Top 10 Essential UI Design Tools Every UI Designer Needs

If you are planning to start as a UI designer, the central part of learning is to adapt to industry tools. From one end to the other end of the workflow, you would require specific tools and programs to accomplish your defined goals, even if reaching out to your team or creating responsive animations. Before looking deep into the UI toolset, let’s learn what UI designers do. 

UI majorly concentrates on the design interface and how a user will relate to it. As said by Jared Sinclair, “Good design is about the process, not the product.” UI tools provide designers with definite wireframes, prototypes, and mockups which they would require to design and deliver feasible products. 

These tools are the fundamentals of the design, conveying its range of capabilities. There lies a huge list of UI tools to fill the needs of UI designers. Over the time you will realize which UI design tool set suits you the best; for now, let’s look into the best of UI design tools supported by wire framing, web design frameworks and libraries that can be used by web development experts as well as the can be utilized for working with images to dally in AR and VR.

  1. Sketch 

A sketch is a well-known tool in the design community that may help designers build appealing prototypes and interfaces. The Sketch is such a prominent tool because it can make extensive changes, whether through your bibliotheca of symbols, text styles, layer styles, or convenient resizing alignment features. 

One of its best aspects is symbols; as with it, you can design your UI elements and assets and reuse them. This will help one to constitute a design structure and to maintain consistent interfaces. One can conveniently export the design to an engaging prototype. A list of tools can be used with a sketch and can blend with third-party plugins. Its pricing starts from $9 monthly to $99 one time payment.

  1. InVision Studio 

InVision provides a full suite of features and applications required to create fully accomplished and useful prototypes with vital animations and elements. Apart from these convenient UI designing tools, they make transmission easy with a collaboration feature that helps developers share their work and get automatic feedback, making chronicle changes. An additional advantageous aspect of InVision is their digital whiteboard that grants team members to come together, share their ideas, communicate and get all the crucial sign-offs before going ahead. Its pricing starts from FREE to enterprise level. To know their enterprise level pricing you need to ask them.

  1. Axure 

Axure operates in prototyping and conformity in the workflow. It provides an easy interface to documents as you go ahead. The app runs on high fidelity, culminating in detailed prototypes. Axure delivers many features of prototyping and UI design tools. It supports the examination of performance and brings everything together for an effective process. Combining these with uninterrupted communication ensures that each member of the project is up-to-date with the changes and progress in real-time, making Axure a dependable UI design choice. Its pricing starts from $9, $42 and enterprise level pricing.

  1. Craft 

Craft is a plugin from InVision functions just how you might be using Photoshop or Sketch, with sync aspects that update you with what you’re working on. Simultaneously with the time-saving feature, it provides everytihing you would require for collaboration and prototyping. Advancements in edits, styling, and other tweaks are renovated on board so that everyone refers to an invariable version of a project. 

Craft is unique from other UI designing tools because of its placeholder content. With this, you get to approach both iStock and Getty photos, allowing you to fill your layout with enhancing visuals; if there lies data in your structure, then you can use your own or outsource it from other sources. There are not many UI design tools that let you fill your mockups with purposeful content. This distinct feature of Craft provides your mockup much authentic depiction of what conclusive design will look like.   

  1. Proto.io

Proto.io makes the declaration that utilizing their UI design software culminates in “Prototypes that feel real.” Proto.io provides you with all you need to create, coordinate, assimilate and examine authentic mockups. It eases the collaboration process, advancing the transmission between team members through video feedback, comments, suggestions and blending with recognized reviewing products like UserLytics, Validately, and Lookback. Their pricing starts from $24 to $160 monthly.

  1. Adobe XD 

It is tough to strike Adobe off their design software position, their domain of design products regime in the innovative cloud. Adobe XD provides one with vector-based tools that help to create prototypes and mockups with a familiar interface. 

As it uses a friendly interface, in the real-time association, Adobe XD becomes a go-to for many UI designers. Adobe XD UI designers stocked many intricate tools with what designers require to agitate synergy and other vital elements combined into mockups and prototypes. It is among the rare design platforms that fuse distinct disciplines without anything flawed. Its individual plans start from FREE to 49.94 GBP per month, and business plans start from 16.85 GBP to 59GBP per month.

