Finding the right design tools can make a huge difference between how creatively and efficiently your team works. Today, you have hundreds – if not thousands – of apps that can help your team work together. You might love having options… but then you feel paralyzed by the number of choices. How can you choose the right design tools when you have so many options?
The following list of design tools your team needs will make it easier for you to focus on the right apps. Once your employers and freelancers get comfortable with the tools, you should notice significant improvements.
UXPin
UXPin has become our favorite prototyping tool once teams start executing ideas and testing them to see how well they work in the real world. It has wonderful features for designing and collaborating.
What really stands out, though, is that UXPin makes creating your UI inventory extremely simple. You can add everything you need to your UI inventory, including:
- Patterns
- Colors
- Typography
- Icons
- Spaces
UI inventories matter because you limit the resources that your team members use. While Mike makes a prototype for an app's introduction page, Jennifer can use the same assets while building a page deep within the application. Since they have access to the same library, their work will share an aesthetic that helps users navigate their ways through the product. The shared aesthetic can also help companies brand their products.
You can make a new UI inventory for every project. You can also save UI inventories for future work that you do with a client. Keeping the inventory means that your clients get coherent aesthetics throughout their products. A new app from Client X can have a similar feel as an older app that users love. You can sprint through the design process because you still have the UI inventory you used to create the first app.
Asana
Asana is a task management tool that keeps everyone on your team on the same page. With Asana, you create projects and assign tasks to the people working on those projects. When tasks get completed, your team members check them off the list to keep everyone else updated of the project's progress.
Perhaps most importantly, Asana doesn't force you to manage projects in a specific way. Instead, you can create your own rules for how the project will proceed. In some ways, all approaches look similar because you assign tasks to individuals, and you can watch the project progress as they complete those tasks. In other ways, the project management app has a revolutionary, flexible design that puts the project lead in control.
Asana isn't the simplest tool to use. Expect a brief period of adjustment. The app's benefits become apparent, though, when you have several people working on an ongoing, multi-step project that requires team coordination.
After Effects
Even the best design teams can get stuck in ruts that make their work feel boring. What if you added animation to some of their projects? Even simple animation can breathe life into a design.
After Effects adds powerful animation features to your team's toolbox. The software gives you several ways to add exciting motion to your projects. You can:
- Generate motion graphics.
- Capture video.
- Edit video into your designs.
After Effects has a lot of features that you might want to learn to use. Realistically, though, you can improve your designs with a few basic features. You probably don't need advanced animation features for an app that helps businesses time their social media posts or get new users to sign up for services. Something fun and simple will do the trick. If you ever expand into more graphics-intense projects, though, you will have After Effects on your side.
Paper
Are your team members responsible for developing ideas for clients and new projects? Then you want to encourage them to use Paper by WeTransfer.
Brainstorming needs to happen quickly. Paper makes it easy for people to explore small ideas before investing time in them. You don't need to add every detail to a design. You just need to get the basics out of your head so you can decide which concepts are worth exploring.
Paper lets you sketch ideas without any commitment. You can make your designs as loose as you want. You can even put multiple concepts into the same collage, then pass around the collage to see which ideas colleagues like best.
The best artists make sketches before they commit to the hard work. Your design team deserves the same freedom.
Palettes Pro
Before you can build an excellent UI inventory, you need to choose a color palette that feels right for the project. Look no further than Palettes Pro, a hyper-focused design tool that lets you create palettes in ways that suit your creative process.
Palettes Pro can create color palettes based on pictures that you take with your phone. When you were out for a walk this weekend, you may have spotted a scene that spoke to you. With Palettes Pro, you can pull up the picture of that scene and pick colors that stand out to you. It brings color from your life into your work.
We're always looking for new design tools that help teams work better. If you find tools that you love, let us know!
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