Adobe were caught napping a little. Sketch built a big community of users with a focus on UI design. Neither Photoshop or Illustrator are optimised for these tasks.
Sketch felt nimble and lightweight compared to Adobe's apps to a lot of designers. And it reflected modern designer workflows. The chance to break out of Adobe's embrace probably appealed to many designers too. Adobe realised they had no app to address the 'experience design' process. The result was a new app: Adobe XD.
But XD came late to the game while Sketch's popularity and influence grew. The XD UI has clearly been influenced by Sketch.
The sheer size of Adobe means that XD is being used (it comes as part of Creative Cloud, but it's also free for anyone to use to encourage takeup). But XD doesn't have 'mindshare' among many designers compared to Sketch or Figma.
There is something similar playing out on the iPad. You would think that Adobe would own the digital painting space here. But they don't (at least, not yet) - it's Procreate that illustrators are flocking to use, not Adobe's Fresco which is playing catch-up.
Sketch felt nimble and lightweight compared to Adobe's apps to a lot of designers. And it reflected modern designer workflows. The chance to break out of Adobe's embrace probably appealed to many designers too. Adobe realised they had no app to address the 'experience design' process. The result was a new app: Adobe XD.
But XD came late to the game while Sketch's popularity and influence grew. The XD UI has clearly been influenced by Sketch.
The sheer size of Adobe means that XD is being used (it comes as part of Creative Cloud, but it's also free for anyone to use to encourage takeup). But XD doesn't have 'mindshare' among many designers compared to Sketch or Figma.
There is something similar playing out on the iPad. You would think that Adobe would own the digital painting space here. But they don't (at least, not yet) - it's Procreate that illustrators are flocking to use, not Adobe's Fresco which is playing catch-up.