Ask HN: Tools/Editors to Create User Interface | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Tools/Editors to Create User Interface

5 pointsrahmaniacc2 comments

Hello all,

I am technical founder and a solo developer working on an educational learning platform for college students (currently based out of SF, but relocating to India post the covid situation). I have a background in backend/data engineering and Machine Learning, but have not worked on front end technologies and design. I'm wondering if there are any tools that are recommended for designing web and mobile apps. I'm specifically looking for suggestions to create front end elements, style sheets etc using some kind of WYSIWYG interface to begin with before hiring engineers.

PS: I'm also looking for co-founders - please reach out to me if you are interested in learning more and talking out about education technology.

I recommend Figma for frontend design! https://www.figma.com/

One of key advantage is that it has Google-Doc-like collaboration features which will make communication with team members much easier down the line. Other features I like are:

- it lets you define components similar to how you would structure your components when coding the frontend, which will help you develop a cohesive styleguide

- you can create a clickable prototype which can help present your designs or for user testing

If you've used other design software like Sketch or Adobe XD, then Figma is like an online version.

Figma is becoming the industry leader with its collaborative features. The drawback is that it's in the cloud.

Sketch was on the top spot for a long time for a reason, you can use it offline and it has a ton of integrations / plugins if you're heavy into workflow optimisation.

Adobe XD is fast and free but not widely used so I'd advise to use it only if you're solo on a project.

If you're not satisfied with the visual to code part of these tools there is Zeplin that we used as an interface for the dev handoff. It connects nicely with all the software listed above.

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