools to connect screens and build interactive prototypes. You can use these tools for user testing without the need of putting in any code. Recently, Adobe released auto-animate, which allows easier prototyping of rich interactions across artboards.

Does Adobe XD integrate with Adobe Creative Cloud?

If you’re already using Adobe Creative Cloud products, you’ll have no problem with Adobe XD. The program seamlessly integrates with a wide range of Adobe products, including Photoshop and more. From photos to vectors, Creative Cloud offers suitable products and services that complement work done on Adobe XD.

What can you do with Adobe XD?

When you decide to use Adobe XD, you can begin with low-fidelity wireframes. In almost no time, you’ll move on to high-fidelity mockups, documents, and workflows and create more than you’d imagined. The program also lets you link artboards, share prototypes, and set interactions. This helps you receive feedback without leaving the app. It’s an important part of the creation process, as the simple UX makes the design software look like a ready-made iOS app.

To get started with your first project in XD, you’ll need to work on a new artboard. This represents the specific screen you want to design for the prototype. Just like Photoshop CC and Axure RP, you can work with multiple artboards. While starting a new project, you can choose from preset sizes for common web and mobile resolutions. Additionally, you can easily create a customized artboard.

While using Adobe XD, you can conveniently move different elements between artboards with a drag-and-drop mechanism. You can even select multiple artboards to cut, delete, copy, or edit certain elements. The program lets you add grids to correctly position the elements in the artboard.

Adobe XD comes with two grid options – Layout Grids and Square Grids. With Layout Grids, you can define columns in the artboard. This feature is quite useful for understanding how every element responds to different breakpoints. In fact, this is a basic requirement in responsive designs.

On the other hand, Square Grids are useful for aligning text and objects. If you’re drawing a shape, the edges will automatically fit in the grid, allowing you to reduce errors. It even saves a good amount of your time.

Compared to Framer and other such apps, Adobe XD lets you work in two different modes. With the Design mode, you can create stunning visuals, wireframes, and low or high-quality mockups. On the other hand, the Prototype mode lets you add interactions, which simulate the required flow of the entire project.

Does Adobe XD offer collaboration features?

The best part about using Adobe XD is the ability to collaborate with team members without leaving the app. The design software supports collaboration among people or teams. While using XD, you can build design specifications and products assets for sharing with developers. Most importantly, collaborative apps like Jira and Slack are compatible with XD. This makes it that you can easily present and share finished designs across platforms, and people can view these on mobile devices and computers.

Adobe XD enables access to all the project assets under a single platform. As such, you don’t need to manually edit each asset individually. Moreover, it leads to the scale design becoming adaptive on different platforms. Depending on their devices, project members can view the scale design. This helps clients, stakeholders, and project managers to reject or accept designs right from their computers or mobile devices.

With Adobe XD, anyone can provide you with helpful feedback about the design. Users can easily plug design elements, assets, and components. You can make edits on the go in little time. It’s worth mentioning that Adobe XD also lets you host multiple design elements in a single system.

Finally, you can instantly save design scales and other projects on Adobe Cloud storage. Compounding this is the easy integration feature of third-party plug-ins when you use different APIs and custom tools to fit your specific needs. If there’s a drawback to the program, it’s that the free version comes with limited features. However, if you’re looking for a feature-packed platform, Adobe XD will be an excellent choice.

The perfect tool for designers

With Adobe XD, you can conveniently handle design projects and collaborate with team members. It helps creative professionals, freelance designers, and large businesses develop and present designs at scale. With Adobe XD download, you can count on easy management and collaboration of multiple design systems. Most importantly, the program is available in different languages, including English, French, German, Japanese, and more.

This program supports Windows 11, 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP platforms.