User experience (UX) design has become a huge part of working in the design sector. Working at a creative agency, graphic designers, or any creative at that matter, are most likely expected  to have or learn coding and UX/UI design knowledge as well.UX design is all about providing the user with the information they’re looking for in the easiest, cleanest, and most intuitive way possible – whether that be a website or mobile app.

Adobe XD

Adobe XD (which stands for experience design) was released only a few years ago, but it’s transformed from beta stages to a fully-fledged UX design tool pretty quickly. As Adobe’s offering to UI and UX designers, you can design websites and mobile apps, prototype and see your finished product in preview in XD.

You can control and customize your experience, get live feedback to iterate faster and preview on mobile devices. Adobe has recently released the latest update to XD too, so now designers can work with third party tools, and preview XD files in Dropbox.

Framer

Framer is an Amsterdam startup company and rival to the likes of Adobe XD and InVision for UX designers. You can design, draw, animate and share work with Framer – a tool for screen design and interactive prototyping.

Similar to Adobe XD, you can bring designs into life with pre-made interactions and animations, and share your ideas with live project previews with the Framer mobile apps.

InVision

InVision offers some powerful prototyping tools, allowing you to quickly and easily create interactive mock-ups of our designs in a way that actually reflects a real web experience. It also offers mobile prototyping with gestures, and you can also launch user testing from an iPhone, including screen recordings, videos and audio of users testing your prototypes.

InVision announced in November that its new digital design and UX application will be free for all users. InVision has released Studio – a rival to XD, Photoshop, Illustrator and Sketch, whatever tool you use to design apps, sites and other digital products.

Sketch

Simple, efficient and well loved, Sketch is a very big player in the design world, with some even weaning themselves off Photoshop completely for it.

As it’s tailored to design gorgeous UX interfaces through quick and easy-to-learn wire-framing tools, some people believe Sketch is superior to Photoshop when it comes to UX design. Its ability to create different layers for every new object means you can be more creative with navigation and combinations.If you want to learn Sketch exclusively, check out the best paid and free online Sketch courses.

Gliffy

Gliffy allows you to create flowcharts, wireframes, UML diagrams, sitemaps and more – and at a low cost, with no download necessary. It really lets you create any kind of diagram, which can be a great way to organize your thoughts and ideas, whether you want to share them with developers or just with yourself.

OmniGraffle

Stop reading if you own nothing from Apple, as OmniGraffle is specifically for Mac and iOS users – and you have to buy both versions of the app separately, which ups the cost of the already expensive OmniGraffle if you want it on two devices.For this extra cost comes a great, feature-rich way to visually represent ideas, tasks and activities. It is a powerful diagramming and wireframing tool, but still easy to use.

Visio Online

Microsoft’s Visio Online creates diagrams quickly and easily – and can be linked to many other Microsoft services, such as Excel. You don’t need to install anything. This is a quick, cheap option.Visio’s simple, easy-to-navigate layout offers plenty of shapes, graphics and lines with pre-crafted starter diagrams and contextual tips and tricks.

Axure

With a steeper price comes a more comprehensive wire framing and prototyping service laid out on a simple drag-and-drop canvas.Create simple click-through diagrams or highly prototypes with animations, data-driven interactions without having to write a single line of code. It’s also easy to collaborate with a team and share your ideas.

Photoshop

The great thing about Photoshop for UX is that, well, you probably already have it. You probably know it well. You probably have a long, rich – and possibly tumultuous – history with it. But is it that suited to UX design? After all, it was made as a photo editor, not a UX design tool, and many digital design agencies are making the switch to the likes of Sketch or InVision.

But the good people at Photoshop are looking to the future – and that future is UX – by releasing plenty of extensions aimed at UX. Adobe’s also focusing a lot on XD, so we may suggest looking at that first for UX design if you still want to stick within Adobe products.

But, with details such as animation, fonts and color all included, Photoshop is better for the later stages of UX design – the high quality mock-ups, which is what it’s made for and what it’s good at.

Helio

Helio (used to be Verify) offers tests and raw data, so you can find out key user behavior’s. Solve design problems and avoid costly mistakes by honing in your target audience to see how age, gender, income, location and education shapes responses to your products.