Will Code-centric Design Tools Gain Traction in 2023?

Will Code-centric Design Tools Gain Traction in 2023?

The Candidates from 2020

I wrote a post two years ago titled “Code-centric Design Tools on the Rise?“. This was my attempt to curate a list of interesting tools that seemed to be headed in a compelling direction toward a more code-centric approach to design tools and systems.

Well, time has passed and I wanted to provide an update regarding the companies I blogged about.

  • Alva is now palettemaker, a move that takes it out of the running.
  • Bit is still active!
  • BuilderX appears to be stuck in a beta version from October, 2021
  • Clutch appears to still be in beta and hasn’t tweeted since July 2022
  • Codis.io is a relatively new contender added in 2022 also offering a Figma to Flutter solution
  • Diez hasn’t been updated on GitHub since 2020
  • Draftbit is still around as a “pro-code native app builder” 
  • Flow is still around as “UX Animation for Designers”
  • FramerX is now just Framer, and still very much in the game.
  • Hadron hasn’t had a version update since September 2020.
  • Haiku has gone in more of a design for marketing and sales direction
  • Handoff is still in “alpha” and hasn’t announced a new feature since November 2021.
  • Interplay seems to still be a player, their last announced update was April 2022.
  • Lona appears to be active on Github
  • Modulz was acquired by WorkOS (Enterprise SSO) in June of 2022. That doesn’t seem like a great outcome to me. I thought they might actually be able to pull off an idealistic tool. Their fate goes to show you how tough this challenge is to address.
  • Parabeac still is active as a Figma to Flutter solution
  • Pinegrow is still going along, but it’s really more a modern version of Dreamweaver and see it as a competitor to Webflow – more web content than apps, so probably wasn’t a great addition to my original post.
  • Plasmic is still going strong, and continues to go in the direction I was hoping these kinds of tools would take. In some ways, Plasmic is actually delivering on the promise of Modulz. Therefore, I think Plasmic is definitely one to watch.
  • React Studio hasn’t announced anything since April 2021
  • React Styleguidist is still going as an “Isolated React component development environment with a living style guide” 
  • Relate has ceased further development on its “Related editor” and has announced that they are renaming themselves as “Rainbow” and working on some kind of stealth initiative that sounds like a pivot, but not a full departure from these core ideas.
  • Specify is still active and focused on helping “unify your brand identity by collecting, storing and distributing design tokens and assets”
  • Storybook is great, but it’s still very much “a frontend workshop for building UI components and pages in isolation” so I don’t believe it will ever be a typical tool for pure designers.
  • Supernova “allows you to build, maintain and document design systems that last, are joy to use and adopt blazing fast.”
  • TeleportHQ announced a seed round of investment in May of 2022, to continue building their “collaborative front-end platform with integrated UI development and content modelling tools”
  • Toolabs has not provided any updates to their unreleased DSM since November of 2021
  • UXPin may also be one of the few players that’s clearly heading in the direction of seamless bi-directional use of coded components in an established and mature “design and prototyping tool”. With its relatively new “Merge” technology, they are an underdog that could win the long game in a post Figma+Adobe world.
  • Visly was ‘quietly’ acquired by Figma in April of 2021. This is notable, as I’ll mention in the summary below.

Other Contenders?

Here’s a quick take on some companies that didn’t show up on my previous list. There are still a number of other Prototyping Tools not listed here. Perhaps one might emerge from those solutions as well?

  • Sketch was intentionally left off the list last time around because they seemed to be falling behind tools like Figma and UXPin. But they are still going strong and should not be ruled out. They’ve really enhanced their native features for inspection and ‘handoff‘ in a way that’s made past third party companion apps pretty irrelevant. Their continued commitment to being Mac-only may or may not also hinder their progress in these directions.
  • Penpot is worth a mention, primarily because they were getting some interest as an open source alternative to costly leaders in the design tool space, and the Figma acquisition provided them with a big boost in interest. That attention was quickly followed by a Series A funding round in September of 2022. They are still playing catch-up in their effort to copycat competitor features. They leverage SVG in their open file format, and it is unknown if a code-centric angle is part of their vision.
  • Axure has a lot of satisfied customers and also shouldn’t be overlooked as a product that could pivot more toward code-centricity. Their prototyping capabilities provide a lot of power and complexity to create extremely realistic simulations of actual software. Personally, it’s this potential over-investing in making a ‘fake’ prototype so realistic that often makes me wonder why an actual coded app isn’t pursued instead. That said, I do acknowledge that a more realistic prototype is often beneficial in getting early user input. But to-date, I have not seen anything like UXPin’s Merge being offered by Axure.

Current Takeaways

As you can see, not all of the contenders in my previous list have survived. However, many are still around and continuing to pursue their original goals.

I had hoped that one or more of these tools would already have had a breakthrough moment by now. For example, some kind of notable inflection point in adoption to really open the floodgates toward a more code-centric professional design workflow.

