Hands on with Adobe XD CC

With the recent release of Adobe XD, we decided to spend some time using the tool — mostly testing to see what affect, if any, it might have on our daily Sketch usage.

Below is a rundown on some of the key Adobe XD features, as well as some issues and linked resources for reference.

*Note — this feedback is pre 0.5.2.29 Beta, Adobe just released an updated and stated “We’re rolling out updates to Adobe XD every month with new features”, sounds solid.

Artboards

Mimicking Sketch — Adobe XD includes pre-loaded artboard templates — organized by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Web — including Apple Watch and Android Wear. The initial touchpoint in your workflow is now a bit more simple and much more efficient.

Getting started w/Artboards

Masking Done Right

Partially — you can quickly mask by dropping an image from your desktop, straight onto a shape layer in XD and the shape’s fill magically becomes the image. The feature is amazing, but unfortunately somewhat unusable due to it’s limitations — you can’t resize or move the image around within the mask. Hopefully this makes an update soon.

Masking

Importing from Sketch & Illustrator

Unfortunately, XD and Sketch aren’t cross compatible — making direct copy/pasting vectors between the two impossible — for now all you get is a bitmap from Sketch to XD. If you’re assets live in Illustrator, which they should, you’re good to go.

Importing from Sketch & Illustrator

Prototyping

I’m still not sure how I feel about this — I was expecting more. The one upside is that given XD is a native app, it’s a much more efficient and intuitive from a usability standpoint than most of the web platforms out there — however it’s lack of features means the only real use case is for very low fidelity prototyping.

Getting started w/Prototyping

Recording & Saving

Sharing

Exporting

There are some slight differences here between Sketch and XD, the big thing worth mentioning is you’re limited to exporting only PNG & SVG— strictly exporting assets won’t be an issue, but the flexibility of exporting a PDF would be a huge plus for additional design needs. It also acts strictly as an asset generator — so every export you end up with 2–3 saved file sizes.

Exporting Assets

Exporting Limitations

Takeaway (XD vs Sketch)

I can only base this on my own experience — but for someone very efficient in Sketch — I would only ever have one reason to open Adobe XD currently — a quicker low fidelity prototype process.

Current Workflow: Sketch to create > export multiple layers and/or images to Dropbox > then Marvel to link together and/or update screens.

XD Workflow: Design tab in XD > Prototype tab in XD

XD wins in efficiency, but in terms of value and scale it doesn’t come close to Sketch + the majority of prototyping tools out there (many of which are free). The XD prototype offering is very low fidelity, you can link objects w/a few transition options — that’s it. Hopefully we’ll see some valuable updates in the near future!

XD Resources:

• Dribbble: Adobe XD Free
• Introducing Adobe XD CC
• Getting Started
• Tips & Tricks
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Adobe XD Community Forum

Additional XD Issues:

• No Layers
• No way to make Gradients
• If you use shadows anywhere in your design, the program gets really sluggish
• There’s no line spacing, amongst many other text edit issues
• Grouping is buggy
• It resets your tool preference every time you switch to a new tool
• When saving, it resets your save as preference ever time you go to save
• Align drop down doesn’t work at all, and you can’t align to arboard
• Keyboard shortcuts are buggy
• No line/border options, such as ends, start arrow, dash, etc..
• When using a shapes with borders, Pathfinder subtract/add/etc.. gets wonky