Most common UX tools

Evolution of UX tools
The field of UX design and the tools used by designers have evolved over the last several
years. Initially, UX designers commonly used Adobe Creative Suite tools, such as Photoshop.
These tools were used mostly for print and static design. But, as technology and the demands
for UX design evolved, so did the need for increased functionality of digital tools. Sketch

was released in 2010 and was the first digital-forward design tool built specifically for UX
designers. In addition, more tools like Freehand by Miro, released in 2011, and Zeplin

, released in 2015, came along, offering prototype capabilities and opportunities for easier
collaboration.

As organizations have continued to digitally transform and move towards dynamic work
environments, UX tools have had to keep pace. The increase in remote workers, along with
dynamic work environments, has presented a need for UX designers to find the right-sized
toolset to fit their desired output.

Today, the demand for modern, digitally collaborative tools has not subsided. Figma

and Adobe XD

both took center stage in the UX design world when they were released in 2016. Today,
Figma holds one of the biggest stakes in the collaborative design and prototyping market. It
offers real-time collaboration, Dev Mode for engineers, and in-product prototyping features,
in addition to many custom plug-ins for unique design needs. Adobe XD continues to offer a
robust solution for UX designers as well, with features such as cloud syncing, for example,
for distributed digital teams. These features facilitate a collaborative element, for teams who
are not working in face-to-face environments.

Going forward
Most of the modern UX tools used by UX designers have similar functionality, with some
unique features and robust online learning libraries. You will likely use more than one design
tool throughout your career. However, in this certificate program, the focus will be on Figma.
You’ll learn how to use it, and you’ll work on projects you’ll be able to include in your UX
design portfolio.

Considerations when choosing UX tools

Don’t worry - you don’t have to choose a UX tool today! But, at some point in the future, as
you dive deeper into your UX design career, you’ll want to choose UX tools that work best
for you and the specific projects you’re working on. As you gain a better understanding of UX
design and the UX design tools, there are a few things you’ll want to consider when selecting
a UX tool:
Who you are as a designer

You may end up pursuing a job as a UX designer. Or, you may end up in a role that is a
variation of UX design—for example, a visual designer or a motion designer. You learned
about various UX design jobs in Jobs in the field of user experience.

Understanding what UX tools work best for you will ultimately be informed by the role you
take on and the corresponding responsibilities and job tasks.

The design context

Another consideration for choosing a UX tool will be the design context in which you work.
In some cases, the organization may dictate the tool you use simply based on what it already
uses. Or, you may have the flexibility to decide on the tool based on the type of project you
are working on or the level of collaboration among team members you may need. These are
just a few factors that may influence the type of UX tool you choose.

Capabilities of the tool

When you get to the point of choosing a UX tool, you’ll also need to consider the capabilities
of the tool. You’ll learn more about these capabilities later in this certificate program. Going
forward, you’ll investigate the tool and ask questions such as:

 Does it allow for mobile-responsive design?

o For example: You may create templates and layouts for various devices. Does
the tool account for, and adapt to, different screen sizes?
 Does it allow for prototyping, testing, and reviewing?
o For example: You’ll eventually want to build a prototype, or sample, of a
product. Does the tool allow you to build the prototype? Does it allow you to
test how it works? And, can the tool allow other stakeholders or designers to
review it and provide feedback directly into the tool?
 Does it allow for team collaboration?
o For example: You will likely work on a team with several people. Can each
team member work in the tool? Can revisions or suggestions be made by other
team members?
 Does it allow for a centralized design system?
o For example: You likely won’t be the only designer on a project. With multiple
team members and collaborators, consistency is key. Does the tool allow the
team to view and/or copy styles and properties to ensure consistency across the
project?

UX tools—an overview
In this certificate, you’ll focus on Figma. Figma is one of the preeminent UX tools. There are
other UX tools, mentioned previously, you can look at for comparison.

