
- #FROM SKETCH FOR MAC TO REAL APP SOFTWARE#
- #FROM SKETCH FOR MAC TO REAL APP PLUS#
- #FROM SKETCH FOR MAC TO REAL APP WINDOWS#
We used Abstract for versioning and for developer handoff (the front-end developer just pulled the last commit and opened it in Sketch, we didn’t find the Abstract’s inspection tools useful). It’s hard to share designs with others. It’s a mess that is hard to use and maintain. It’s necessary to create way too many styles because of the way styles are built in Sketch. Sketch started to be painfully slow as our file grew (1000+ artboards). No convenient dev handoff for people on other platforms (Windows, Linux). This is my list of our problems with Sketch so we’re clear what are our reasons to leave. Accessibility from other platforms (Windows, Linux or the web). Would a designer enjoy working with it? Does it allow productive workflows? Is it fast and furious? Is there a plug-in ecosystem? How big is it? (I’m an extreme productivity freak, I optimize for milliseconds, I worship automation). Is this only a tool for UI designers? Or can it be used by anyone as an infinite collaborative whiteboard? What other use cases does the tool offer?. Can we rely on the tool? Can we entrust our business into the company that tool? Is there a strong community using the tool?. Is it easy for the developer to understand what needs to be done using the tool? Are there the necessary inspection tools? How would it work with 10x or 100x more? Will I be able to find what I’m looking for in such structure? Can it scale? At the time we had 1000+ artboards in Sketch (equivalent for “frame” in Figma). Everyone in the team should be able to access any design, open it, look around and give feedback. Feedback is critical and we want our design to be open to our entire team. The more people take part in the design process, the better the product will be. Here are the primary things that we considered important for our case. I had to make sure that it was really a step in the right direction. Moving to another design tool in our case is a huge thing. That made me seriously consider moving to another design tool. Then I tried to import Sketch file into Figma and it blew my mind. Building this from scratch again in another tool would cost a lot of time and it was still unclear whether it would be worth it. Still, we had a complex design system built in Sketch. After a short while, I realized that Sketch is not the only design tool of choice anymore. Moreover, who knows how that will end up?Īs I was googling around looking for a solution, and I bumped to Figma. However, that’s not going to save us today. Sketch has recently raised 20M in funding, aiming to add collaboration features and to bring Sketch to the browser. Abstract does not offer this type of browsing as well. There is still no way to do this if the dev is on Windows. The best developer handoff is to have the dev open the file independently and mess around the screens, see how the screens are placed on pages, navigate the prototypes and so on. As you probably already know, there is no Sketch for Windows. #FROM SKETCH FOR MAC TO REAL APP WINDOWS#
Right? That’s what I thought until the first developer on Windows came along. I’ll do my best to give you my point of view from both of these seats. I sit on two seats: the executive and the designer.
Our design system needs to be scalable, sustainable and must handle thousands of screens of UI. So it’s one digital product being under development for several years.
#FROM SKETCH FOR MAC TO REAL APP PLUS#
Plus the regular stuff like website, newsletter, branding, design for marketing platforms. There’s a desktop app and web app built on Electron.
#FROM SKETCH FOR MAC TO REAL APP SOFTWARE#
It’s a collaborative text editing software for creating, managing, and collaborating on notes, specifications, blog posts or knowledge bases. We are building the workspace for everything written: Smarkup. To help you figure out whether it matters to you, here’s a brief description of what we do and how we work. It was a pragmatic move for us and we’re happy we did it. Plus there are several other smaller reasons. We migrated from Sketch to Figma (instead of Invision Studio, Framer X or Adobe XD) primarily because of collaboration and scalability.