For me the long term goal is to get a solution that enables designers to freely and easily work with existing coded components alongside typical drawings of UI elements. The UI metaphors and interaction patterns of Drawing tools have the potential to keep designers in a state of flow, and open to experimentation that working in code sometimes lacks for certain creative temperaments.

Figma still has great potential of wowing the market further, by finally delivering on a code-centric design tooling breakthrough. Their 2021 acquisition of Visly, as mentioned above, signals that this may still be an active goal on their roadmap.

UXPin and Plasmic would be smart to try and take advantage of the mixed reactions to Adobe’s acquisition of Figma as leverage to promote themselves as viable alternatives (in the way that Penpot has).

Also, a solution that takes a JavaScript framework-agnostic Web Components approach might best capture the broadest possible marketshare of design and development teams. Despite most of the solutions being React-centric, it’s still not clear that React will be an ‘ultimate winner’ in a field where another framework du jour could pop up at any moment.

Did I miss any other interesting products that fall into this category? If so, please get in touch.

 

Design & Business Podcasts Roundup

Design & Business Podcasts Roundup

Here’s a roundup list of some of my favorite podcasts with a focus on topics of design, product development, business strategy, and tech news – a Podstack so to speak.

Podcasts deliver on the promise of the internet in a way that many other resources don’t. Up until recently, they had been a shining example of open, accessible, and decentralized content (this is changing, and that may not be a good thing but that’s a discussion for later).

Here’s a continually updated list of Podcasts that I frequent. Many are design and technology-focused, but not all. I’m always interested in learning about new Podcasts so please get in touch or Tweet at me with suggestions.

I’ve attempted to link to the publisher’s main website so that you can decide how and where to subscribe via your favorite Podcast player service.

Illustration: podcast by achmad mulyana from the Noun Project

An Unopinionated Roundup of Current UX Research & UI Testing Tools

An Unopinionated Roundup of Current UX Research & UI Testing Tools

Updated: November 29, 2021. See this twitter thread for details.

Recommended 2022 Resource

As I figure out if I want to keep up with the content below, I suggest you check out this comprehensive and fun resource from User Interviews “The 2022 UX Research Tools Map”.

USER INTERVIEWS PRESENTS The 2022 UX Research Tools Map

2021 Content

Whether you call it user experience, customer experience, human experience, or simply ‘trying to understand if anyone wants-or-can-use the thing we’re making’ – if you’re reading this, you probably appreciate the importance of iterative user research and usability testing.

This work has historically been the domain of User Experience (UX) professionals, but it is also becoming the standard practice for any cross-functional team developing products and services for buyers and end-users.

I’ve created a running list of all the UX Research and UI Testing platforms I’m aware of in an Airtable database. The live-updating list is embedded below for your reference. I have only used some of these solutions. If you are interested in my opinion or think I missed anything, please get in touch via email or on Twitter.

The Airtable list is simple in format and has a direct link to the product’s website. I do not expect that this is enough information to help you decide which tool(s) to choose.

There are lots of great product reviews already out there. If you find a tool of interest, I’m sure you are a quick Google search away from a detailed article or comparison.

Enjoy improving your ideas for – and implementations of – products and services by getting to know your prospects and customers!

Other UX Reading on the Web

Illustrations: co creation workshop, cross-platform, and feedback by Yu luck from the Noun Project

Digitizing Your UX Sticky Notes

Digitizing Your UX Sticky Notes

Sometimes the analog approach is a quicker and easier way to achieve a particular design thinking task.

A classic example is the appropriately stereotypical use of sticky notes by User Experience designers to facilitate various design thinking workshop exercises such as card sorting and other ideation models. The ability to quickly write-out and rearrange notes keeps the ideas flowing.

After your effort has wrapped up, there’s often a desire to capture the analog results in a digital format. Transforming analog work to a digital copy allows a team to move toward the next phase of sharing or synthesis.

Here are some useful apps that can help quickly capture and convert photos of your hand written “Post-it®” sticky notes to editable text.

The Post-it® App

Post-it® App. Download on iPhone or Android™ devicesFrom the brand you know and love. “The Post-it® App brings the simplicity of the Post-it® Note to your Mac, iPhone and iPad. Whether you use Post-it® Notes for collaboration or for personal note taking, the Post-it® App helps you keep that momentum going.

Simply capture analog notes from a photo, or create new notes right on your device for those important reminders. Arrange, refine and organize notes and ideas on your board anyway you see fit. Then share your organized board with friends and co-workers, or export to your favorite applications and cloud services—including Trello, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, Dropbox, iCloud and plenty more.”

Brill

Brill is an app that promises to help you digitize faster and work smarter “take photos of multiple handwritten sticky notes and instantly convert them to digital text in 100+ languages. Up to 200x faster than typing.”

