ui designer (2024 Guide)

What Tools Do UI Designers Use?

BrainStation’s UI Designer career guide is intended to help you take the first steps toward a lucrative career in UI design. Read on for a guide to the top tools for user interface design. 

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Each step of the UI design process uses a different set of tools—some quite specialized, and others general-purpose. According to Brainstation’s Digital Skills Survey, 72 percent of UI Designers incorporate a range of digital tools into their process at this stage.

What Tools Do UI Designers Use?

For wireframing, Sketch is used by 66 percent of respondents—but 44 percent of respondents also cited Illustrator, with InVision Studio, Adobe XD, Axure, Figma, and Marvel rounding out the category.

For interface design, the list was similar—with Sketch cited by 64 percent of respondents—but with Photoshop taking the place of Illustrator, at 43 percent. Photoshop and Illustrator are excellent companion tools, with the former dedicated to photo editing and the latter designed for creating and editing vector-based images.

For prototyping, InVision was used by 58 percent of UI/UX Designers, edging out Sketch. For more advanced prototyping with micro-interactions, there are a range of alternatives, including Proto.io, Principle, Flinto, Framer, and ProtoPie.