Let me start by saying how much I love working in Sketch. It appeals to my never-ending task of bringing order into the chaotic process of designing UI. Now, some things in Sketch are not perfect, but the community has adapted to Sketch’s flaws and built powerful plugins to patch these. The only problem is, I forget to use the plugins and my Symbols quickly becomes a mess. To solve this, I wanted to prototype a tactile gadget, expressing my love for the app and plugins but also to streamline my Design System process.

Plugins to enhance your workflow

Sketch’s real muscle becomes clearer when you install a certain amount of plugins. These are my go-to ones (except for the obvious ones), and sort of the basis for the functionality of the Panel:

I’m not gonna go through these in detail, so feel free to check them out and see what they can do for you.

The Vision

I bought a cheap (15$) USB number pad and thought long and hard.. Which features do I need in my workflow? The Numlock-toggler enabled me to have 6 two-function keys, which gave me 23 unique inputs in total.

A cheap number pad — Post-It for scale

First I had the idea that the Numlock would toggle a Design Mode, and no Numlock would be the Organise Mode. I tried it out, and tested it on a colleague. It didn’t make sense, as you are constantly switching between the two when designing. Instead I merely called it Alt. Mode. As for the whole gadget, I called it Sketch Panel: