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Adobe XD, the design prototyping software, is introducing a coediting feature in beta today that lets users work with other designers in real time. Coediting allows users to work in the same document in Creative Cloud, so team members can collaborate on projects without doubling up on files.
Users will be able to see when other teammates are working on the document, and see what artboards and objects they’re currently editing. It’s basically like Google Docs for user experience design, and also happens to be the same core feature that Adobe XD competitor Figma is known for, with its Multiplayer editing.
Users can choose to opt in to the feature and enable co-editing on cloud documents, which will allow them to invite teammates to start editing. Work is automatically saved in cloud documents periodically, and there’s also a documents history tab that shows previous versions. Document history is saved for up to 30 days, and there’s a neat feature that lets you bookmark and rename specific versions. Bookmarking is especially useful for keeping track of big milestones, like if you make a significant change in a design project.
Adobe XD is also introducing a new Share mode which lets users create web links to their work. Projects can be set to different sharing presets depending on the use case, such as design reviews, development hand-off presentations, and user testing. Like Google Docs, users can manage access permissions and password protect their work.Coediting will be included in all plan levels. Users on paid plans will have unlimited access to all sharing and collaboration features, while users on the free XD starter plan will have the same unlimited access until April 2020. For more details, you can read about more Adobe XD updates here.
Users will be able to see when other teammates are working on the document, and see what artboards and objects they’re currently editing. It’s basically like Google Docs for user experience design, and also happens to be the same core feature that Adobe XD competitor Figma is known for, with its Multiplayer editing.
“As audiences reach peak attention, we are committed to carving out a key place within the overall viewing ecosystem”
The announcement blog post highlights companies that are part of the closed beta launch, like Slack and Dropbox. Slack envisions use cases like sharing UI kits for third parties to build better Slack apps, and Dropbox says it could share culture kits for managers to use internally. Figma also worked with institutions like the city of Chicago, which is publishing a public design system for citizens to use, and the Lambda School, which aim to publish free learning templates.
The announcement blog post highlights companies that are part of the closed beta launch, like Slack and Dropbox. Slack envisions use cases like sharing UI kits for third parties to build better Slack apps, and Dropbox says it could share culture kits for managers to use internally. Figma also worked with institutions like the city of Chicago, which is publishing a public design system for citizens to use, and the Lambda School, which aim to publish free learning templates. Besides being a place for companies to share entire design systems and kits, Figma’s community profiles can also work on a smaller scale for designers to learn from each other. For example, a few months ago, designer Dave Kulakevich shared a video of his process of re-creating a painting in Figma. With the community profiles, he can now share that project file on his page, opening it up for users to view the layers themselves and pick apart each component of the painting to see how he created it. Figma says published works will be covered under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, but the company is still exploring other licenses during this beta period. It feels a lot like Glitch, the collaborative coding site that encourages users to remix apps, or GitHub or Medium, for designers. But Figma co-founder and CEO Dylan Field is hesitant to use the Medium analogy just yet. “On Medium, when you publish work, there’s sort of a finality to it. My hope is that Figma will be a place where people work openly,” Field told The Verge.
