Studio vs Framer X vs Sketch vs Figma

“We’re in the golden age of digital design tools. Love it.”

I saw this tweet by Max “Tim Van Damme” Voltar and yeah!

Absolutely, I love it too.

It’s 2019 and we are all pretty spoiled with all the amazing design tools we have at our disposal these days. I’ve had the opportunity to play around with a couple of them and here are my thoughts. Um okay, let’s start with…

Studio

So, I’ve had such high hopes for Studio. The things I’ve seen during its pre-launch preview was quite amazing. Advanced animations for my prototypes? I’d love that! I have been using Adobe After Effects now and then to create basic animations and I wanted to move on so bad.

I’ve used the Beta last year and it was really bad. The entire application lagged so badly it was unusable.

However, I picked it up again a few weeks ago because I saw an ad online or something. The timing was good too because I needed to create a prototype (Is that you Google?). Anyway, I thought it might be faster if I were to do it in Studio instead of that Sketch-Craft-InVision thing.

And yes, it’s so much more stable now. 2019. July.

Studio’s algorithm doing the base work for the animation.

What I like about it:

1. Copying and pasting files from Sketch worked fairly well. It had a bit of problem with Symbols and dotted lines but otherwise, it’s fine.
2. Animations. The algorithm that runs the animations (which I thought was its ace card) was quite good actually.
3. Low learning curve. The design of the app is pretty similar to that of Sketch, which is important because that means us folks will take less time to learn and use the application.

What I don’t like about it:

1. Key missing features. Hotspot and link to the previous page weren’t available. It was pretty useful on the browser-based InVision.
2. Too difficult to maintain. For the fancy animations to work, I’ll have to duplicate components on the other screen that I’m linking to. My layer management looked like crap.
3. Can’t be edited on desktop. I thought I could perform the 2 tasks on the browser right? No. After linking the screens and uploading them to my InVision account, I realised that the screens that were uploaded are as good as an image gallery. I can’t do shit there. Nothing. Fuck.
4. My teammates can’t see it. We bought a team account and the admin can’t see the project. It’s exclusive to me only. Fuck.
5. App sucks. Big time. I wanted the prototype to be as presentable as possible. I was trying to find a way so that my colleague could use the InVision mobile application. I thought the mobile application would perform better. Right? Fuck no, the prototype actually performed better on a browser than it does on the mobile application.

I actually thought that InVision could’ve been the undisputed king of screen-based prototyping tool if it had focused its resources on its browser-based product.

Framer X

I’ve always wanted to be that guy. The guy who walks the fine line between the realms of design and coding. Framer X presents an opportunity for me to finally be that guy. But I’m still not that guy.

Nonetheless, I tried picking up Framer X at the turn of the year. I then proceeded to pay for a few months of experimentation.

Creating a simple accordion + lottie support.

What I like about it:

1. https://designcode.io/framer-x by Meng To is amazing. The tutorials were on point and were sufficient enough for me to get started. I can already achieve quite a bit with just ‘if’ and ‘else’.
2. Lottie support. This is pretty cool if you know After Effects. AE — Bodymovin — upload JSON — Link it to Framer X. Voila.
3. Possibly the strongest prototyping tool I’ve tried. I mean, I felt like I can do a lot, even though I’m just scratching at the surface.

What I don’t like about it:

1. Weak community. I can barely find any material online. The Slack channel is pretty dead as well. Just a couple of people asking for stuff. I’d usually go to our frontend guys for help.
2. Steep learning curve. Learning how to code is one thing, but learning without materials is a real bummer.
3. Lack of freemium model. I’d have still used it from time to time but I didn’t want to pay for it anymore. As if the learning curve hasn’t scare prospective users away.
4. Effort and returns. Is it worth the effort to spend so much time to prototype something? I felt it kind of defeats the purpose of creating a prototype in the first place. I often found myself getting into the details just because I can.
5. Live preview font. The live preview feature wasn’t able to load custom fonts on mobile phones. There is a workaround but how much work am I supposed to do?
6. I’m alone. Too technical for most. No buy-ins. Not even from the frontend guys.

Sorry Framer X, I paid and I tried. I’m not that guy.

Sketch

The industry standard for a couple of years now. It liberated us from the bloated application that shall not be named. I’m talking about Photoshop. If Photoshop is a horse, then Sketch is the car we all wanted.

