Adobe XD Wishlist

Adobe XD is one of the newest and most exciting offerings from Adobe and aims to be a replacement for Photoshop, Invision and Sketch. A lofty goal indeed. As someone who has used everything from Fireworks to Photoshop to Sketch to designing in the browser, I was very curious.

After experimenting with it for a few days and watching the tutorials, I’m blown away. This feels like the tool I’ve been waiting the last 8 years for. It’s a joy to use–something I don’t often say about software. Compared to Photoshop or Illustrator, the interface is stripped down and focused on a very core set of tools I need most often to get the job done. I mean, LOOK AT IT!

But this isn’t a post about the amazing features XD possesses, though they are many. No, this is about the things I want, and suspect many other designers will, too.

More robust grid options (edited)

I originally thought XD was missing a grid option entirely until Demian Borba (Product Manager for XD) kindly pointed out that they’d added support for minimal grids in the April update. I’d missed this because you actually have to select the Artboard name in the upper left corner before the grid option appears, so if you’re just working on the design and try to add a grid you’ll miss this.

Though the grid still isn’t anywhere as robust or nice as what I’m accustomed to in Photoshop or Sketch, it’s definitely a start! It’s missing things like a ruler and grid guides, but this is just the first implementation of the grid so these items will be added soon, according to the XD team.

Type tools are a bit…lacking

Whether you’re designing for the web, mobile or something else, typography will play a huge role in the design. I feel in its current state, the type tools in XD are lacking. For example, I can’t adjust kerning between characters, and that just feels…wrong.

Layers

This one I’m actually still on the fence about. I’ve been accustomed to having a layers panel in whatever design software I use and this was one of the first things I looked for. How can you design without layers? I’ll be honest, though; it was super easy to get around this and make use of cmd + shift ] and cmd + shift [ to bring items forwards or backwards and may be way faster than searching for and locating layers in another panel of the app.

Animation

I feel like in 2016 it’s not too much to ask that we have 1 tool to design static comps and animate them, all in one. As revolutionary as XD is, if it were to include even a basic set of tools to animate designs and show behavior, it would be a game changer. The prototype tools in XD are cool in that you can show a transition between screens but I want more than that. I want to be able to show the CSS3 animations and app interactions the design intends to have, before they’re coded.

Integration with Creative Cloud Assets

One of my favorite things about Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC is the ability to use the shared Creative Cloud Library assets, such as colors and typography styles as well as images. In an app that already speeds up my workflow so much, this would make it even faster.

Still an amazing tool

Those are some of the biggest things on my wishlist, though there are others. Even without these items I’ve mentioned, this is an incredibly impressive tool for designing and prototyping and it’s still a very new product so I’m sure the XD team will be adding tons of cool features in the coming months. So go download it and give it a try while it’s free so you can suggest your wishlist items to the XD team, you can vote on features here.