Hi there,
from time to time I am stumbling over sketch or figma to do the prototyping process and/or design process and as of this reading always I am wondering what’s the benefit of using one of these apps. Anyone out here using sketch/figma and able to showcase kind of a benefit from it?
Coming from Adobe Muse, which was also said to be a prototyping tool, I was always glad, that all designs, animations and stuff was done, published as a functional website and so it is with sparkle now.
Mostly I am interested if any of the sketch or figma features finally is visible on the sparkle created website – means: how is the process between sketch/figma to sparkle?
i do use Figma professionally, but it doens’t have any benefit if you’re developing the website with Sparkle IMO.
Prototyping apps have two ultimate goals: one is to showcase how the project will be for a client without ever coding or doing the hard work, you’re just wireframing and making a high fidelity project.
The other goal is for a developer to see how the website was designed, what are the sizes, dimensions, features and what not so he can start building the actual thing. Literally architects and engineers relationship.
You prototype first and then see if the feature is developable or not - then you change accordingly. Developing time is big so you want to reduced that to a maximum.
Sparkle does not tend to this audience of high tech/high feature web design that prototyping apps are made for, with thousands of information architects and developers & engineers in a single team. Instead it focus on simple solutions for easy non-complex web solutions, which is fine and great.
You can prototype a high fidelity project in Sparkle without a problem. The advantage of Figma/Sketch is that you can share the project via link, which Sparkle isn’t able to (unless you’ve uploaded it to a server and have a url for it).
I don’t use either, but do use Adobe XD, if I am doing a larger site, that will ultimately be put together by a developer. If I am doing something where the final production is done in Sparkle, then I don’t really see the point in that kind of prototyping. I will just do some sketches, then straight to sparkle.
I can see a point where I would use prototyping software even if a static site is larger a still being produced in sparkle. If I use XD, I’d the have to recreate in site entirely. I have been tempted by sketch, for just that reason, but very few sites fall right on that cusp. They are normally one thing or the other. One day I might give it a go.
Thanks for both replies so quickly. Just, as mentioned, stumbled across it, seeing that sparkle has kind of an integration for both sketch and figma and so thought about if that could help in any way for the overall design and prototype process.
My experience with my recent client https://holzbau-atelier.com
who still almost every month has some new ideas for business and showcase.
We did that website since January from scratch, adding content as soon as it appears and was being photographed and designed and so on.
And sometimes it needs some more try and error with sparkle to test out new elements, except I save it as a new file and transfer new content later to the published file and so I thought about that integrations of either figma or sketch to maybe do some work more easy.
Thanks for any thoughts.
Also if one has done some work with sktech/figma and sparkle.
As well as XD from Adobe I was always wondering how to translate that design stuff to a website, which Muse did in one step and sparkle does so in a reduced way as well.
For the sharing part, for a client I always have a url anyway, right? But also here, sparkle needs quite a long time for uploading so far, so it isn’t really quick – might be better in the future.
Yea! But for that URL you need to host on a server. These prototype tools allow you to share and to work together on a file at the same time. It is not the same thing, although the output may feel the same.
Usually the websites/ mobile apps / systems designed in tools like Figma/Sketch/Adobe XD goes up in the tenths of thousands of dollars with a considerable team working on it.
They aren’t really quick projects with low complexity, so planning up way ahead is a necessity. It requires careful planning and preparation, including dozens of different assets and interactions (“what the mouse pointer will do when it interacts with this specific button”, “how will we be able to translate the feeling my client wants using specific animations”, “how we can animate via After Effects and how to translate that to javascript code”, “where this image go” etc). We are talking 4 to 6 months of preparation before developing, working full time on a project considering server & user capacity, CMS, communication, funnels, update iterations, etc etc etc
To be able to imagine all that, you first lay it on a prototyping tool and share with the team and then you start to iterate together.
Sparkle can’t handle this workflow as it was not designed to be a cooperation tool like the prototyping apps. It does have its strength on smaller projects, of course, and thats why a prototyping tool feels kind of useless with Sparkle, because generally, for the output it produces, it’s better to prototype directly into Sparkle.
Yes, that’s what I thought as well after just try to get anything done in Figma and put it into Sparkle.
And also yes about the many issues and when it works with a team only and yes at that money point, work in its complexity is better shared for the team members and clients and so on.
Sketch. I think the ability to prototype and use the export to Sparkle function is a godsend for designers. Both Sketch and Sparkle are Mac native apps which makes workflows streamlined for Mac users. I’ve been a Windows and Mac dedicated user for lengthy periods, but there is a euphoria I feel with a streamlined Mac workflow. True, both offer a web-based ecosystem which makes it somewhat cross-platform, but simplicity is key for me.
I think mastering a Sketch to Sparkle workflow is good for productivity and flexible enough, as both platforms continue to expand the functionality of their applications. I’m committed to this toolset, I see immediate/future benefits… I’m dedicated to both brands for the long haul. They assess too many of my pain points to continue to explore alternative solutions. I’m home.