Adobe XD: The Definitive Guide (FREE)

What is Adobe XD?

In case you are new to the UI/UX design world or you have spent the last year of your life on a desert island, Adobe XD (aka Experience Design) is a new design and prototyping tool developed by Adobe.

By using one unique powerful tool, XD allows you to easily wireframe, design and prototype web & mobile products and experiences.

Adobe XD was previously known as “Project Comet” and was launched in February 2016, as a preview version and only for Mac, with a very limited amount of features.

Month after month, Adobe released new updates, adding more and more features based on the feedback received by its growing user base.

At the time of writing this guide (Aug 2017), Adobe XD has grown into a solid and fast piece of software, available as a Beta version for Mac OS, Windows 10, iOS and Android.

Adobe has yet to disclose when the Beta testing period will be over and the full version of XD will be released.

Download XD

Adobe XD can be download for free from here for both Windows and macOS.

You can also download the free XD mobile apps from the Itunes App Store or the Goole Play Store , allowing you to preview your designs and prototypes on mobile.

Shape the future of Adobe XD

The XD product team has done a great job so far in listening to users’ feedback. You can contribute in shaping the future of this product by participating in the XD Uservoice forum.

You can post feature requests, raise bugs and check the status of what’s been suggested and reported so far.

Also, make sure you follow @AdobeXD on Twitter for daily news and updates about Adobe XD and UX design in general.

About this guide

Although still in Beta, Adobe XD’s set of features keeps on growing with every monthly update, so I thought it would be useful for the whole XD community to have a complete and up-to-date written guide covering every single feature included in XD.

You can use it as a quick reference if you don’t know or don’t remember how to do something. Or if you are a total noob, you can read it from the beginning and get to learn Adobe XD step by step.

It has been structured as a big 11,000 words written tutorial, spread across 26 chapters, starting from the very basics at first, and then gradually moving on to more advanced topics.

It’s quite easy to navigate by using the chapters list on the left (or at the bottom on mobile) and I tried to write it as a more conversational guide, rather than a cold software documentation.

I really hope you find it useful, it took me quite some time to create it! I will soon provide a PDF version too.

Ready to start? Then check out the second chapter: The interface.

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