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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1359241
their phones to sketch and finish their work on tablet or desktop, which led us to make sure we could get cloud docs right on the phone, so that the file transfer would be completely seamless.” Not having to call up another sharing service like Dropbox or AirDrop to access files helped keep the artists in their creative flow. The Adobe Cloud also played an obvious cloud in keeping development going in these work-at-home times. Adobe XD, presciently designed for remote collaboration, allowed work to proceed apace on both Fresco for the iPhone and Illustrator for the iPad. Wayne Hoang, the Principal Product Marketing Manager for Illustrator for the iPad and Gabriel Campbell, it’s Lead Designer weren’t directly linked to any other product teams when their project began. They were given a blank slate to bring Adobe’s first retail product onto one of technology’s newest platforms. It needed to be familiar enough to the legions of artists and designers who have literally grown up with the desktop version, however, they had an opportunity to use the new UI to make it easier for new users to adopt. Recreating Illustrator for the iPad “presented an opportunity for us to experiment and push the boundaries of UX design–we were able to reimagine workflows and create new features unique from how the desktop features were create,” Campbell told us. They needed a design that was right for the tablet/pencil interface, yet it had to be powerful enough to work smoothly on large, intricate illustrations created on the desktop. They knew they couldn’t bring all the features of the desktop version onto the iPad. Their challenge was to find the right subset that the mobile artist would need and then present them in a way that was accessible and intuitive. To do this, they went through each tool in the program and categorized them as either an action, a mode, or really a tool. “…if it doesn’t put something on your canvas or allow you to select items on your canvas, then it’s not really a tool.” The Shape Builder, for example, was categorized as an action, and didn’t warrant placement on a toolbar. Their intentional approach to organizing the UI features in this way translated directly into making it easier for it to become intuitive for the user. Sometimes, analysis wasn’t enough and they, too, had to turn to their user base. Campbell this was the case with an issue they discovered with an early iteration of the