Sketch, Freehand, and Zeplin

 Work well with very large teams that may struggle to adopt new tools
  Paired most commonly with another of these tools
 Do not require WiFi, enabling offline design work
 Do not afford real-time collaboration, prototyping, or design to development
collaborative activities

Adobe XD

 Works well with teams that already use Adobe’s Suite

 Rounds out Adobe’s suite of products with one that is entirely built for digital and UX
design work
 Syncs to Cloud rather than using actual real-time collaboration and can be used offline

Figma

 Is excellent for most designers and contexts

 Includes FigJam access, a whiteboard for brainstorming, diagramming, and
strategizing
 Requires WiFi connection
 Is a digital-first, remote-friendly, all-in-one tool, allowing for easier sharing,
designing, collaboration, and reviewing in our ever-changing, more virtual workspace

Do your research
Check out each tool’s website for additional information. As you educate yourself on each
tool’s features and benefits, you’ll be able to choose the UX tool that is right for you. But
remember: You’ll be introduced to Figma and you’ll learn how to use it throughout this
certification course.

 Sketch

Stay current with the UX industry

The field of UX design is constantly evolving. To succeed in the field, you have to keep up
with the latest tools, standards, and best practices. Thankfully, the UX design community is as
supportive as it is innovative: There are tons of great resources out there to help you master
the fundamentals, grow your skills, and stay current. Find the resources that work for you, and
check them regularly to get support and learn about recent developments.

Thought leaders in UX design

Thought leaders use their expertise to define and improve their fields. In UX design, many
thought-leading organizations offer free or subscription-based resources to help you grow
your skills and create great designs.
Nielsen Norman Group

: Founded by two early leaders in the field, the Nielsen Norman Group offers training,
consulting, articles, reports, and other resources to help individuals and organizations grow
and innovate in UX design.

UX Collective Blog

: The UX Collective offers curated posts from UX designers around the world. You can
browse their homepage for topics of interest, check out their editor’s top picks, and subscribe
to their newsletter for regular updates.

Interaction Design Foundation

: Driven by peer-reviewed research and evidence-based design practices, this foundation

offers open-access UX design resources, such as articles and textbooks, as well as fee-based
courses and classes.

UX Planet

: This resource offers guidance on everything from UX design fundamentals to advanced

careers in the field. Check out their offerings on User Experience, UX for Beginners, UX
Careers and Agencies, and more.

Growth.design

: Looking for examples of great UX design at work? Want to know more about the
psychology behind UX? Seeking inspiration for your own designs? Growth.design provides
weekly case studies of real-world examples in fun, comic book formats.

Case Study Club

: This community of UX and product designers shares design case studies to help you build
your skills, grow your confidence, and prepare for new roles. It’s made up of more than
28,000 members, including Google, Spotify, and Adobe.

Awwwards

: Get more inspiration by exploring globally recognized UX designs. Awwwards showcases

these designs in easy-to-explore experiences that highlight specific design elements, like font
and color.

UXPodcast

: This podcast and blog explores how digital media professionals balance business,
technology, and society in their work. It aims to break down the organizational and
disciplinary silos that separate UX designers and other digital media professionals.

Communities of UX designers
Plugging into UX design communities is one of the best ways to grow your craft while
expanding your professional network. These organizations facilitate and host design-centric
discussions, meet-ups, and other social experiences. Get connected!

Creative Mornings

: This group hosts free virtual field trips and in-person meet-ups for creative professionals in
cities around the world. Check out their website to explore upcoming events, watch talks from
past meetings, and find a chapter near you.

AIGA

: The Professional Association for Design, or AIGA, supports UX designers and other design
professionals. In addition to hosting an annual conference, they offer resources on
fundamentals, innovations, and professional development in the field.

ADPList

: With a focus on designers’ growth and professional development, ADPList is a mentorship

service that matches aspiring designers with more experienced peers for feedback and advice.

Many UX design communities are developed by and for groups that are underrepresented in
the field. These communities support designers and work to make the UX industry more
inclusive for everyone:

 APIwho.design

 Blacks Who Design

  Ladies that UX

 Latinxs Who Design

  Techqueria (Latinx in Tech)

  Women Who Design

 Queer Design Club

Tool-hosted UX tutorials
Because most digital design tools are updated regularly, you’ll find that online help tutorials
can at times have out-of-date screenshots or instructions from older versions of the interface.
Thankfully, the organizations that license these tools maintain robust libraries of up-to-date
training resources. Here are some links into key parts of the training libraries for Figma,
Sketch, Freehand, and Zeplin.

