The Great War of Design Tools — A Conflicted Intern’s Story
Recently, Figma just released their version 3.0 with the coolest features in Prototyping, introducing many more device frames, creating scrollable areas, and adding nice transition modes; they also rolled out the all anticipated Figma Styles that’ll enable designers tweak a saved local style, and watch it update everywhere it’s being used. Once I saw the tweet, it triggered my most dreaded fear, The Fear of Missing Out!
I was just getting comfortable with XD after several therapeutic sessions with my instructor at Genesys Tech Hub, who helped me stop obsessing on which design tool to use.
Why does Figma always have be the coolest kid in school everybody wants to hang out with?
Well, I was told recently by a colleague to find an outlet to release all mental pressure anytime I feel conflicted. So today, I’ve chosen to tell my side of a story every UI Designer would be familiar with,
The Story of the Great War of Design Tools
In the beginning,
When I first started out with designing logos and illustrations, I was excited about the potential of designing everything I wanted in one masterpiece tool. I always saw myself as the Ultimate Illustrator Jedi, the kind that would to fight till the end with another designer when they say, “I prefer Photoshop to Illustrator”. My apologies, I was still in the Dark Ages then, I hadn’t felt the force yet.
Fast forward to when I got an internship position at Genesys to learn Product Design, our first UI design task was to redesign the home page of a website. After hours of trying to design just one page with Illustrator, I got tired and went to ask Google for faster UI design tools.
No Kene…
Don’t go there…
Run Kene!
Nobody warned me…
It was at this moment, this particular googling activity, that got me involved in a war I didn’t want to fight. They were everywhere! Design tools littering the web, facing each other off like a world war!
After hours of reading and re-reading articles and opinions, I came up with a list of top design tools. Slowly, I crossed each design tool off my list until I was left with Adobe XD and Figma. To finish my design task immediately, I chose Figma because I didn’t have the data (in Nigeria we value our Internet Data) to download XD and I was not ready to incur extra costs on my Adobe CC.
That was how my journey with Figma started.
Figma
Though I’ve been hearing about Google Docs before, I just got using it recently and have never been more addicted. That marketing line, was all the Figma team needed to sell to me,
Google Docs for Design
Their interface was pretty intuitive and I started designing in no time.
Adobe XD now FREE
Just when I thought that everything had started going according to plan, Adobe killed the very reason why I didn’t want to adopt them. They announced a FREE version for personal use. Once again, I got drowned in Google’s search results, comparing and re-re-reading articles on preferred and popular design tools. To escape this vicious cycle, I had to talk to my instructor for guidance (who FYI owns a MacBook Pro and uses Sketch). He advised me to use Adobe XD because it’s free, it’s basically the same with Figma and it’s offline. So I heeded the advice of my Sensei, broke up with Figma, downloaded Adobe XD, and I’ve been using it until…
Ever broken up with someone, only to see her a month later looking more beautiful and precious than ever? That’s exactly how I felt when I heard Figma just got cooler!
Why I don’t choose sides (but still prefer Figma)
I’ve officially given up on picking sides in the ongoing war. It’s still 2018, Sketch is getting popular as ever, Figma is fighting with all their SAAS strength, Adobe is trying to keep their target market back at Adobe, Framer is surprising everyone with what they have in store, and Invision…Invision Studio is the winter every designer and Design Company is bracing up for.
Well, I’ve decided to sit back, watch the design battle from afar, and use whatever tool I feel like, whenever I feel like. You could safely say, I’m in an open relationship with Figma, yes we have our ups and downs — like when there’s no Internet connection (#thisisNigeria), but this is how I’m going to roll from now on.
If you’re a UI Designer, how are you dealing with the Tool War? Any advice for those starting out?
