Top 5 Mobile App Design Tools 2019

6 min readNov 18, 2019

Are you looking for a mobile app design tool? Fortunately, there are bunches to choose out there. However, this could be a headache to pick up one since every platform has its pros and cons.

Understand this problem, we at Designveloper wrote this blog post to show you the 5 most used web design tools.

Let’s start with…

Sketch

Without a doubt, Sketch has been most software designers’ best friend ever since its first appearance. That said, this mobile app design tool is one of the most used software of the design community. In 2015, it was the App of the Year. And according to the Subtraction Design Tools survey, Sketch is the number one design tool to wireframe and design UI.

Designers, especially the ones who mainly work with UI design adore it for various reasons.

First of all, Sketch is simple yet powerful. It doesn’t take much time to understand how this mobile app design tool works. At the same time, it also has many UI-centric features such as responsive grid guides, layout setting, layer and text style, etc.

Besides, many say that Sketch is a perfect combination of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator as it can draw and edit vectors as well as do many tricks related to visual design. On top of that, you can wireframe your UI and easily design for multiple devices.

Some other advantages of Sketch are a light-weight size, affordable pricing plan (only $99 for a lifetime license, it gets cheaper when you buy in bulk). Furthermore, since its community is large, there are many plugins create so that designers could save time and effort spent on their work.

Nevertheless, it does have some downsides like any other tool. The most significant flaw of Sketch is that it’s not good at supporting real-time preview on Android devices. Yet, you can fix this with Skala Preview.

InVision App

InVisionApp is another common mobile app design tool with designers. Instead of focusing on UI factors like Sketch, this web app platform helps designers create interactive mockups for their designs. In other words, it makes the fixed prototype an interactive one.

Designers will use this tool to add interactions, animations, gestures, transition, etc. to the designs. Their works can also be uploaded from other tools like Adobe Photoshop or Sketch to this platform.

One of the most important missions of this app design tool is fast prototyping. Designers can let other team members understand how the software will interact in reality.

Furthermore, this tool can effectively support collaboration and communication between teammates or clients. This happens since stakeholders can comment or start discussions directly on the design.

On the other hand, you can see your designs from other perspectives. It all thanks to the feature that allows us, designers, to look at the work in a way that resembles web experience. As a result, designers or clients can give better feedback on the product since there is a visual context.

Other amazing features of InVisionApp you should know are keeping records of old versions, live share, instant updates, etc.

It still has some bugs though. For example, when files or assets are not inputted correctly, issues may happen. However, we believe that these problems will soon be fixed as InVisionApp’s developers are well-known for their fast actions.

Marvel App

The main ideas of using this superhero-like platform are to design, wireframe and prototype. While performing all of this, designers can also add interactions to the UI works too.

In comparison with InVision (since their missions are kind of similar). Many users stated that Marvel App is easier to use since the interfaces are intuitive and very well-designed.

But that’s not the only advantage you gain when using the Marvel App. It’s also compatible with Sketch and Adobe Photoshop (but remember to add plugins beforehand). Furthermore, this mobile app design tool can automatically sync to several cloud-based storages such as Google Drive and Dropbox.

One feature that its team is very proud of is the ability to collaborate effectively. This way, you can give or receive feedback, and share your ideas effortlessly on the prototype. Thus, all stakeholders will involve closely in the workflow.

Some other upsides of Marvel App are fast, easy to set up. It also enables designers to design multiple types of screens too. Moreover, this design tool is friendly with developers once web/app designs are delivered to them. Last but not least, you can look at your designs as how users see it (this feature is called user testing).

However, as stated above, everything has its weaknesses. Marvel Apps’ are that:

Designers cannot work offline since it’s an online platform.
It does not show changes made by other designers.
This software design tool does not pay much attention to detail when it only offers full-screen animations.

Figma

Even though Sketch has been the number 1 design tool for years, there are many competitors who are trying their best to dethrone it and Figma is the most promising one.

This mobile app design platform is similar to Sketch in terms of many features and functions. But two significant advantages of Figma that the King doesn’t have (or doesn’t mind having) are:

Collaboration. All stakeholders who are involved in the project could edit, comment, give feedback. This feature is available in both design and prototyping modes.
It can be used on any type of operating system: Macs, Windows, Linux or even Chromebooks. That’s how all project members, including people who love PC and the gang who adore Mac, can work together.

These two plus points help members learn of what is going on with their design in real-time.

On the one hand, designers can control all versions by naming them and adding descriptions. On the other hand, it also has a design system that contains your project’s component library. Thanks to this feature, UX designers and front-end developers can easily access and download design elements.

Nevertheless, it has only a few resources and a small community. But as many great efforts have been spent on all these years, we at Designveloper believe that it will soon be more well-known.

Zeplin

This last mobile design tool we introduce to you in this article is Zeplin. This is not quite a design-centric tool though, instead, it focuses on the collaboration between the development team and the design team. In other words, Zeplin’s mission is to bring different teams, different mindsets together.

Now let’s talk a bit about its features.

First of all, Zeplin enables designers to export designs from Sketch, Adobe XD, Figma, Adobe Photoshop with a little help from plugins. Furthermore, it is able to generate development resources automatically and turn UI works into guidelines and specs. This way, the development team can generate code snippets. As a result, the handoff process happens faster and more convenient than ever.

Another significant feature of Zeplin is grouping, arranging and tagging various related artboards together.

Yet, some designers and developers feedback that sometimes there are bugs in the design uploaded in Zeplin. We hope the team from Zeplin will fix this soon as there are more and more designers and developers using this tool. As stated in the 2018 Design Tools survey, Zeplin was ranked as the number one handoff tool for designers and developers.

A conclusion on mobile app design tools

Perhaps, you now realize that the software design tool really appreciates the ability to collaborate between members and teams. However, they still focus on the most important factor is that creates beautiful designs and seamless flows.

Hey, if you are looking for software design experts, look no further than Designveloper. We have successfully completed many projects for years such as Lumin PDF, Swell, Walrus Education, etc.

Tell us your ideas and we’ll realize it.

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