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Vault Unlocked: Our Design Perspective

May 8, 2023

We’re launching a series that will explore design, development, fundraising, strategy and all things startups where we’ll review the current landscape and give our team opinions. In this first series, were going to cover some common popular design tools and in the series follow ups will give our feedback on each specific design tool.

Welcome to Vault Unlocked: Our Design Perspective.

Do you use an iPhone? Do you use Instagram? Do you use DropBox? Do you know what all of these products have in common beyond being some of the most widely used products on the planet?

They are all design driven products whose success has been in part due to putting a focus on quality user experiences and user interfaces. To create a quality design experience for the users of your products it’s important to define your user personas and design a product that will meet their needs.

To design a quality product it’s important to use the best tools for the design process. There are many tools out there for designers and front-end developers but we selected a few of our favorites. We’ll provide detail on what each tool is for, our opinion of how the tool could be best utilized, and why we use this tool in future blog posts.

Adobe (Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign)

Adobe is the design tool that started the design trend and is a suite full of tools. From Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, XD and more with Adobe you can design anything. Some of the features of Adobe are:

  • Wireframes
  • Prototypes
  • Animations
  • Feedback from collaborators
  • Image editing  

Sketch

Sketch is a tool using high definition interfaces and prototypes. Sketch can be described as a Photoshop with more intuitive design features. Some of the features of Sketch are:

  • Responsive layouts
  • Vector editing
  • Fast Prototyping
  • Responsive components

Invision

Invision is one of the earlier rapid prototyping tools for designers by designers. It allows designers to create interactive prototypes with the following features:

  • Clickable prototype
  • Downloadable assets
  • Comment and collaboration tools
  • Generate front end code
  • Wireframing

Marvel

Marvel is a lightweight prototyping tool to create quick prototypes. Some of the features of Marvel are:

  • Rapid prototyping
  • User testing
  • Automatic design specs
  • Integration with sketch
  • Wireframing

Figma

Figma is similar to Invision as a rapid prototyping tool with a collaborative approach to gather feedback from multiple users. Figmas goals are to help teams design together no matter their role. Some of the design features are:

  • Design responsively with auto layout
  • Design and prototyping
  • Wireframing
  • Code snippets sharing

Zeplin

Zeplin is a post-design tool that is used with prototyping tools like the ones listed above. It’s primarily used to move designs from the designer to the development team to create them on the front-end. Files can be uploaded from different tools like Sketch, Invision, Figma and more. Some of the features of Zeplin are:

  • Design export in one click to 3rd party tools
  • Generate development resources
  • Team communications

To check out more in this series look out for our post on the Vault Unlocked blog for in depth reviews of each tool.

At Vault we have the Learn, Build, Grow model that helps companies of any size from startups to Fortune 500 identify their brand identify and design using proven methods from our years of design experience. Want some assistance or have questions about how to design a better brand and user experience? Reach out to hello@vaultinnovation.com to schedule a free call.

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