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What's your team's design stack?

5 years ago from , Design @ OneSignal

Something I'm always curious about; what tools are other Design teams using?

I just published a post about our own design stack at Mesosphere. Some of the tools we use:

  • Sketch
  • Abstract
  • Lingo
  • InVision
  • VS Code
  • Adobe CC
  • Slack
  • JIRA
  • Confluence
  • G Suite
  • Dropmark
  • Cloudapp
  • Screenflow

Thought I'd open up the discussion here to hear from others.

What tools are you using? What tools do you wish you were using?

37 comments

  • Keith Robinson, 5 years ago

    Using: At Atlassian we've got a mostly unified stack, with a few teams and individuals diverging here and there. So this list isn't comprehensive.

    • Sketch
    • InVision
    • Keynote
    • Stride
    • Confluence
    • Bear (I do a lot of writing in my day-to-day)
    • Jira
    • Dropbox
    • Code (Bitbucket / Atom / HTML+CSS / React)

    Trying out:

    • Figma
    • Principle
    • Wake

    Wish we were using:

    • More code :)
    7 points
    • Nate vNate v, 5 years ago

      I live for Figma. Wake was pretty cool at the time I tried it (pretty early in it's life). Unfortunately it didn't seem to provide too much value to the team (at the time).

      0 points
  • Thiago Duarte, 5 years ago

    That's the list of tools I mainly use in my everyday work. Unfortunately, I'm not able to use most of the new tools out there because of security restrictions (the only cloud-based apps we use today are Slack, Box, and G Suite).

    • Sketch
    • Adobe CC
    • Principle
    • Framer
    • iWork
    • Slack
    • Box
    • G Suite
    • Sublime Text 3

    I'm also trying Haiku now and I'd love to try Figma but I can't, due to the cloud environment.

    3 points
    • Andy MerskinAndy Merskin, 5 years ago

      Any qualms with Box? Our team is considering using it, potentially migrating away from an internal SVN server to store our assets (thank the lawd).

      0 points
      • Thiago Duarte, 5 years ago

        Box is great, the interface and the sync software got so much better in the last few years. To be honest I'd prefer to use Google Drive or Dropbox, but seems like it's not "secure enough".

        0 points
  • Jeremy Sallee, 5 years ago

    We are an international team (15 in the US, 15 in India, 1 freelancer in Europe). We just transitioned the whole team to Abstract from InVision so now the stack would be:

    • Sketch
    • Abstract
    • Very limited usage of Adobe CC tools (Mostly Illustrator) for Illustrations and legacy purposes
    • JIRA for project management and tracking purposes
    2 points
  • Oliver Swig, 5 years ago

    Cool...another thread about tools.

    Indesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Bridge, Font Suitcase, Keynote

    2 points
  • Dexter W, 5 years ago
    • JIRA for project management
    • Bear Notes for research
    • Figma & Framer for all screen design and prototyping
    • Pinegrow, Webflow, HTML/CSS for front end design
    • Bitbucket for version control
    2 points
  • Mitch Malone, 5 years ago
    • Sketch
    • No version control yet. I'd like to try abstract.
    • Invision for now but moving to Zeplin or something else. Invision has been causing problems for our team in how they render nested and pinned symbols from Sketch when using Craft sync.
    • Atom for FE (for me at least)
    • Slack
    • JIRA
    • Confluence. Use this for design system documentation
    • Dropbox paper for notes and thinking
    • React Storybook. We use storybook in our design system as a front end to our reusable react components.
    • Whimsical for user flows and diagramming.
    2 points
    • Lee Munroe, 5 years ago

      Wasn't familiar with Whimsical. Looks good.

      How do you find keeping Storybook aligned with what's documented in Confluence (and vice versa)?

      0 points
      • Mitch Malone, 5 years ago

        Heh. It's not easy. Our design system is very much an MVP. So when we add or update the system, it's a laborious process of updating sketch libs, documentation in Confluence, and React components.

        0 points
    • Kris PuckettKris Puckett, 5 years ago

      Hey Mitch! I'm Kris with InVision. Bummed to hear that Craft is causing so many issues for you and your team! I would love to help make that better. Would you be willing to jump on a call with me to talk more about the issues? Thanks!

      0 points
      • Mitch Malone, 5 years ago

        Hey Kris. Coincidentally, I discovered the problem a few hours after I posted this. Turns out it was a third-party Sketch plugin that was messing me up. I removed it and now Craft sync works perfect!

        Thanks for reaching out!

        1 point
  • Felix Guertler, 5 years ago

    Happy to see Screenflow in your list. Such a great little but powerful tool that doesn't seem to get the attention it deserves.

