So we combed out rolodexes and reached out to more than two dozen designers to ask about the apps they couldn't live without. While a few designers said they don't use apps at all—Sagi Haviv and Daan Roosegaarde, we're talking about you on the Internet, if you even know what that is! :)—most designers had at least a couple apps they wanted to wax appreciatively about.
Some of these apps are aimed specifically at designers, but many of them are useful to anyone. Here are the apps the designers we quizzed love most.
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JOHN BROWNLEE 06.23.15 7:30 AM
Maybe it's just Gmail, or maybe it's something more esoteric like Processing, but there are certain apps we rely on so much that if they suddenly went missing, we'd have a hard time getting by. That's especially true for designers. Their livelihoods depend upon great software. What's more, as people who dissect design details all day, they have unique insights into what makes an app great. They can see UI/UX friction points the way Superman can see microscopic structural flaws in steel.
So we combed out rolodexes and reached out to more than two dozen designers to ask about the apps they couldn't live without. While a few designers said they don't use apps at all—Sagi Haviv and Daan Roosegaarde, we're talking about you on the Internet, if you even know what that is! :)—most designers had at least a couple apps they wanted to wax appreciatively about.
Some of these apps are aimed specifically at designers, but many of them are useful to anyone. Here are the apps the designers we quizzed love most.
ATEXT
What It Is: A Mac app for automatically replacing abbreviations with text snippets.
Why It's Indispensable: "It’s awesome for date and time templates or when you want to quickly drop your contact details into an email. There’s a bunch of pre-defined snippets and you can create custom ones," says Lee Simpson, product designer at ustwo.
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ATOM
What It Is: From Github, a cross-platform, hackable text editor.
Why It's Indispensable: According to Toby Milner-Gulland, senior designer at Moving Brands, the version control options and versatility of Atom make it the text editor to beat.
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What It Is: A cross-platform app and website prototyping tool.
Why It's Indispensable: "Axure is our go-to prototyping tool," says Jason Broughton, head of user experience, Zappos. "It gives us a way to rapidly create design prototypes for user testing, build documentation, and stakeholder presentations. The Team Project feature allows us to collaborate on projects without the fear of overwriting others work. The best part of the tool is that it’s versatile for designing mockups on phone, tablet, and desktop."
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What It Is: An Adobe-owned website and app for designers to share their portfolios online.
Why It's Indispensable: "I love browsing through Bēhance to see what other designers are working on. You can use the app to follow your favorite designers, or use the 'Discover' function to browse the best current designs in any conceivable subject. The iPad version works great as well," says Eleanor Lutz, data visualizer at Tabletop Whale.
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What It Is: Google's cross-platform web browser, available on Mac, PC, Linux, and mobile, as well as the basis for the Chrome operating system.
Why It's Indispensable: Due to its compliance with modern web standards, fantastic speed and reliability, Chrome is "the best browser for testing, experimenting and on any platform," according to Toby Milner-Gulland, senior designer at Moving Brands.
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What It Is: An online platform for sharing anything between computers, including screenshots, files, web links, and even screen recordings.
Why It's Indispensable: "I’ve been using CloudApp for as long as I can remember," says Lee Simpson, product designer at ustwo. "For quickly hosting screenshots and small files it beats Dropbox hands-down and it makes it super easy to send image links to clients without cluttering up an email. I’m still on the free plan and I haven’t maxed it out yet. For bigger files, I use Dropbox, naturally."
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What It Is: A cross-platform digital locker for all your recipes, notes, receipts, and other digital files.
Why It's Indispensable: "I work across lots of different devices, including my MacBook Pro, iPhone 6 Plus, and Samsung S6 Edge, so I need a way to capture ideas, thoughts, discussions, screenshots and pictures no matter where I am or what device I have handy," says Josh Bloom, VP of design at Skully. "Evernote makes sure all of those platforms are in sync and I can find anything I've captured, whether paper sketches, whiteboard photos, product ideas, blog posts or book ideas."
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What It Is: An online reader for RSS feeds with support for loads of apps.
Why It's Indispensable: "A friend put me on to Feedbin about six months ago as an alternative to Feedly. Feedly just became too clunky, it had a ton of features I never used and an interface that got in the way of the content—at one point I stopped checking my feeds. I like that Feedbin is really simple, and it just works! $3 a month and it integrates with Reeder," says Lee Simpson, product designer at ustwo.
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What It Is: A prototyping tool for interfaces, interactions, and animations.
Why It's Indispensable: "I only started using Framer Studio recently but it looks like it's going to become an integral part of my workflow," says Raphaël de Courville of ART+COM Studios. "Framer is in its early stages so some features are still a bit rough around the edges, but it is very promising and integrates perfectly with Photoshop and Sketch."
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HACKPAD
What It Is: An online, collaborative text editor owned by Dropbox.
Why It's Indispensable: "I'm a big fan of Hackpad for collaborating on documents. I use it to compile resources when doing research (it embeds video automatically which is great for gathering content from various video platforms all in one place) as well as for drafting articles," Raphaël de Courville says. "Since anyone can join and contribute to a pad, it is a great tool to take turns writing notes during a meeting or a conference."
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What It Is: An online, collaborative text editor owned by Dropbox.
Why It's Indispensable: "I'm a big fan of Hackpad for collaborating on documents. I use it to compile resources when doing research (it embeds video automatically which is great for gathering content from various video platforms all in one place) as well as for drafting articles," Raphaël de Courville says. "Since anyone can join and contribute to a pad, it is a great tool to take turns writing notes during a meeting or a conference."
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What It Is: A recipe tool for linking together multiple services: for example, making sure that all your starred Gmails automatically get backed up to your Dropbox.
Why It's Indispensable: "I signed up to IFTTT sometime in 2010 (I was part of the original beta) and I’ve used it religiously ever since," Lee Simpson, product designer at ustwo, says. "I’ve used it to backup photos, capture links I’ve shared, send reminders, cross post to social networks—basically, it does a ton of stuff. Recently I built an SMS mood-tracking app by stringing together a few ‘recipes’—it’s so quick for experimenting with fairly complex ideas and prototypes."
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What It Is: A vector graphics editor by Adobe for creating original digital art.
Why It's Indispensable: "This is the one I use most frequently pretty much for everything, including drawing, design, user flows, and wireframes," Sandijs Ruluks, founder of Froont, says. Toby Milner-Gulland, senior designer at Moving Brands, agrees: "The best app for any sophisticated vector drawing as well as wire framing and layouts."
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Written by: JOHN BROWNLEE
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