Finally, Sketch 49 is here. You have probably created tons of mockups or wireframes in this software tool. Now you can bring them to life with Prototyping feature!
Thanks to this Sketch has become the complete tool for UX Design Deliverables. In this story, you will discover all deliverables (not only wireframes and mockups!) that may be successfully created in this tool.
Prototyping
This is the biggest and the most important feature introduced in Sketch 49. Now you are able to turn your artboard into simple prototypes with basic transition animations. What’s more thanks to Sketch Cloud and Mirror you can share them with other people.
If you would like to explore more about prototyping in Sketch. Feel free to read following articles:
More UX Deliverables in Sketch…
While prototyping is extremely important for every UX Designer. There are also other key deliverables that are crucial to the design process.
User Flows
One of the most important deliverables is surely User Flows. Thanks to the unique Sketch features designer is able to prepare this type of asset directly in a software tool. What’s more, the created flow may dynamically change — stretch, adjust style in just a couple of clicks. No other digital design tool can do that in such convenient way.
Note: If you are like me you probably choose Sketch because it is a really convenient tool that gives us the possibility to work efficiently. Time-saving tools give us the opportunity to get the design done better and faster.
This is why I came up with an idea of User Flow Library for Sketch — Toolkit that will let us create elegant flows in a few minutes. If you would like to discover how you can also do it this way feel free to read the article and discover SQUID UI Flow Template:
Personas
Some designers love them some hate them. However, personas may help to visualize typical users. This deliverable is especially helpful when is printed and pinned in the room we work. Thanks to this we can quickly verify if the idea that came to our minds will be valuable to the user.
There are lots of elegant User Persona Templates done in Sketch, so you can also try one:
https://www.sketchappsources.com/search_persona.html
Journey Maps
I have written a bit about Journey Maps and User Flows. This is also very important deliverable. Journey Map is some kind of journal, where user notes their pain points, moments of delight and all other feelings or actions.
There are some Sketch templates for User Journey Maps that looks nicely:
https://www.sketchappsources.com/search_journey-map.html
Personally, I did not use them in my work. Maybe someday I will find the Journey Map for Sketch that will match my needs, but it does not mean that these ones will be useless for you… in the end, Sketch can do even Journey Maps!
Design Handoffs and Specification
I am sure that you prepare UI design guidelines for the developers. In Sketch created mockups may be measured and described thanks to Sketch Measure plugin. It is very simple to use and save a lot of time. Of course, there are other specification tools like Zeplin or InVision Inspect, but Sketch Measure gives designers ability to create specs directly in Sketch.
Summing up
Prototyping feature has completed the process of transforming Sketch from UI Design Tool into Complete UX Design Tool. I hope that in the next releases Sketch will introduce even more features to make the prototypes more interactive.
Personally I found Sketch very comfortable to create lots of UX deliverables, especially User Flows.
If you enjoyed the Story do not forget to 👏👏👏.
