The two key ingredients to create something spectacular are knowledge and tools. A creative, knowledgeable UI designer is helpless if they don’t have the right tools to implement their ideas. UI Design Tools allow designers to design accurate, hi-fi wireframes, mockups, and prototypes and render minimally viable products. UI designing has evolved a lot over the past few decades, and a lot of powerful UI Design Tools have surfaced. In this article, we list 10 useful UI Design Tools that help designers in creating spectacular designs.

1. Adobe XD

The suite of Adobe products enjoys massive popularity in the world of design. Their kingdom of design products rules the creative cloud. Adobe XD offers vector-based tools to create prototypes and mockups with an interface that’s mostly like other Adobe products. The long list of features, along with real-time collaboration, makes it a go-to tool for many UI designers.

Not only does the Adobe XD has an array of tools, but it is also stocked with what designers need to improve interactions and other dynamic elements that can be integrated into prototypes or mockups.

2. Sketch

One of the popular design tools for UI designers is Sketch. There’s a long list of features that make it such a useful tool. Designers can make universal changes using Sketch. Whether it’s through their library of symbols, text styles, layer styles, or through its flowing resizing and alignment features. It’s a real time-saver for designers while they deliver consistent prototypes. The tedious parts are eliminated by the tool, which allows designers to focus more on the creative aspects. Additionally, there are loads of easily integrable third-party plugins available with the tool.

3. InVision Studio

InVison offers a full suite of applications that packs a bundle of UI design tools required to create fully functional prototypes with dynamic elements and animations. Apart from the UI design tools, they also provide accessible collaboration features that let developers share their work as they design it, receive feedback, and make documented changes at each step. They also offer a digital whiteboard that allows team members to pen down their ideas, interact with each other and sign-off before moving forward.

4. Craft

Craft is a plugin offered by InVision that works in tandem with your projects on Photoshop or Sketch. It comes with a sync function that facilitates the updating of your ongoing work; this saves much time. Craft also offers everything you need for prototyping and collaboration. Changes in styling, edits, and other tweaks gets updated across the board so that everyone is referring to and working from the same version.

5. Axure

Axure is mainly useful in prototyping and keeping track of the workflow. It provides a smooth interface for documentation as you move forward in the project. Axure has almost all the features which come with popular prototyping and UI design tools. Testing of functionality can be performed using Axure, and the tool puts everything together for a smooth developer handoff. It also furthers communication so that all the involved team members are up-to-date with the progress and changes.

6. Proto.io

Proto.io claims that using their UI design software results in “Prototypes that feel real”, and we can’t agree more. They provides designers with what they need to create, organize, integrate, and test accurate mockups. Like other popular tools, it also strengthens the collaboration and communication between team members through comments and video feedback, as well as integrating with some of the well-known testing products, like Lookback, Userlytics, and Validately.

7. Marvel

Whether you’re a seasoned UI designer or just starting your design career, Marvel’s design platform simplifies the designing process for you. With the ability to create both low-detail and hi-fi wireframes, interactive prototypes, and do user testing, it gives a UI designer everything they need, all of it packed into an intuitive interface. One of its key features, called the Handoff, provides all the HTML codes and CSS styles to the developers, which are required to start the development process.

8. Figma

Figma allows designers to build dynamic prototypes and mockups, even test them for usability, and can sync up all of the progress. Multiple people can work on or view a project at the same time, much like Google Docs. Users can see who’s working on what. It’s also browser-based, making it accessible to everyone in an instant. The best part is that it’s free for individual use, so you can check it out and get familiar with the tool.

9. Framer X

Experienced designers know that Framer X was a code-only prototyping application back in the days. However, it has evolved a lot since then, and today it offers a host of UI tools for building functional prototypes and testing for usability. Its ability to work with React makes it ideal for UI designers who like to stay on top of the newest web design innovations.

Framer X also comes with a variety of plugins, which allow UI designers to integrate social media channel players for embedding a variety of media, grids, and other useful components.

10. Origami Studio

Origami was initially built by and for Facebook designers. Today, Origami Studio has become an advanced prototyping tool. This platform has the tools you need to build complete prototypes that are powered by a sophisticated patch editor, allowing designers to integrate advanced functionality. Prototypes end up looking and working like a real app or webpage. It also integrates well with Sketch. If you’re working in parallel with Sketch, it lets you bring in layers and copy and paste them directly without any hang-ups.

We hope that this list of UI design tools is enlightening for you. If you wish to discuss your UI design needs in detail, feel free to get in touch with our team of design experts.

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