Figma

 Help Center

  Get Started - Guide

  Figma for Beginners Tutorial

  Figma YouTube Channel

Sketch, Freehand, and Zeplin

 Sketch Docs

  Sketch 101

  Freehand

  Zeplin Start Guide for Designers

Creator-made UX tutorials
When in doubt, ask the internet! Whether you’re facing an unfamiliar new challenge or just
looking for inspiration, there’s a good chance that some other UX practitioner has tried
something similar to what you are working on. So, use Google and YouTube (including
YouTube Shorts) to search for creator-made tutorials about different design tasks and tools.
TikTok has also become a very popular place to share tips on Figma. These tips and tutorials
are often really detailed, with explanations of specific pitfalls, features, and challenges you
may not anticipate.

Open-source design templates

In UX design, there’s often no need to reinvent the wheel. Many design tools host libraries of
open-source templates, which are licensed to be publicly available for download and for
personal and commercial use. With these templates, you can experiment with unfamiliar
designs and quickly spin up new designs for your own work. They make it easy to keep
features you like and tweak those you don’t. As you play with them, you’ll start to apply your
own style and preferences. Here are links to template libraries from some leading design
tools:
  Figma Template Community

  Adobe XD UI Kits

  Sketch UI Kits

  Airtable Template Community

  Miro Template Community

development life cycle

Every new product, whether it’s an app or a physical object, follows a specific set of steps that
take it from the first spark of an idea to the release of the final product. This is called the
product development life cycle, and it has five stages: brainstorm, define, design, test, and
launch. Depending on where you work, the exact names of each stage might be a little
different, but the overall process is generally the same.

Around
the circle there are icons for each phase of the lifecycle - brainstorm, define, design, test,
launch

In this reading, you’ll explore the product development life cycle and how UX design fits into
each stage. As you might have guessed, UX designers are most engaged during the design
stage of the product development life cycle, but they work closely with team members — like
researchers, product managers, and engineers — throughout the entire life cycle.
As a product moves through the development life cycle, the team might need to spend longer
working in one stage than in others, or repeat certain stages based on feedback. The success of
each stage depends on the previous stage’s completion, so it’s important to do them in order.

Check out each of the five stages of the product development life cycle!

The first stage of the product development life cycle is the brainstorm stage, when the team
starts thinking of an idea for a product. Your team might already know the user problem that
you want to solve when you begin the product development life cycle. If not, coming up with
a list of user problems is a great place to start.

It’s important to pay attention to the diversity of your team at this stage. Teams that have
meaningful diversity across identifiers like race, gender, abilities, family structure, age, and
ethnicity are generally more effective at brainstorming because they bring together a lot of
different lived experiences.

Consider this example: If you’re designing a new app to help working parents and guardians,
your team might start the brainstorming stage by listing common problems that working
parents and guardians face, like a lack of reliable childcare, transportation concerns, or trouble
managing schedules. Your team might review user feedback about other similar products or
the results of user surveys to help guide your ideas. After you’ve brainstormed lots of user
problems, your team chooses one and starts coming up with ideas for solutions to that
problem.

The brainstorm stage is also an ideal time to check out your product's competitors and identify
if there are already similar products available in the market. You want your product to fill a
gap in the market or solve a problem better than existing products. Completing research into
both your competitors and your users helps determine what problems need to be addressed by
the product’s design.

One more thing to keep in mind: A UX designer at a large company might not be very
involved in the brainstorm stage. But a UX designer at a startup or small business could have
a big role to play!
The second stage of the product development life cycle brings together UX designers, UX
researchers, program managers, and product leads to define the product. The goal is to figure
out the specifications for the product by answering questions like: Who is the product for?
What will the product do? And, what features need to be included for the product to be
successful?
During the define stage, your team narrows the focus of your idea. One product can’t solve
every user problem. Continuing with the example for an app to help working parents and
guardians, your idea should focus on helping parents and guardians find reliable childcare or
manage their schedules, not both. In this stage, a UX designer might help the team pin down
the focus of the idea, but a product lead will probably be the one to define the scope of the
project.

