From the course: Learning Adobe XD

What XD can and can't do - Adobe XD Tutorial

From the course: Learning Adobe XD

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What XD can and can't do

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- [Instructor] In the previous video, you discovered what a prototype is and unfortunately that it is disposable, which begs the question well then what can XD do and what can't it do? Let's start with what it can't do. XD is not a web design or mobile design application. As you will learn in this course, XD kicks out a lot of HTML code, but is there only for introspection by the developer. The developers can look at it and decide either to use pieces of it or simply ignore it. The same goes for mobile apps or tablets or smartphones. So if you think you will be designing a killer website or mobile app with XD, you might be looking in the wrong place. The auto-animate feature in XD is pretty robust, but there is one important aspect of motion missing, curved motion paths. Though there is a pretty sweet integration with After Effects, the bottom line is the developer will have to create the motion through code. All animations in XD are linear. Design systems are another thing XD can't create. Let me explain. Design systems are created through a close collaboration between the design team and the developers. As it is developed, such components as say, buttons are designed and tweaked and tweaked again to get the button staged just right. From there, the developer will code it up and that code will reside, for example, on a GitHub repository. XD can't directly access that code of component for use in an artboard. The best you can do for now is to rigorously adhere to the naming standard developed. That's the bad news. What about some good news? XD contains a lot of collaboration features, which tend to reinforce the word rapid in the term, rapid prototyping. One I get to later in this course is the live cursor feature. You could be working on one artboard on the project while a colleague is working on a different one and you can both see what the other is doing. XD is surprisingly a rather robust drawing tool. Though a quick look at the tools may make you think otherwise, This is especially useful when you need a quick icon. Best of all these items are output in the SVG format, which everything can read. The most overlooked aspect of XD is that it can be a superb user testing tool. The preview and sharing features of XD make the user testing process run as smooth silk. There's a lot more that XD can and can't do but these are, in my opinion, the important ones. As you proceed through this course, you will get a sense of what I'm talking about. And best of all, as you explore XD, you will find uses that uniquely fit your needs. So let's start exploring.

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