The Design Tools Survey is back! We always appreciate the enthusiastic support and response from the community. Enjoy the results!
As always, the raw data is free and available to all. We hope you enjoy analyzing the data as much as we do. See how the design industry continues to shift in the remote world, and be sure to check out several new sections about research tools!
Join 70k+ other subscribers and get updates on next year's survey! You'll also get the latest articles directly in your inbox.
No partners were involved in the making of the survey. Each of them supports free and open data!
Survey respondents submitted tools from all around the world. Take a look at how the respondents vary in team size, company size, experience, and more.
111
different countries are represented in the survey results.
UX Designer vs Product Designer: Does it matter? Or is the work the only thing that matters? These two titles are almost exactly even in the results (just like in previous years).
24%
of respondents do some amount of design work on Windows.
These are tools that respondents use for sticky notes, sketching, user flows, workshops, and more. This industry has exploded since the remote work revolution and continues to grow with no signs of stopping.
18%
of people use the same tool for UI design and whiteboarding (26% last year). This market has diversified.
This software helps create, design, and specify the details of high-fidelity interfaces. Let's be honest—you probably already knew that.
Framer | 4.7 |
|
Figma | 4.7 |
|
Sketch | 4.1 |
|
Adobe XD | 4.0 |
|
Adobe Illustrator | 3.9 |
|
*With more than 75 total votes in this category
These tools create realistic, clickable experiences to test interactivity and motion in an interface. Most UI Design tools also support some form of prototyping.
These tools helps designers and developers collaborate by communicating flows, interactions, assets, and other specifications.
As more UI design tools natively integrate handoff into their feature set, this category has narrowed over time.
Many respondents included tools where they share the designs, such as Notion, Jira, or Confluence (you can dig into the raw data to see more).
These are tools for creating and maintaining guidelines for typography, color, spacing, components, and other design elements. Some document design components, code components, or both.
Figma | 4.3 |
|
zeroheight | 4.2 |
|
Zeplin | 4.0 |
|
Notion | 3.9 |
|
Storybook | 3.8 |
|
*With more than 75 total votes in this category
The category encapsulates a lot of functionality: creating the design system components, writing the documentation, and sharing it with others. It's worth a look into the raw data to see the wide spread of tools (as you'll notice the long tail of "Other" tools in the graph).
It's exciting to see tools originally meant for developers, like Storybook, rank highly in this category.
These tools assist in storing, organizing, and versioning design files. Most tools also offer some sort of solution to collaboratively share files while working together with designers or other team members.
65%
of respondents are managing files and versions with software.
Figma has almost entirely removed the need for extra tools. Google Drive is next most popular, presumably to manage other kinds of assets (like videos, graphics, etc.).
These tools assist in engaging real people with prototypes, concepts, research materials, or real product experiences.
Useberry | 4.3 |
|
Maze | 4.1 |
|
Optimal Workshop | 3.9 |
|
UserTesting | 3.8 |
|
Lookback | 3.8 |
|
*With more than 75 total votes in this category
73%
of responses are for general video conferencing software.
24%
of respondents surprisingly reported they don't do any user testing (even though 95% of respondents reported that they design interfaces).
This category is new to the Design Tools Survey!These tools help find and possibly incentivize participants for research projects. Many have their own panels of testers to pull from.
UXtweak | 4.3 |
|
UserInterviews | 4.2 |
|
Userzoom | 3.8 |
|
Maze | 3.9 |
|
UserTesting | 3.8 |
|
*Used by at least 5% of respondents in this category
The unusually large "Other" bar on the graph above is due to several dozen tools with only 1 or 2 votes, and very few responses in this category overall.
9%
of respondents reported using software to recruit research participants. This is a new category, so we weren't sure what to expect.
Satisfaction scores in this category are fairly low, with an average of
3.5
This category is new to the Design Tools Survey!These tools are best for storing, tagging, and organizing research sessions and insights into a repository. Some are generic knowledge base tools while others are specific to UX research.
Dovetail | 4.3 |
|
Notion | 4.1 |
|
Airtable | 4.0 |
|
Miro | 3.9 |
|
Google Drive | 3.5 |
|
*With more than 75 total votes in this category
38%
of respondents work with a research repository of some kind.
Most respondents are using generic knowledge base tools such as Notion, Confluence, and Google Drive.
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