How Tools Have Shaped the Role of the Designer — uxdesign.cc – User Experience Design
This is a neat write-up about the tools we use as designers are increasing our productivity and allowing us to collaborate better with our partners, particularly the engineers we work with. The lines blur between design and engineering, and it’s because the tools we use help bridge the gap.
In regards to tools, one of the things that I am struggling with is designer-to-designer collaboration. There is a plethora of tools to choose from these days, and all of them are constantly evolving. Ok, that’s great.
Now, the time it takes to build a product is much slower than the the next tool release/update. As a lead product designer working in a large team, I often times have to start design files, and then I hand them off to multiple designers so we can move things along more quickly. It is best when all of us use the same tool. In the past, every interaction designer I worked with used OmniGraffle so we would just pass each other OG files so it was easy to do a quick change, make updates, pass it along to the PM or engineers. Currently, I work with multiple (perhaps “many” is the more proper description) designers who prefer to work in different programs (i.e. OmniGraffle, Sketch, Illustrator, Photoshop, JustInMind, Invision, Mural, etc.) so it becomes difficult and slow to share and update files. How can we work faster?
Is the answer that we all have to be fluent in every tool?
Should we, as an organization, try to standardize on one main tool?
Should we just continue to pray and hope that someday there will be a way to seamlessly import/export pixels in its exact form from one program to another?
Anyway, just some thoughts upon reading the essay!