    1 point
  • Ronan Flynn-CurranRonan Flynn-Curran, 5 years ago
    • Sketch
    • Adobe CC
    • Rightfont
    • Niice.co
    • coolors.co
    • Git
    • VS Code (about 2 weeks into this, amazing debugging features)
    • Slack
    • Google Docs
    • Dropbox
    • OneDrive
    • Trello (infrequent)
    • Office 365
    1 point
  • Ronan Flynn-CurranRonan Flynn-Curran, 5 years ago

    Really like the look of Abstract + Lingo tools. Would you rec?

    1 point
    • Lee Munroe, 5 years ago

      Abstract is great. Central to our workflow now. Lingo is a solid tool but it does something which I would expect Sketch to already do, which is shared layer and text styles as part of a library. Before Sketch libraries we also used Lingo to share our UI components.

      0 points
  • Christian DorianChristian Dorian, 5 years ago

    At Quizlet we are primarily using:

    • Sketch
    • InVision
    • Framer
    • Lingo
    • Dropbox
    • JIRA
    • Confluence
    • G Suite
    • Adobe CC

    We are considering switching from InVision Inspect to Zeplin in the near future.

    1 point
  • Nathan NNathan N, 5 years ago

    Jira, Confluence, Google Apps (prefer Office 365), Slack, InVision, Sketch and Balsamiq Mockups.

    1 point
  • Jason Coudriet, almost 5 years ago

    Sketch Abstract Invison Invision Studio Trello Adobe CC

    0 points
  • Lauren HollidayLauren Holliday, 5 years ago

    I'm interested in trying Webflow. I'm not sure if this counts. I always design/build websites in WP. What does everyone think about Webflow compared to WP? Think it's the "next thing?"

    0 points
  • Brent C, 5 years ago

    My stack:

    • Sketch
    • Framer
    • Invision - Would rather be using Zeplin
    • Box - Would rather be using Dropbox

    Some tools I'm interested in using:

    • Wake
    • Overflow
    0 points
  • Andy MerskinAndy Merskin, 5 years ago

    For my current client, we use:

    • Illustrator (yes, for UI design, and yes, we prefer it over Sketch or anything else!)
    • InDesign for decks / books
    • Tumult Hype 3 (for clickable, high-fid, guided demos)
    • InVision (for quickly testing click paths)
    • In-house design/image presentation webapp
    • Cornerstone (for SVN to store design assets / projects)

    General tools: - JIRA, Confluence, HipChat (the Atlassian stack) - Google Drive / Docs / Sheets

    Other tools, depending on the client: - Sketch - InVision - Marvel

    The nice thing is, since our team of 50+ designers have so many clients, it's really up to our smaller teams to decide what we like best and use it, for the most part. We have a lot of flexibility in choosing our tools here, aside from storage or anything cloud-based (which does limit our options, due to security and audits).

    0 points
  • Alec LomasAlec Lomas, 5 years ago

    Company-wide:

    • Sketch (with the occasional PSD floating about, mostly legacy stuff)
    • InVision
    • Dropbox
    • git (hosted on GitHub)
    • Slack
    • Asana
    • Notion

    Personal Use (but for work):

    • Rightfont
    • Dropbox Paper
    • VS Code
    • Hyper

    I use a few other things for personal projects, but that's it for work.

    0 points
  • Timothy McKennaTimothy McKenna, 5 years ago

    At PHEAA, our tech stack is pretty old but we're in the process of modernizing. Currently, we run Windows 7, so there is a compatibility issue we also run into, but nevertheless.

    • Axure 8
    • Adobe CC
    • UltraEdit
    • JIRA
    • Confluence
    • Lotus Notes Group Chat
    • MS Office 2009

    Trying out - Atom Editor - Figma/UXPin - Windows 10 Business

    0 points
  • Thai HoangThai Hoang, 5 years ago

    Our team at Neyber are using:

    Sketch Adobe CC InVision JIRA Confluence LucidChart Zeplin Google Drive

    Trying out: Principle Marvel Figma

    0 points
  • Bart S, 5 years ago

    Pretty small list compared to the rest here:

    • Sketch
    • G Suite
    • Principle
    • Slack
    • Podio
    • Gallery.io (this recently replaced Sketch Cloud + Zeplin for us)
    • Atom (for optimising SVG's and sometimes to code and try some stuff)
    0 points
  • Tiago FrancoTiago Franco, 5 years ago

    At Imaginary Cloud we use:

    Sketch (can't miss it) Photoshop Illustrator Marvel App Keynote (you have to present stuff, better do it right and neat) Pages (for writing more than a few pages) Numbers (tables... tables everywhere)

    0 points
  • Rey AlejandroRey Alejandro, 5 years ago

    At 42Race, We use Figma — design, prototype, presentation, design library Loom — video documentation and presentation ( easier to discuss design rationale and specs) Notion — design specs outline, linking video and prototype, wikis for design processes and templates Jira – Project management Flock – Communication

    0 points
  • josh yu, 5 years ago
    • Sketch
    • Adobe CC
    • Principle
    • Invision
    • Timelinr (Planning / PM)
    • Google Drive
    • Slack
    0 points