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UI/UX Prototyping and Animated Designs in AD


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Hey Affinity team - Since Affinity Designer is getting more into UI/UX, I wanted to ask if you have any plans on possibly making a prototype persona or something along these lines for rapid prototyping and animations. Right now, my workflow goes something like this: All heavy graphic design work is done in Affinity Designer and all the UI/UX work in Sketch and prototype in InVision or Principle for Mac for more complex animations/transitions. I would love to be able to just prototype and create animated transitions straight out of AD. Just wondering if this is something that would be possible in AD and if so would it be in the road-map anytime soon. It's obvious Affinity Designer can do a lot more than UI software like Sketch, but I think having a prototype/motion feature would put this app ahead of the competition for UI/UX. Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

 

Thanks!

 

Marc

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Hi Marc Lindfors,

 

We do have plans to add prototyping tools to the app however it may not be in the form of a persona. If you would like to see the features you have requested added to the app I reccomend making a post in our Feature Requests section :)

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/6-feature-requests/

 

C

Please tag me using @ in your reply so I can be sure to respond ASAP.

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I definitely will check that out and will add it on there if it's not there already. I would pay whatever Affinity would charge to have a prototyping app/feature or however the team wants to do it. I think it's an essential part of a UI/UX software to have an app that is supported by a prototyping app. But I also think it's even better to have an animation/prototyping app similar to Principle for Mac or InVision's Motion that's coming very soon. Since the industry itself is moving on to more dynamic interactions I would highly recommend this.

 

Thanks Callum! And sorin, I'll be watching this unfold like an eagle too :)

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+1

 

Right now I'm actually doing animated mockups in Apple Motion. It's not perfect but I can deliver some coolness and explain transitions and effects.

 

But I would go as far as saying I need an Affinity Animator. The "other guys" got me used to an animation app that's was so flexible you could create all kinds of cool, vector-based animation in there and there doesn't seem to be an alternative for that one.

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  • 5 weeks later...

I'm not sure Affinity Designer needs full animation tools for prototyping -- that is a big feature set, hard to get right, and I feel that it would be getting away from Designer's focus -- but I do think Designer is lagging behind Sketch in terms of UI design workflow, and I fear unless they really target UI design, Sketch is going to be the de facto UI design tool. It kind of already is. And that annoys me, because many of Sketch's UI choices are weird and the app itself feels poorly coded. Not a big fan.

 

I guess there's more of a general question in my head about Designer's focus and its future. Is it a general vector tool? Is that a good idea when many desktop apps are becoming more focused? If it's a general tool like Illustrator, why are Designer and Photo two separate products? When I'm doing UI design, I often don't know which to pick. In fact, I recently built some mobile screens in Photo. The vector tools in Photo are far more competent than the ones in Photoshop. So why not just have a generalized design app that supports both vector and image editing? I get that Photo seems marketed to photo editors with new features like HDR and 360 stitching, but then why does it even have design tools and vector support? I don't see a clear separation of tasks between the two products, except for hardcore editing needs.

 

TL;DR I guess what I'm saying is, maybe it'd be better to have a generalized design editing tool which supports both photo editing and vector illustrations. And then have a separate app that is focused on UI design and other layout needs, which maybe full prototyping tools could be added to.

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I'm not sure Affinity Designer needs full animation tools for prototyping -- that is a big feature set, hard to get right, and I feel that it would be getting away from Designer's focus -- but I do think Designer is lagging behind Sketch in terms of UI design workflow, and I fear unless they really target UI design, Sketch is going to be the de facto UI design tool. It kind of already is. And that annoys me, because many of Sketch's UI choices are weird and the app itself feels poorly coded. Not a big fan.

 

I guess there's more of a general question in my head about Designer's focus and its future. Is it a general vector tool? Is that a good idea when many desktop apps are becoming more focused? If it's a general tool like Illustrator, why are Designer and Photo two separate products? When I'm doing UI design, I often don't know which to pick. In fact, I recently built some mobile screens in Photo. The vector tools in Photo are far more competent than the ones in Photoshop. So why not just have a generalized design app that supports both vector and image editing? I get that Photo seems marketed to photo editors with new features like HDR and 360 stitching, but then why does it even have design tools and vector support? I don't see a clear separation of tasks between the two products, except for hardcore editing needs.

 

TL;DR I guess what I'm saying is, maybe it'd be better to have a generalized design editing tool which supports both photo editing and vector illustrations. And then have a separate app that is focused on UI design and other layout needs, which maybe full prototyping tools could be added to.

 

That's something big and long term. Adobe is taking that route with XD. 

 

 

The thing is there are lots of good prototyping web tools. So i don't feel exclusively adding this feature on AD is required. Only integration with them is required.

 

But adding prototype feature on AD would be cool.

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  • 9 months later...
On 2/26/2017 at 0:23 AM, dogcow said:

Sketch is going to be the de facto UI design tool. It kind of already is. And that annoys me, because many of Sketch's UI choices are weird and the app itself feels poorly coded. Not a big fan.

Until Sketch acknowledges other platforms than Mac exist, it should never become a standard.

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@Marc Lindforsfor basic prototyping, and then some, Keynote is unbelievably capable. It's a workaround to use it for this, but it has most of the facilities required to make most kinds of prototypes, and customise as you need.

 

Drop the following into google:

 

prototyping with keynote

 

 

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