Sketch, Adobe XD, Figma, I need HTML

I’ve started thinking to switch to Adobe XD from Sketch. For the last four years, Sketch is my primary daily tool for creating digital products, however following Adobe XD, and its functions, I start thinking to switch.

I’ve been checking XD from time to time, but I gave up every time I’ve found some functions that are not available; “well, I’ll come back and try it again”. Now maybe the time to switch to XD.

I am not going to write a comparison of these tools, but here are my reasons are:

• I don’t have to subscribe Sketch license
• I’m already in the ecosystem of Adobe products (used to buy DVDs)
• my employer(company) use the enterprise version of Adobe
• share design with my stakeholders without using other products/plugins

Having said that both tools are getting better; however, what I am really looking for a tool that can generate (proper) HTML, including CSS and JavaScript files. I’ve been working as the UX team of one, and work with developers a lot. It’s getting tough especially in the situation where we have to work within a tight budget because of the pandemic, the high expectation of the speed/accuracy, productivity, efficiency is more than before.

We often see the question: should UX Designers learn how to code? It depends on which field of UX designer you are in, but my answer is yes we should. My area of UX design is delivery-focused, so as long as my design gets signed off, I’d like to build its HTML and hand it over to the programmers to integrate with the backend. The other way of saying is I want to control and own the interface and interaction design.

Even you don’t need to build HTML, and you still need to understand the framework they are going to use so that the developer can spend less time and effort to make what you designed.

Back to the design tools, both are useful tools. Hoping I get the software which I can generate HTML just clicking a button. What is your situation with prototyping?

P.S. I see many people start using Figma. My problem with Figma is the web browser-based application you cannot use it without the Internet. Once I had to rework because it didn’t save all my work.