4 Reasons XD Will Crush Sketch This Year

Why Adobe XD will become your favorite UX/UI tool in 2017

ICYMI: Adobe XD, formerly Project Comet, is a vector-based design tool that launched in early 2016.

Screenshot of Dann Petty’s Onshore app design created in XD.

This past November, I joined a team of designers from Red Ventures in sunny San Diego for Adobe MAX. We learned a ton about what Adobe’s planning for 2017 — including exciting new features in XD.

Coming out of Adobe MAX, I’m convinced that XD is the best tool on the market for UX/UI designers in 2017. It beats Sketch hands down.

(Scroll to the 43 minute mark for XD announcements.)

4 reasons XD is the right tool for UI/UX designers

1. You already have an Adobe CC subscription.

Over 90% of the world’s creative professionals use Adobe’s products every day. And if you have a monthly Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, guess what? Access to XD is included— no additional subscription required.

On the other hand, Sketch has recently rolled out a new pricing structure that requires users to sign up for an annual subscription if they want continued updates. 😞

2. XD is built for teams.

A slew of great XD updates have rolled out over the past twelve months, with plenty more to come. A lot of these new features are built with teams in mind. Some of my favorites include:

1. CC Libraries integration | With XD, it’s easy to move assets between devices and all other Adobe products. This cloud-based asset management also facilitates seamless hand-off between team members.
2. Share URLs| Quickly grab a share URL for built-in, straightforward commenting by teammates and clients.
3. Easy style guide sharing | Generate and publish a global style guide for any given file with a unique URL that can be shared with anyone.
4. Revision history and versioning | Quickly browse and revert back to previous versions.
5. Real-time collaboration| Now you can work together simultaneously within the same file! 😱
6. Compatibility | While Sketch is a Mac-only app, XD can be enjoyed by your PC-loving teammates!

Commenting on designs in XD is quick and painless for project managers, teammates & clients.

3. XD is a design powerhouse out of the box.

If you’ve used Sketch, you’re probably familiar with Sketch Toolbox and the endless plugins that circulate each week. Plugins are great — except when an update comes out and everything breaks. This has happened to me several times, and it often means filtering through articles and forums for a solution.

But with XD, tools like Principle, Invision, Flinto, and other plugins aren’t necessary. You can do most of the same things natively in XD, without the risk of relying on a third party to maintain their software each time there’s an update. And yes, that is as awesome as it sounds.

In XD, you don’t need plugins for:

1. Animated prototyping to easily map out user flows and how elements interact with one another.
2. The repeat grid tool. Not sure what that is? Check it out.
3. Navigating within a focused layers panel that only shows layers within a group or object once selected, making it painless to find that random rectangle you forgot to name (you know you do it too).
4. Replacing a color anywhere in a document with a single click. (Watch from the 55 second mark in this video.)
5. Editing symbols in an artboard and seeing changes made in real-time across all artboards. (Watch from 50:10 in this video.)

The repeat grid tool at work. Learn more on the Adobe blog.

4. XD is lightning quick.

XD is fast. Like really, really fast. The whole app was built with speed in mind, and it shows. The product development team has been exceptionally patient in how they’ve approached rolling out new features to avoid bloat.

From the first time opening the app to loading up a massive file, XD can handle just about any task instantaneously. Compare this with how slowly Sketch handles larger files — and how it stores 200GB on your Macbook — and XD definitely comes out on top.

Your design workflow on XD.

At the end of the day, XD is managed by a massive team with tons of resources.

Adobe has over 30 years invested in the creative industry, with 6.6 million global users and 14,154 employees worldwide. They also have a ridiculous amount of resources at their disposal and are continually adding new apps to their arsenal with cloud-synced libraries.

By comparison, Bohemian Coding, Sketch’s parent company, was founded in 2008 and has just 20 employees. Being a small shop does have its advantages, but it’ll be tough for Sketch compete with the sheer scale of Adobe long-term.

And if Adobe continues to crank out XD updates at the current pace, Sketch doesn’t stand a chance.