Short answer: probably.

So many things came out of this Google I/O event! And most of them were really exciting, if you’re into AI, IoT, but also UX/UI and generally product design. I’m an Apple fan, but as of now, Google is really leading the way on innovation and jaw-dropping keynotes.

So let’s talk a little bit about the two things that might influence our daily routine as digital product designers/visual designers/etc.

1. Material Theme Editor

Holy guacamole!

This-is-huge! We know Material Design as the father (or mother?) of all modern design systems. Even though, technically, design systems existed for decades, Google Material Design revolutionized digital product design of today, providing a master guide for most (all?) of the design systems that came afterwards.

It provided a common ground to all Google’s digital products, giving them a unified brand identity, UX and UI, helping users to easily find their way into different products, as they were speaking the same language.

Now, that made (still make) sense for Google’s products, but if other developers adopt Material design on their own product, as you can imagine, personality and brand identity are as good as gone.

So here comes Material Theme Editor to save the day!

Material Theme Editor is a Sketch plugin that automatically creates a full Material Design library THAT YOU CAN CUSTOMIZE.

You can change primary, secondary and accent color, you can change fonts, you can change shapes… and every single symbol and module automatically updates! How great is that?!

Now, either you want to follow Material Design principles and rules, or not, this is an AMAZING starting point to create almost any design system.

You can also add different sets of icons from Google, with different styles (outline, filled, two tones…) and each set is made of OMG-so-many icons.

Take 5 minutes to calm down and then come back.

Ok, now let’s talk about what I see as the first issue for InVision here.

This is actually something I was thinking already, even before this Google thing, but I see this as a big endorsement they’re missing.

InVision is about to publicly release their Studio design software. I’ve been able to test the beta version, and I like it. It includes all that advanced animation elements that Sketch is still missing. Think about it like Sketch+Principle. And that’s great, I love it. BUT on Sketch, I (and almost certainly you too) use tons of plugins, that makes my work easier and faster. Things to use icon-fonts like FontAwesome, to organize symbols, to rename artboards in bulk, to make charts and so on. InVision Studio is, at the moment, lacking any third parties plugin support and this is a big obstacle to convince me to switch, and I think it will be for lots of Sketch users.

Now it comes this huge endorsement from Google, recognizing Sketch as the standard tool to design UIs and making an incredibly good plugin for it.

On stage they also announced a continuous support with new customization options, new modules, etc…

I don’t know. I love what the guys at InVision are doing, and I’m a little worried for them. Especially because…

2. Google Material Gallery

This is another potentially big thing. Basically Material Gallery is InVision by Google, minus the prototyping features. Which, I’m sure, will come soon.

You can upload your designs, work with your team and keep track of iterations, comments, receive feedbacks etc…

The sharing process is like the one in Google docs, so you know how it works.

You upload artboards from Sketch using the Material Theme Editor plugin mentioned above (just like Craft does for InVision)

AND

Once uploaded you can share the project with devs and basically it does Zeplin’s job, letting them check measurements, colors, fonts… and if you’re using Material Design modules they get the name and the link to that specific module on Google Material Design guidelines.

And yes, there’s an app for that. You can also check and write comments and upload photos with pencil wireframes and notes from an Android and iOS app.

What is really missing is the mock-up/prototyping feature, but, as I was saying above, that’s the obvious next step and I’m sure it’ll arrive soon.

So, what do you think?

Should InVision guys be worried or not? Studio is great, but stealing users from Sketch seems like a steep path and this Google plugin and new tools are adding extra hurdles along the road.

Once Google Gallery will be a full-fledged tool to collaborate and prototype interfaces, with the support and integration of Google Drive, Google Docs and any other Google product that will make sense to add to the flow, what will InVision’s destiny be? Will Google Gallery become the central hub and standard platform for sharing, collaborating on, providing feedback and prototyping user interfaces?