Creating a great user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) for your website is essential if you want visitors to stick around. But if you’re not a designer, it can be hard to know where to start. User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design are two of the most important aspects of creating a website or application that is both useful and visually appealing. That’s why we’ve put together a list of our top picks for the best UX/UI design tools for web designers. These tools will help you create beautiful and user-friendly designs that your visitors will love.
1. Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a widely used design program that enables designers to create stunning visual elements for websites. It’s perfect for creating infographics, buttons, and other web graphics. Many people find it difficult to use at first, but with a little practice, it can be easy to master.
2. Adobe XD
Adobe XD is a vector-based user experience design tool developed and published by Adobe Inc. It is available for macOS and Windows, and it allows users to design, prototype, and share user experiences for web, mobile, and other digital products.
Adobe XD has a wide range of features that make it a powerful tool for designing and prototyping user experiences. One of its most notable features is its support for vector-based graphics, which allows designers to create high-fidelity designs that can be scaled up or down without losing quality. Another notable feature is its ability to quickly create prototypes that can be tested with users. This helps designers validate their designs with real users before investing time and resources into developing them.
3. Sketch
Sketch was designed specifically for interface design. Sketch is a vector drawing and animation software that’s growing in popularity among web designers. It’s especially well-suited for designing icons, logos, and other design elements. It has all of the features and tools that you need to create beautiful, user-friendly interfaces. And because it’s a vector-based program, your designs can be easily scaled up or down without losing any quality.
Sketch also has an extensive libraries of resources that you can use in your designs, including fonts, icons, and reusable elements. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for in the libraries, you can always create your own custom elements and save them for future use.
Another big plus for Sketch is that it’s relatively inexpensive. There’s just a one-time fee of $99, and there are no subscription fees after that. Compare that to Adobe Creative Cloud, which costs $19.99/month (or $239.88/year), and it’s easy to see why Sketch is such a great deal for graphic designers.
4. InVision
InVision is a cloud-based design platform that enables designers to create interactive prototypes of their designs. InVision provides designers with all the tools they need to turn their static designs into clickable, interactive prototypes. With InVision, designers can also collaborate with team members, give and receive feedback, and track their progress.
InVision also offers many features that are specifically tailored for graphic designers. For example, InVision gives designers the ability to create multiple artboards in their prototypes, making it easy to design complex pages or screens. InVision also offers a wide range of built-in components that designers can use in their prototypes, including buttons, forms, and icons.
5. Zeplin
As a graphic designer, you know how important it is to be able to work efficiently and effectively with your team. After all, design is a collaborative process, and the better you are at communication and collaboration, the better your final product will be. That’s where Zeplin comes in.
Zeplin is a collaboration tool specifically designed for designers and front-end developers. It’s a cloud-based platform that helps streamline the design process by providing a central place for designers and developers to share files, leave comments, and track changes. It generates code snippets for designers so they can hand off their designs to developers with ease.
6. Figma
Figma is a vector-based design tool that is similar to Sketch but with one major difference: it is browser-based, which means it can be used on any platform. Figma also offers real-time collaboration, version control, and an extensive plugin library. However, one downside of Figma is that it does not have as many features as Sketch—but what it lacks in features, it makes up for in accessibility.
UPDATE: Adobe announced that it has struck a $20 billion deal to acquire Figma.
7. Balsamiq
Balsamiq is a rapid wireframing tool that allows you to create low-fidelity prototypes quickly and easily. Balsamiq has a simple interface that looks like a sketchpad—which makes sense given its name (“balsamique” means “sketchy” in French). One of the best things about Balsamiq is that it allows you to focus on the structure of your design without getting bogged down in the details. This makes it ideal for early stage conceptualizing or when you need to quickly iterate on an idea.
Conclusion:
Creating a great UX/UI for your website doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. There are plenty of great tools out there that can help you create beautiful, user-friendly designs without breaking the bank. So what are you waiting for? Start experimenting with some of these tools today and see what they can do for your website’s design.
About the Author: Brad Fogel
