Andrew Shorten is Senior Director of Product Management for Adobe XD at Adobe. He is passionate about improving the quality, richness, and value of digital experiences. Andrew previously developed user interfaces for government and enterprise customers while working at Fujitsu. He has since worked for Macromedia, Microsoft, and Adobe, where he has engaged with designers, developers, digital agencies, and organizations to help them deliver engaging web, mobile and desktop experiences.
Andrew and I unpack his origin story, the importance of prototyping in UX design, and his role in Adobe XD.
From our friends at Adobe:
Adobe XD January 2018 Update
This month’s Adobe XD CC release, available today, introduces a range of new features and updates including seamless workflows that integrate with popular UX tools for designer to developer handoff and advanced animations. Other key improvements that address requests and feedback from the XD design community are included below my signature.
For example, Dropbox now supports native XD file previews on mobile, web and desktop. When users view an XD file saved to Dropbox, a preview of the file automatically displays, enabling designers and their stakeholders to find and see experiences that they share via Dropbox quickly. Dropbox support for XD file previews reflects the growing popularity of Adobe XD, as its adoption continues to grow. Dropbox is committed to building a common bridge among its products and leading design tools, teams and users.
“Adobe XD is an innovative all-in-one tool for UX designers, and we’re excited to bring the power of Dropbox, Adobe XD and Creative Cloud to our joint users,” said Daniel Wagner, Engineering Lead, Dropbox Previews. “Our goal is to unleash creative energy through an expanding partner ecosystem, and connect design tools like Adobe XD with core Dropbox mobile, web and desktop products.”
Designers can also quickly export their designs from XD into third-party tools like Zeplin, Avocode and Sympli. These highly requested workstreams are part of designers’ existing processes and are ingrained within their teams. Direct integration with XD streamlines their designer to developer handoff process without disruption. XD also integrates with ProtoPie and Kite Compositor, letting designers add advanced animation to their XD prototypes.
This update also includes significant enhancements that enable designers to now zoom in and out of a canvas with thousands of artboards without compromising performance. No matter the size of the project, designers can now seamlessly move between screens and across the canvas faster than ever before.
Additionally, Adobe XD today released five free UI kits in partnership with leading UI/UX designers around the globe to make it easier than ever to get started designing apps for different platforms.
"Adobe XD's human-first design approach and integration with other Creative Cloud tools has made it incredibly easy and seamless to create scalable and cross-platform design systems,” said Michael Wong, designer and founder of Mizko Media & the Designership, who created a gaming console UI kit for Adobe XD.
The other UI kits include options for smart watches, Apple Dashboard, and transportation and travel apps, and can be found here. Let me know if you’re interested in speaking to one of the featured designers on their work with XD and background in UX design, and I’d be happy to set up a call.
Adobe releases regular updates to Adobe XD, working closely with the design community to implement user feedback and introduce popular requested features. You can find additional information on the latest updates here as well as image assets and resources on how to get started in Adobe XD here. Let me know if you have any questions or need anything additional to support your coverage.
Additional Adobe XD Updates
- Usability improvements to Design Specs (Beta) – Feature enhancements make it easier and faster than ever to navigate design specs in the browser, and enable users to work with masked layers.
- Ability to switch between HEX, RGB, HSB in Color Picker – Within the Color Picker, a user can select HEX, RGB, or HSB from the dropdown menu, allowing designers to quickly switch between three common color models used in screen design.
- Batch export – Export options now include batch export, which you can access through the file menu. Right-click in the Layers panel to mark objects for batch export.
