UX Prototyping Tools: How to Pick the Right One (2020)

You've asked for it, so here it is... 2020 edition of the latest and greatest UX and product design prototyping tool walkthrough.

As a designer (product, UX etc.) you probably found it hard to keep up with every single tool in the market. Every year there is a brand new tool that allows designers to craft their prototypes in a different way. In this video, I'll walk you through a handful of criteria/principles (consistent from the previous video) that allow me to pick the right UX tool for the right project, budget, occasion etc. You'll also find out my thinking behind evaluating which tools are worth the time to invest and learn based on asymmetrical opportunity/Lindy effect.

The tools I'm walking through:

Based on where the tools take us, this will be a living document that I am to maintain going forward.

Did I miss a tool you swear by? Drop the line below and I might include in the future videos.

🙌 If you like this video, you'll definitely like what comes next;

Thank you for this info! We´ve been doing a review like this with my team and one of the most important criteria to pick a tool is its collaboration capabilities and the most preferred tool for that is Figma. But despite it´s complexity and that its learning curve is long, we´ve found that Axure is the most complete tool for professional and complex prototypes as other of its benefits is an easier hands-off with developers.

[slavais]

The middle of the night, I'm sitting in front of a monitor and watching this video...and I'm not dissapointed at all about this - the video is really interesting, thank you :)

[MrsCabecaderadio]

03:07 Prototype fidelity (interaction)
03:49 Ease of use
04:36 Time to master
05:13 Price
06:06 Versatility
06:33 Future relevance

[yousefghazal]

So glad you revisited the video you posted from last year!

[stewdean]

Thanks for the updated. It feels like there is still a massive gap in the market here. We've yet to see a tool that really wins in all areas. Figma has got a lot of traction but it can't produce final sites like Webflow - but webflow is nowhere as visual as it could be - you still have to understand how CSS works. One day we'll see a tool that will make many of these things redundant.

[denniszenanywhere]

I started with Azure in 2016. Liked it a lot. Then I tried Sketch and Invision. I switched to UXPin which to me is underrated. I think in terms of future relevance, you could factor in where it's made and maintained. I've seen so many foreign products in the US die, because they're not based in the US, meaning that those US-based UX tools get more funding for marketing to go mainstream faster. Future relevance doesn't mean they're not great tools, just less marketed properly. For example, if Apple bought one of these UX tools and promoted it aggressively, that would be the main tool used by mostly everyone.

[EminoMeneko]

No wonder it's easy to miss out other tools. When you are used to one tool and satisfied, why look elsewhere ?
One would argue curiosity but that's not for everybody especially when you meet the point above.
Unless your job is to know what's available on the market, you likely won't and that's fine.
This is when those people commenting provide value. They help you discover the thing you've missed.

EDIT: That's a good job you made in this video. But I was here with the hope to see the interfaces, because I'm fairly sensitive to look and feel. So great analysis I could eagerly come to anytime later.
I would also suggest you copy/paste the time stamps provided by some commenters in the video description. That will unlock the chaptering and will be a nice addition to the experience of your video.

Cheers.

[asandax]

Invision studio for me is the easiest took me 1 day to learn how to draw the components I want and how to do simple prototyping of switching views. Figma was also good and easy to learn but I hated that it constantly needs internet connection so I can work on sketches.
I am now going to try Adobe XD.

[yancoder]

Axure for me is the best tool for high fidelity prototype

[juanantonio]

Haiku is also another good tool for interactive prototypes

[EPSTomcat]

Also check out Kite Compositor, and Affinity Designer

[jakemetz]

What tools did you use to craft this video? Loved the editing combined with the Miro board

[koenvanniekerk]

You clearly do not really test all the tools... Protopie for instance, is one of the most HiFi tools I have used (and I have used a lot)...

[yingz]

Thank you for this super useful video! Like the way you display the criteria. Do you post on Medium?

[utshomomen]

Hello, I have been looking for one tools which has some prototyping way like figma but you can have live interaction. I saw someone embedded this to iframe in behance case and with that anyone can have access or use to test as user experience and alas i have failed to save that tools. I no longer remember the current website that is hosted this app. If anyone know this tools please feel free to comment here. Its ends with something like js. Maybe as far as i remember it was a js library tool or something.

[christiangrace]

Can Any of these be integrated into a website? For a customer experience aspect just by clicking it if it was on the front page?

[RenataMiles]

I recently started using Principle to animate my Figma prototypes. Just curious what makes you think it's on the way out. I wonder if I need to transition to Framer instead.

[skumaranand]

Hi guys, I have a question. Do you think it’s worth spending time to learn origami studio for micro interaction. I don’t have a coding background.

[gabrielmolocea]

so it will take less time to learn sketch than adobe xd?

[EPSTomcat]

Is it possible in Figma maybe via a plugin to have actual text input fields when running the prototype?