  1. Marvel App

Even if you have been a beginner or an experienced UI designer, Marvel’s design makes work effortless. It can create reprobative prototypes, hi-fi wireframes and do the verification. It provides everything a UI designer would demand to make a mechanical interface. Marvel consists of Handoff that commits developers with all the HTML code and CSS styles they require to initiate. Its pricing starts from FREE to $24 monthly.

  1. Figma 

Figma helps designers frame charismatic prototypes and mockups and examine them for operation, which dovetail the advancement. Figma makes it possible for numerous people to work upon and have an outlook of a project in real-time, somewhat similar to Google Docs. One can have a glimpse of who is working and what they are doing as it is browser-based, which makes it approachable at the moment. The best thing about it is that it is free to use, so go ahead and check it out and get well-known with how it functions. Its pricing starts from FREE to $45 monthly.

  1. Framer X

Framer X previously was a code-only prototyping application, but now it has evolved. Today it serves one with UI tools that helps in building responsive prototypes and examining its usability. The collaboration of Framer X with React makes it an optimal choice for UI designers who want to explore advanced web designs.

Framer X also provides one with numerous in-store plugins. It also serves with facets like UI kits for accommodating digital channels like Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat for implanting diverse media, grids, and other needful segments that can be effortlessly combined. Its pricing starts from FREE to $666 monthly.

  1. Origami Studio 

Facebook designers set up origami Studio; hence it has more intricacy than InVision or Sketch. Origami Studio can be a solid option for looking for more breakthrough prototyping tools for their design structure. 

It embodies the tools one would need to create entire prototypes powered by a refined patch editor, providing designers with an opportunity to bind in progressive performance. The resulting prototypes end up appearing like a web page or a real app. 

Origami Studio also goes well with Sketch. If you are currently working with Sketch, it can serve you with layers, copy and paste them directly without hang-ups.

  1. Webflow 

Webflow is considered one of the best UI design software as it gives you the potential to design without having insight into HTML or CSS. Webflow provides you with the artistic freedom to structure whatever you brainstorm with drag and drop components and an instinctive interface. If you are adopting Webflow for architecting a prototype, you get an actual website with valid HTML and CSS codes; this helps you save your time as now you directly have the part that needs to be submitted to the developer. The lead designer at Webflow, Ryan Morission, has opted to initiate building and designing with Webflow. Its pricing starts from $12 to $36 monthly.

  1. Flinto 

Flinto is a well-known reciprocative prototyping app for Mac that provides you with all you would require to lead your designs to existence. With Flinto, you can design micro-interactions, screen transitions, and add video layers by dragging video/GIF directly into your created designs. You can also blend in UI sound effects and custom-make scrolling. You can import your data from Sketch and use the free iOS view, and you can perceive how your final design will look. Its pricing starts from $99. 

  1. Zeplin 

Being a UI designer, it becomes imperative for you to convey your designs and ideas to your development team; Zeplin helps you facilitate this. You need to transfer all your plans, and Zeplin will immediately develop specs and guidelines, respectively. It saves front-end developers as they don’t have to convert designs by generating platform-related code snippets. Collaborating with Zeplin with the Slack channel will become easy for the developers to add notes directly to the platform. Its pricing starts from FREE to $26 monthly. 

Conclusion 

The above mentioned are some much-opted web UI design tools that web UI designers can utilize. While you’re selecting your set of best UI design tools, one needs to take some points into deliberation. Firstly, you need to be clear about what kind of projects you are focusing on, and then you need to choose the UI and UX design tools that are best suited for your project.

The apparent decision you need to take while selecting tools is that they need to be compatible with your laptop or PC. We hope that our collective knowledge related to some of the best UI design software helps you create a responsive, engaging image for your web development company. In case we missed out on something, feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section. 

About the author

Rahul Yadav is a versatile digital marketing consultant from Delhi who offers exceptional web and digital services worldwide.

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