Google "Framer x" ... 90% of the designs you see are mobile. Their entire thing has been mobile for like the past 3 years. Have you ever used Framer?

They've always marketed themselves as a mobile design solution which honestly just isn't that interesting. Peeking at it now after a year or so I see they're doing more than that, but they've really hindered themselves with their terribly boring marketing.

I don't get it. Someone says "here's something that makes no sense" and we go "lol that makes no sense"? Is that the joke?

Ah, I haven't had to do any voice prototyping, so yea maybe they're the leader in that space!

I find prototyping in general to be a bit overrated simply due to how easy it is to live code interfaces in modern frameworks, but that's from the perspective of a guy doing all enterprise web UI all day everyday so I'll be the first to admit my perspective is limited.

This is actually a pretty great intro to all 3 tools (and some bonus tools too). It seems pretty clear to me that Figma has surpassed Sketch as the premier UI design tool at the moment, but I remember reading about Sketch having more collaboration-focused plans (maybe even a browser-based version similar to Figma) as a result of their recent funding.

Poor Adobe xD. It being included with Figma and Sketch in this article is just unfortunate as it's basically a distant 3rd in every single category. I don't understand why anybody would use Adobe xD in its current state.

I just took a brief look at the Sketch docs, and it doesn't look too spicy. If anything you may want to specify your developer have proficiency with "Node" which should sound funny to most good JS developers, but I'm sure there's a nonzero number of jQuery-or-bust folks trolling freelance sites.

Edit: As for where to go to find one, I haven't had to hire a freelancer who wasn't a friend of mine in years, so I have no input on that part :)

Nice article! I personally think ability to code JS is going to become pretty important as a UX designer. As design tools start to export more production-ready code it's going to become more and more of the designer's responsibility to own that deliverable.

I highly recommend all UX designers pick up JS/React today. It's really not all that hard to learn and might become essential to the job in the coming years.

No one who doesn’t use Slack would know that; many people who do use Slack don’t know that

He complains the first logo requires too much intimate knowledge of slack to appeal to the general public.

it again suggests Pentagram doesn’t even use Slack.

Then later claims that Pentagram doesn't even use Slack.

Logo design, and really design in general includes TONS of mocks that just end up not working at all. Every logo ever designed has a bunch of garbage on a canvas somewhere. I thought it was neat how Pentagram showed their iterations.

John Gruber, as usual, has no idea what he's talking about.

I concur and want to piggyback a bit..

When I was first starting out the thing that helped me learn the quickest was just copying other people's work (not for sale of course, but for practice). There are so many small decisions that go into even simple looking designs that you'll have a hard time understanding until you're in Sketch trying to create the effects yourself.

Where you might normally just slap a shadow on a box and call it a day you might realize copying shopify or gmail or whatever that they're in fact using several shadows (just an example, I'm not claiming that good designs have multiple shadows automatically). Very small decisions like that end up working together to create a polish on the final artwork that you might be struggling to achieve.

tldr; practice the craft by copying other people's stuff

Seems like most responses here are from the perspective of freelancers or remote contractors. Through that lens I can see being skeptical of design tasks - specifically ones that have you work within the same field of the employer (ie: a health insurance company asking you to design a plan selection page).

When it comes to full-time gigs, however, you'd be hard-pressed to find a potential employer who doesn't require a take-home design task, a whiteboarding session, or both. For better or worse it's SOP at this point, so you might as well get used to it.