What I like about it:

1. A dedicated tool for screen design. It’s lean and everything that I need for screen design.
2. Low learning curve. I mean, I came from PS and AI.
3. Symbols. Shared, reusable and manageable UI components.
4. Widely supported. InVision, Zeplin, Overflow. You name it. It should have it.
5. Frequent updates. Not sure if it’s necessarily a good thing. But I take constant updates as a sign of constant improvement.

What I don’t like about it:

1. Lack of team features. Depends on 3rd party plugins to do quite a fair bit of things e.g. version control, prototypes, flow charts and specifications.
2. Multiple uploading channels. 3rd party plugins probably mean that I’ll have to upload screens into multiple channels.
3. Multiple plugins to keep up to date. I can’t do it.

I still like Sketch. However…

Figma

Funny how the tables have turned in a span of a few short years. If Sketch is a horse, then Figma is the car we all wanted. How can a web-based tool outperform a native application is beyond me. Our frontend developer was really pushing for us to try Figma. I know, I should’ve been more proactive. I thought Figma was just like Sketch. I was wrong.

What I like about it:

1. Freemium model. I signed up, worked on an actual project, used all its features without any hiccups. I was convinced. No, we were all convinced.
2. Real-time collaboration. There were tears when we saw each other’s cursor moving around. Enough said. Wasn’t my tears though. I swear.
3. Web-based. I can actually do work on my 2013 Macbook. A few dead pixels here and there, but that’s all on my Macbook.
4. The one app. To rule them all. The prototype feature feels solid. Everyone on the team can inspect the screens. We’re planning to get rid of a couple of applications once our subscription expires.
5. Affordable. Team plan is USD$15 per editor/month. It’s USD$12 per editor/month if you pay annually.
6. Smart animate. Great job cherry-picking features. That is InVision Studio slayed.
7. Lottie support. If you want to include animations that you’ve created on AE, Lottie has just created a plugin just for that.

What I don’t like about it:

1. Granular stuff. A few minor hiccups here and there. Otherwise, it’s been perfect.
2. Lost prototype links. W̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶o̶p̶y̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶p̶a̶s̶t̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶s̶c̶r̶e̶e̶n̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶w̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶k̶e̶d̶,̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶s̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶k̶s̶ ̶m̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶g̶o̶n̶e̶.̶ ̶W̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶n̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶’̶l̶l̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶r̶e̶-̶l̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶i̶t̶.̶ You can copy the screens you want in prototype mode and paste it to preserve the links.
3. L̵a̵c̵k̵ ̵o̵f̵ ̵L̵o̵t̵t̵i̵e̵ ̵s̵u̵p̵p̵o̵r̵t̵.̵ ̵T̵h̵a̵t̵ ̵w̵a̵s̵ ̵s̵o̵m̵e̵t̵h̵i̵n̵g̵ ̵I̵ ̵r̵e̵a̵l̵l̵y̵ ̵l̵i̵k̵e̵d̵ ̵a̵b̵o̵u̵t̵ ̵F̵r̵a̵m̵e̵r̵ ̵X̵.̵ ̵S̵u̵p̵p̵o̵r̵t̵ ̵f̵o̵r̵ ̵G̵I̵F̵ ̵w̵a̵s̵ ̵r̵e̵c̵e̵n̵t̵l̵y̵ ̵r̵e̵l̵e̵a̵s̵e̵d̵,̵ ̵b̵u̵t̵ ̵w̵t̵h̵,̵ ̵G̵I̵F̵.̵ ̵2̵0̵1̵9̵?̵ ̵R̵e̵a̵l̵l̵y̵?̵

What a game-changer, Figma. I thought it matched Sketch in every aspect. In fact, it outperformed Sketch in many ways. Those internet reviews, they ain’t lying. Our team unanimously thought it was amazing. It is a clear winner and I can only hope for more good things to come.

We paid for it as well without much hesitation.

Conclusion

I think every one of these tools is capable of taking over my entire workflow but Figma is the clear all-round winner here. Its web-based collaboration capabilities changed the entire landscape of how software tools should be like.

To the God of design tools:

I still rely on Adobe Illustrator to illustrate. Well, at least I’m using it for what it was intended for. As with most Adobe products that I’ve used, the entire application feels so bloated and clunky and even after years of using it, it’s still a mystery to me. I mean.. it can’t even perform cursor zoom. Please help.

Thank you.