“Save time when capturing your handwritten notes. Share to email, Slack, Jira, Trello and more!” With auto-detection and bulk uploading, Brill can “Take photos of multiple handwritten sticky notes and instantly convert them to digital text in 100+ languages. Up to 200x faster than typing.”

Brill Sticky note digitization

Miro

Miro digitize your notesMiro is your team’s centralized platform for collaborating on user story and customer journey maps, workflows, and more.

One feature is a “Stickies Capture tool allows you to convert real stickies to fully editable Miro sticky notes. Share them and collaborate in real-time, turn them into Jira tasks or make a part of digital diagrams, templates, and more.”

Evernote

Evernote lets you “Take notes anywhere. Find information faster. Share ideas with anyone. Meeting notes, web pages, projects, to-do lists”

“The Evernote camera is specially designed to enhance and transform your Post-it® Notes into beautiful, digital replicas of all your notes.”

Capture Post-it® Notes into Evernote

Stock Up on The Real Thing!

Post-it® Teamwork Tools are the actual Post-it notes, large notepads, and other physical supplies that can help you facilitate your UX and Design workshop sessions.

Get Your Post-it Supplies

Collaboration with The Dogmatics and Rum Bar Records

Collaboration with The Dogmatics and Rum Bar Records

Here’s a personal-perspective case study on how I had the opportunity to collaborate with the band and their label on both the recordings and design to support their latest release.

The Dogmatics have contributed to the Boston rock scene since the early ’80s. Read their backstory here. Two thousand nineteen marks a momentous new chapter for the band, their family, friends, and fans.

The Dogmatics announced this July that they had joined the local label Rum Bar Records and would be releasing their first new material in over thirty years. Jerry Lehane, Tom Long, Peter O’Halloran, and Jimmy O’Halloran (in honor of their late brother Paul) were laying down new tracks. Garage rockers in New England and around the world rejoiced in anticipation.

My family and I have been close to the band and its extended circle for many years. For over a decade, I’ve been a member of The Hired Men, a band that includes members of The Dogmatics among a gloriously amoeba-like group of other established local musicians. Our two bands have played together and even combined forces for live shows.

When they asked me to play mandolin and sing backup on a few new songs, I jumped at the honor. The band worked out of a fantastic barn studio with the expert ear and production skills of Ed Riemer. Tim Heap joins in on a track, and they were even able to collaborate remotely with their long-time keyboard player John Goetchius.

After they completed the recordings, we started throwing around ideas for the album artwork. Rum Bar Records would be releasing it on 7” vinyl, CD, and Digital.

We played with some concepts. Ultimately we agreed that our goal was to strike a balance between the nostalgia of the band’s storied history and the contemporary context of these new songs.

The Dogmatics Album Covers over time

The final layout is a compositional hybrid of their previously released albums. We carried forward the classic logo created by Barry Hall, and stacked it above a white framed b&w photo. The album’s title is hand-lettered in sharpie (a nod toward the many setlists the band hastily penned over the years before hitting the stage).

BTW The cover photo is from series I took a while back when Peter pulled his legendary Fender Telly apart to try and find the date of manufacture.

Pete with telly neck 12-03-1972

The palette is inspired by the logo coloring on their album “Thayer Street”. The yellow background was an intentional strategy to grab the viewer’s attention. A primary consideration was the desire for a cover that would stand out among the many thumbnails vying for attention in the digital distribution landscape.

In a stroke of marketing genius, Rum Bar’s founder Lou Mansdorf partnered with Newbury Comics to release a limited edition of the EP in Yellow vinyl!

THE DOGMATICS She's The One Exclusive 7" in Yellow Vinyl

This partnership was a perfect synergy between a band and institution that have both been helping to make the Boston music scene “wicked good” for many years. The rollout included an in-store performance at the Norwood location.

The Dogmatics Live Performance at Newbury Comics Norwood October 2019

The album is out now in the digital marketplace and the physical goods officially release on October 10th. The reception has been excellent so far.

“She’s The One is no run of the mill comeback. This thing’s a stone cold triumph!” – Faster and Louder

“It’s always renewing to hear a set like this at Newbury Comics. The store had the gorgeous yellow vinyl copy that sold a lot of copies during the day. Score that if you can.” – Boston Groupie News

“Throughout the band tears through each song with frantic, fun abandon…

Who knows what prompted this reunion, 33 years later, but it’s clear that they’ve managed to sand away any possible rust that may have settled in over the past several decades, offering a revisiting of a band that always deserved a much wider audience beyond their native Boston. She’s The One could very well be the release to make that happen.” – NeuFutur Magazine

The songs have been charting in the top 10 across a number of indie stations and the single “She’s the one” was #1 on Radio Indie Alliance top 40.

Topping it all off, many of the events mentioned above have been captured on video and may be part of a forthcoming documentary about The Dogmatics (stay tuned). I couldn’t be more excited about all this well-deserved attention the band is getting.

Give their new EP a listen, or try to catch them playing live.