Adobe Is Obsolete
About product design process and its' tools
Sep 12, 2024
Design
Dear recruiters, when hiring UI/UX or digital product designers, why is Adobe Creative Suite often a requirement? It plays a minor role in today's design process.
I divide the design process into five key stages:
Define — Understanding goals and scope. This stage is about communication and documentation. Tools: Zoom, Notion, Calendar, Google Slides.
Discover — Analysis, research, personas, and user flows. Tools: Notion, Google, Miro. Here, designers and teams define inputs for the next stage.
Design — Wireframes, prototyping, testing. This is where design tools come in, predominantly Figma, covering 95% of this stage. We also use tools to share designs, collect feedback, and conduct tests.
Deliver — UI design, systems, animations. Figma again. Adobe software like After Effects may be used here for animations. Knowledge of platform capabilities and front-end tools like Tailwind CSS is valuable. Tools like Loom help transfer designs to development.
Document — Recording design decisions and guidelines. This ensures the design remains understandable when revisited months later.
Adobe Creative Suite includes over 20 applications, but a designer might use only 3 or 4. Many don't intersect with the design workflow. Perhaps it's time to reconsider listing it as a must-have in job postings.
P.S. Ofc may be you're operating within an established, long-standing process with UI/UX design on XD or even photoshop , but in this case, we're talking about industry dinos