By Dani Beaumont
Adobe XD is an all-in-one solution for designing, prototyping, collaborating and sharing design concepts. That's a lot of functionality in one application. So, let me give you a quick tour of the user interface.
I'm here in Adobe XD working on my latest design. I began the design by coming here to the upper left-hand corner and clicking on the home icon. Next up in the home screen, I can select the first artboard. I can always create a custom size here on the right hand side. I'll come and select the iPhone X from there XD opens up a new document and takes me to that first artboard. As I mentioned, I'm actively working on a design of my own. So let's go ahead and switch back over to that. To do so, I'll come to window and then go back to that initial design. I can tell that XD has dropped me into Design mode, which is one of three workspace layouts. I see it here in the upper left-hand corner so I have design, prototype and share. On the far left, I have a series of tools so as I come in and start to design elements and click on them on the design canvas, I can use the pointer tool.
For example towards the lower left-hand corner are a number of panels the bottom most panel allows me to browse and select from hundreds of plugins out in the community to extend XD functionality. Above that I have the layers panel and when I click on it, it's going to toggle open. As I click on objects on the design canvas it will show me in the corresponding list on the left where I am in the layers panel in that hierarchy. Also as I click on objects on the canvas the properties inspector here towards the right-hand side is going to show me properties that relate directly to the type of object I have selected.
Back again here towards the lower left-hand side of the application. I can toggle between that layers panel and an assets panel. When I open up the assets panel and scroll all the way towards the top. You can see I have the ability to extract colors that I'm using in the project. I can also extract character styles and below that I have a series of components. These components are elements that are reused throughout my design. I can toggle between the list view and a grid view and just extend this out a bit to get a better look at all of those components that I do have available. At any time when I'm done working with those panels, I can always toggle them closed again by clicking on the icon one more time. Once I have my design all set and I'm ready to start to define my interactions, I can do that by clicking here in the upper left hand corner on Prototype mode. If I click on any object here on the canvas in Prototype mode and then for example, click on a wire I might have defined the properties inspector on the right hand side is going to show me all of the interaction options I have available for any of the elements on the canvas.
Once I have my workflow fully designed and I'm ready to share this experience with some of my stakeholders, I want to switch over to Share mode. To do that, I'll come here to the upper left-hand corner once again and click on share. Here I can see which artboards on the design canvas will be included in the share prototype that I'm about to generate and on the right hand side, I can come in and set the type of share experience I'd like to have.
Obviously, that is just a whirlwind tour of the user experience for Adobe XD. I encourage you you to start to delve more deeply into the functionality of this pretty amazing application.
The Adobe XD Interface is clean and simple, helping you stay focused on the work at hand and providing contextual controls when needed. In this tutorial we'll cover the interface basics and controls so you know exactly where to find what you need in Adobe XD. Explore the Property Inspector, the toolbar and the collapsible plugin, Layer panel, Asset panel, and other basics.
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