Computer software giant Adobe has announced that Adobe XD is opening its platform to enable users to customise their tools with an ecosystem of community and partner-built plugins.
Leveraging Adobe XD APIs, developers can now build on top of Adobe XD, adding new features, automating workflows and connecting XD to the tools and services designers use every day.
In addition, Adobe XD now tightly integrates with designers’ existing workflows via other popular collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams (Adobe’s preferred collaboration service), Slack and Jira Software Cloud.
The open platform will be made publicly available later this year, but Adobe is already working with early developer partners to build plugins for XD.
These partners include Microsoft, Trello, UserTesting, Airtable, Dribbble, Silicon Publishing, Slope, inMotionNow, Astute Graphics, Anima and Google Cloud, along with its own Behance and Stock services.
Scott Belsky, chief product officer and executive vice president of Creative Cloud at Adobe, said: “We are committed to developing a rich ecosystem around Adobe XD to fit the modern designer’s needs.
“Delivering seamless, engaging user experiences is imperative for brands, companies and all digital products, and Adobe is focused on serving designers with powerful collaboration capabilities.”
Adobe today also revealed the first recipients of the Adobe Fund for Design.
Created in May, the $10 million fund, distributed in the form of grants and equity investments, provides support to empower designers and developers to innovate in the world of experience design and create plugins and integrations for Adobe XD.
In addition to financial support, Adobe provides recipients of the fund’s investments with access to industry experts, early access to technology, partnership and go-to-market opportunities and exposure to Adobe’s network of passionate customers.
Initial grants and investments include individuals and companies building tools and services on top of Adobe XD to empower designers around the globe, with several expected to be available in the product later this year.
Here’s the list of Adobe Fund for Design recipients:
- CloudApp – video, webcam, screenshot annotation and GIF creation securely in the cloud.
- Protoio, Inc., makers of Overflow – empowers designers to design, present and share beautiful user flow diagrams that tell a story.
- Stark – helps you design and build products that are accessible, ethical and inclusive.
- Florian Schulz, maker of Ratio – maker of design tools for user interface typographers.
- Precious Design Studio – a studio that helps innovators shape meaningful products and services that people love to interact with, as well as design tools such as Data Populator and Open Color Tools.
- Odin Chart – Tyler Wolf is a data visualisation designer building Odin Chart, a designer-friendly tool that makes creating charts for digital products and publications a breeze.
- Iconscout by Chamestudio – high-quality icons, illustrations and stock photos in one place.
- Impekable – a digital agency specialising in user experience design and enterprise software engineering.
- UI Faces – avatars for design mock-ups.
- io – a community platform for designers to share their work and stay up-to-date with the latest and greatest design tools and news.
- Modulz – a visual code editor for designing and building digital user interfaces, without writing code.
- Design+Code – the team behind popular design and code courses and the Angle plugin.
- Yummygum – creates tasty-looking designs and refreshing experiences for web and mobile.
