True UX & UI Design Tool, Are We There Yet?

What a great time to be a Ux & UI designer, Not long ago there was only one sheriff in town, Now it seems the whole town is gunning for that spot. Figma, Invsion Studio, Framer X, Adobe XD to name a few.

But, the fact is, even with all the prototyping, developers hand-off, bells and whistles, we are not really there yet, where designers can truly work on the end product. All these tools are just there to communicate our Idea to a developer who has hundreds of other bugs to fix. one missed font size here, an alignment there, or simply white space between elements is never ever going to be a priority. Who is secretly wishing for your eternal damnation in hell for increasing his workload.

To a developer who has hundreds of other bugs to fix, one missed font size here, an alignment there, or simply white space between elements is never ever going to be a priority.

Over the years many tools tried to fill this gap but these so-called designed to code got lost in transition. codes were often very messy,un-optimized, bulky etc.

Right from the birth of binary code, development is very disciplined and logical and design is its polar opposite. So therein lies the problem. a lot of tools out there trying to build a bridge between these two polls and having multiple platforms to deal with doesn’t make it any easier.

But, Is it really impossible? can we never bridge these two poles? What if I tell you we are already half the way there?

Think about it, whether it’s brother sketch, grandpa Photoshop or granny illustrator we are designing in a software!! which is logical in nature! when there was no way to add multiple borders in Photoshop we found a workaround logically. we did the same for multiple shadows.we are already designing with lots of logical constraints especially in the new tools like the sketch with its fancy responsive design tools. not to mention unlike any other art/design profession, we need to understand the needs of the user and find a simple, logical yet delightful solutions. creating something pretty isn’t our only or end goal.

As a user experience designer, we need to understand the needs of the user and find a simple, logical yet delightful solution. creating something pretty isn’t our only or end goal.

So why it’s taking so painstakingly long? Well… I would say it’s because of the logic and when I say logic it’s mostly because of the language.

Take something simple as a shadow property. In photoshop you get light direction and color among other properties. in sketch you get something akin to Html/CSS and in android material design it’s affected by elevation value. finally, in iOS, you get four different properties for a shadow.

So in short, each tool interprets the design in a different way, so when we get to a point where design and development share the same language we will get a true Ux & UI design software. Until then even with the strong prototyping software, we are merely limited to convey our ideas.