Reimagining layer interaction on Sketch

How can we make interactions with layers easier on Sketch?

Sketch is undoubtedly one of the best design tools out there. The capabilities provided by Sketch has made interface design so much easier. The Sketch ecosystem is so well-defined with plethora of plugins available to make our workflow easier than ever.

As with any product, there is always room for improvement. Suggesting improvements was particularly hard for us because, Sketch already is a well-designed product, and pushing the envelope with such a product tested how far we could go with our creativity.

Getting into User mode

As designers, we are caught in the vicious loop of always looking at designs or products with a critical lens. It was time for us to remove our hats as designers, and look at ourselves as users of a design tool. This took us back to the memory lanes of reflection in action. This process still meant looking at the tool with a critical lens, but as a user of the product.

How do we analyze our usage of Sketch, find pain points, and reflect on how we use?

Consciously designing and noting the troubles we faced as users of Sketch took some effort. As designers, we are used to a workflow of designing and almost quite subconsciously make a million decisions when creating a new layer, drawing a vector shape, creating symbols etc. Analyzing why we were making these decisions forced us to move out of that subconscious loop to a conscious flow of designing.

One may ask — Why not interview designers instead and understand their workflow? We decided to dedicate this piece completely to solve our own pet-peeves.

What could improve?

Upon conscious observation of using Sketch, there were certain broad areas that we uncovered which could use some improvement.

We discovered quite a few pain points in our design process while using Sketch, and decided to boil down to one pet-peeve to delve deeper into— reordering layers.

How do we reorder layers now?

Most designers obsess over minute details such as name of the layer, the location of the layer in the panel, and most importantly the order and hierarchy of the layers. Current method of reordering is by no stretch a bad experience, but as I mentioned before, we are in an effort to make the interaction better than what it already is.

Now, we see the layer panel to the left where elements are stacked above the other. We also have an indentation to highlight the parent and children layers. If we were to move one of the layers above or below another, we just drag it close to the target layer.

More often than not, when dragging layers to our target destination, we find ourselves looking for the target layer as it is lost in the sea of layers, or has gone beyond the scroll view. This continuous search and placement process is quite time consuming and can be pretty annoying.

In a normal designer’s workflow, there are multiple groups that are expanded thus making the scroll inevitable. As you can notice here, to drag a layer out of the viewport, one has to have the layer in the active drag mode and pull it down to scroll. Placing it within another folder requires precision and expects the user to wait until the folder opens as there is a shift in interaction — from drag mode to placement mode. Also, in the process of dragging it to a layer above the scroll view, it requires continuous movement of the cursor to remind the application that a scroll is being performed.

In a nutshell, the workflow of reordering layers is complex interaction-wise and quite a bit of a cognitive load in terms of keeping track of all the elements being manipulated with. Lev Vygotsky and Alexi Leont’ev and would be quite unhappy considering how complex this interaction would be when observed through the lens of Activity Theory.

Design Proposal

We explored multiple options, and like every other design the solution that stood out was the one which was simple and obvious.

Finder Style View
After ideating a few solutions, a finder-inspired solution stood out for better layer management.

This view gives the user a complete sense of the tree structure in a more visible manner. This requires the user to not scroll further to view content within another folder.

Our Solution

There exists a quick access button at the top of the artboard that brings out a contextual menu. This consists of the layers of the selected artboard. This menu can be moved around anywhere within the screen, giving complete access to layer management in a much easier fashion.

Advantages of this approach

Localized controls — layer management is easily accessible as the controls are now closer to the user’s focus point; the canvas itself.

Better overview — By separating sub layers of a group into their own column, we expose the structure of how layers are arranged on the artboard.

Efficiency improvement — By opening up horizontal mouse movements — the use of columns of layers enables horizontal dragging which makes it faster and more efficient to move up a layer in its hierarchy. For example, the child layer can become the sibling of a parent folder with just one small horizontal mouse drag instead of the more error prone method of dragging a layer over many other layers which may not be under the user’s target zone.

Opportunities for better layer arrangement — This needs further testing, but the multi-column view for layers exposes the hierarchy of the design which may encourage designers to name their layers properly — something that is critical when prototyping designs from a sketch file in Framer or Principle.

Difference in Experience

The image below highlights the change in experience. There is lesser of a scroll required in addition to the drag being significantly lower than a vertically structured layer panel.

Monthly Designs is design blog written and curated by Adhithya & Shankar. Follow Monthly Designs on Twitter to stay updated for future posts.