In our last article, we shared the latest enhancements available on Adobe XD CC 2019 from a design point of view, but as you probably already know, XD isn’t limited to design, it’s also about prototyping, and that’s what we’ll be looking at today.
Prototype building is regarded somewhat of a superpower nowadays. Being able to build a compelling, convincing prototype quickly will make you a much more persuasive and effective designer. This is why Adobe has been working to make prototyping in XD richer and even more capable.
Enhancements include prototyping any form of comment interaction and gesture, being able to drag and swipe, fixing various elements on your artboard while the background scrolls, and placing artboards on top of each other as overlays. But the one feature that Adobe believes will go a long way in unlocking creativity of its users when it comes to prototyping is Auto-Animate.
Auto-Animate:
With this brand-new approach to animation, there’s no need to master a complicated timeline interface. As a matter of fact, you don’t even need to be able to write a single line of code. Once in XD, select Prototype (found next to the “Home” icon).
Starting with two artboards, drag a wire from the one artboard to the other and back again, and select Auto-Animate from the action menu. (This can be done across multiple artboards.) To preview, click the play icon at the top right of the screen, and watch how your images transition into each other on your screen. Whether it’s on your desktop, mobile phone or tablet, this feature will add life to your UI. A simple app to use, but a powerful one.
Another amazing feature that works hand-in-hand with Auto-Animate is Voice.
Voice:
Nowadays, designers need to work on so many different platforms, with immersive media like Voice, which has proven to be rather challenging. It’s only a matter of time before Voice becomes a part of every app experience, making it essential for designers to be able to create and design with using Voice. Unfortunately, there haven’t been tools for this… until now. That’s right. Designing, prototyping and sharing can all be done using Voice as a medium.
Just as you do with auto-animate, simply drag a wire from one artboard to another. On the first artboard, select Voice as the Trigger from the action menu and add your words under Command. Then select Speech Playback from the action menu on the second artboard and type in the response you’d like your app to give in the Speech block. This can be previewed on your mobile device.
This is great for artificial intelligence applications, home automation systems and other apps that require Voice automation and will take designing to the next level.
All the artboards for your product can be saved in one place alongside each other, regardless of the devices they’re for, with the ability to fluidly switch between design and prototype without having to leave the app. If you haven’t done so yet, you should really try Adobe XD.
So, what new Adobe Creative Cloud CC 2019 features will we be sharing with you next time? There’s only one way to find out… join us next time.