About the project
Adobe XD – the beginning
The story of what is now Adobe’s premier digital design tool begins in late 2014 with a simple prototype, which was codenamed Sparkler.
This prototype pointed in a bold new direction for Adobe’s creative toolset: a lightning-fast layout and transformation engine, and a streamlined, focused feature set. This implicitly recognized a fundamental truth that was not yet widely acknowledged within Adobe at that time: that tools such as Photoshop and Illustrator, powerful though they are, do not meet the needs of designers creating experiences for web, mobile and other natively digital environments.
Fig. 06.01 shows one of the earliest demos – a side-by-side comparison of the XD prototype and Illustrator, using the step-and-repeat tool.
I was the first designer to work on Adobe XD. As time went on, I was joined by Talin Wadsworth, who helped articulate the vision further.
Our initial focus was on fast drawing and object manipulation. We eventually progressed to canvas behaviors such as artboard management and prototyping workflows (fig. 06.02 ). We also explored collaborative design modes. All of these were a first for Adobe at the time.
One of the best aspects of this project was our ability to move quickly. We went through many rounds of rapid iterations, finessing the details of the UI and interactions. This velocity, combined with open-ended possibilities, made for one of the most satisfying times in my design career.
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