Sherry
In the ever-evolving digital landscape, the internet continues to thrive, and application UI design tools are constantly keeping pace with the times. With the increasing popularity of remote work, designers are turning to online app UI design tools to meet their needs. In the past, UI design work was often plagued by various issues. There was a lack of consistency in UI design tools, making it difficult for teams to share resources. When delivering application UI design products, a great deal of time and effort was spent on annotations. Moreover, UI design specifications were often incomplete and not comprehensively shared. However, choosing an efficient and suitable online UI design tool can often resolve these problems.
1. Pixso
Pixso is a new-generation online collaborative UI design tool. It is committed to improving the efficiency of UI designers. By delving deep into the UI design industry, Pixso continuously provides designers with highly efficient app UI design functions.
The intuitive interface of Pixso makes it more user-friendly for designers. Here, designers can easily complete multiple design steps, including application UI design, prototyping, design delivery, online collaboration, and resource management, achieving one-stop design delivery. In addition to this, Pixso has many remarkable features:
File Compatibility
Unlike traditional UI design tools, Pixso is compatible with various mainstream file formats. It can import design files from Figma, Axure, Sketch, and Adobe XD. When there are a large number of files to import, you can click the "Batch Import" button in the "File Import" panel to upload multiple files simultaneously.
Online Collaboration and One-Click Delivery
Pixso supports real-time access to all prototype design information. It can replace multiple traditional prototyping and project management tools, freeing teams from the hassle of not being able to design online together.
Interactive Animation Insertion
Pixso allows for the insertion of not only layers but also interactive events, enabling the efficient creation of interactive animation effects.
-Dual-Perspective Preview: Pixso offers both macro and micro perspectives. It can comprehensively demonstrate the overall product and interaction details. You can also use GIFs to fine-tune actions and animation designs, continuously optimizing the app UI design.
Abundant Resources and Plugins
The Pixso Resource Community is filled with a large number of open-source design resources, templates, and materials. You can find excellent design systems from major companies, UI design kits, icons, and scene illustrations. The Pixso Plugin Plaza also updates open-source design plugins in real - time to boost the efficiency of UI designers.
Best of all, when you register for a free Pixso account, you can enjoy all the benefits of a Pixso membership, such as an unlimited number of files, no limit on the number of collaborators, and unlimited cloud storage space. Give it a try!
2. InVision Studio
InVision Studio is an application UI design tool that enables users to create effective prototypes for user interfaces. It allows users to create animations and transitions and attach interactions to static images. Similar to Pixso, InVision Studio can automatically handle all the work for different devices in real time, eliminating the need to create multiple artboards.
-Highlight Features: You can create two artboards with different content and turn them into a prototype in seconds. When using layers, all objects are automatically linked to each other.
-Advantages: It enables the creation of custom animations and transitions, allows adding interactions to static images, and integrates with many other programs.
-Disadvantages: It requires a powerful PC, and issues may occur when creating prototypes.
3. Axure
Axure is a highly realistic online UI design tool for website and app prototyping. It is on par with Pixso and is an essential tool in the field of prototyping. Users can quickly design product prototypes using its built-in components. Axure provides strong interaction support, ensuring that the interaction experience of the designed prototype is almost identical to that of the actual product.
-Highlight Features: It offers high-fidelity prototyping, allowing you to create detailed prototypes. You can write descriptions for any element in the design interface and attach text documents. It also allows using "Adaptive Views" to design a prototype page for multiple screen sizes at once. You can upload the entire prototype in HTML format, along with all graphics and comments, maintaining the description of interactivity and interface behavior for developers.
-Advantages: It has the function of adaptive resizing.
-Disadvantages: It lacks a collaboration feature and has few tools for handling animations.
4. Framer
Framer is an open-source prototyping framework based on JavaScript. It can help developers and designers create highly realistic UI designs. However, it requires a certain programming foundation and is more difficult to get started with compared to Pixso. Nevertheless, it has its unique highlights:
-Highlight Features: Compared to native H5, Framer provides a rich set of mouse and gesture events, such as tap, long-press, zoom, drag, scroll, and edge-swipe. It ensures an uninterrupted workflow and allows prototyping with code. Based on the web, it offers a wealth of event interfaces for prototype interactions.
-Advantages: It provides a continuous workflow, preserves design layers, synchronizes design and coding, and has ready-made application UI design kits.
-Disadvantages: The integration of design and code is not ideal, and there is a lack of tool instructions.
5. Principle
Principle is currently one of the easiest-to-use and best - overall - experience UI design software for creating interactive demos. There are similar prototyping software like Origami, Framer, ProtoPie, Drama, and Flow, but they have a higher threshold and often involve programming. Principle, on the other hand, can achieve demo presentation effects through simple animations without relying on code.
-Highlight Features: The program has functions for alignment, creating artboards and screen seams, and real-time preview. It can seamlessly integrate with Sketch.
-Advantages: It supports animations, allows for one-click design import, and has flexible artboard settings.
-Disadvantages: Unlike Pixso, it does not support multi-person online collaboration on the same project, and it is not compatible with Windows.
Final Thoughts
In the world of application UI design, these five online tools each have their own unique features and capabilities. When it comes to app UI design, the choice of tool can significantly impact the design process and the final outcome.
For those deeply involved in application UI design projects, Pixso stands out as a comprehensive solution. Its one-stop design delivery, extensive file compatibility, and powerful collaboration features make it an ideal choice for teams working on complex app UI design tasks. Whether you're designing a simple mobile app or a complex web application, Pixso's features like interactive animation insertion and dual-perspective preview can enhance the quality of your application UI design.
In conclusion, when engaging in application UI design, it's crucial to consider your specific project requirements, team skills, and the nature of the application you're designing. By evaluating these factors and exploring the features of different tools, you can find the perfect app UI design tool to bring your design concepts to life. So, take your time to experiment with these tools and make the most of them in your application UI design journey.