The research you completed in the brainstorm stage comes in handy now. Using what you've
learned, you will pinpoint your potential users’ problems. Your team can’t assume they know
what problems users are experiencing without asking the users directly.
The third stage of the product development life cycle is design. At this stage, UX designers
develop the ideas for the product. Generally, UX designers start by drawing wireframes,
which are outlines or sketches of the product, then move on to creating prototypes, which are
early models of a product that convey its functionality.

UX writers are also involved in the design stage and might do things like write button labels
or other copy within the product's wireframes and prototypes.
At this point in the life cycle, UX designers make sure to include all of the product
specifications that were outlined in the define stage. You might also check to ensure that each
part of the design fits together in an intuitive way. For example, UX designers might check
that the screens of an app flow in a way that makes sense to the user. Or that each interaction,
like tapping a button, has a correlating action, like an item getting added to a cart. On the
other hand, with a physical product, UX designers might check that one piece of a physical
object matches up to the connecting piece. Finally, UX designers also make sure that each
task a user needs to complete is clear and easy to understand, like navigating from the
homepage to the checkout confirmation page in an app.
Next, your designs move into the test stage. UX designers work with engineers to develop
functional prototypes that match the original designs, including details and features that fit the
company’s brand, like font and color choices. This also means writing the code and finalizing
the overall structure of the product.
Or, if you want to test your designs earlier, another option is to test a functioning prototype of
the product, using a design tool like Figma or Adobe XD. You'll learn how to create
prototypes of your designs later in the certificate program.

At this stage, the designs go through at least three phases of testing: internal tests within your
company, reviews with stakeholders, and external tests with potential users. A stakeholder is
a person you need to work with to complete the project or anyone who has some interest in
the project, either within or outside of the company.

Running these tests is typically the responsibility of the UX researcher on your team, if you
have one.

 First, the team tests the product internally to look for technical glitches and usability
problems. This is often referred to as alpha testing.
 Then, the product undergoes a test with stakeholders to make sure the product is
aligned with the company’s vision, meets legal guidelines for accessibility, and
follows government regulations for privacy, for example.
 Finally, there’s an external test with potential users. This is the time to figure out
whether the product provides a good user experience, meaning it’s usable, equitable,
enjoyable, and useful. This is often referred to as beta testing.

Gathering and implementing feedback at this stage is absolutely critical. If users are frustrated
or confused by your product, UX designers make adjustments or even create new versions of
the design. Then, the designs are tested again, until there’s little or no friction between the
product and the user.

It’s important to call out that the product development life cycle isn’t a completely linear
process. Your team might cycle between designing and testing a few times before you're
ready to launch the product!
Finally, you’ve arrived at the fifth and final stage of the product development cycle: the
launch stage, when the product is released into the world! This might involve listing an app in
the Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store, making a website go live, or putting a physical
product on store shelves.

The launch stage is a time to celebrate your work and start promoting the product. Marketing
professionals on your team might post about the new product on social media or publish a
press release. The customer support team might get ready to help new users learn how the
product works.

Program managers also meet with the cross-functional team to reflect on the entire product
development life cycle and ask questions like: What worked and what could be improved?
Were goals achieved? Were timelines met? Making time for this reflection is super important,
since it can help improve the process going forward.

For a physical product, the launch stage might be the end of the product development life
cycle. But for a digital product, like an app or website, launching the product to a wider
audience provides another opportunity to improve on the user experience. New users might
find problems with the product’s functionality or features to improve that no one noticed
before. So, after the launch stage, teams will often cycle back to the design and testing stages
to start working on the next version of a digital product.

Beyond the product development life cycle

You now understand how products are developed and the role UX designers play in the life
cycle. Everywhere you look, you’ll find products of all kinds — big, small, physical, or
digital — that have been through this very process. The more you see the intention and
thought put into everyday objects, the closer you’ll get to becoming a UX designer!