MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.
Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1515807
For the past 10 years, coming into play about the same time that Creative Suite was elevated to Creative Cloud, Adobe has been using an in-house system named Spectrum to allow its thousands of developers worldwide coordinate their efforts to deliver a cohesive, unified experience to the users of its diverse suite of tools. It was something of a breakthrough concept at the time, predating Google’s open-source Material Design system and others. In fact, the term “design system” had yet to make it into the development lexicon. It took years for Spectrum to be fully adopted by all the product teams, but the company concluded that effort was worth it. Not only was the overall user experience improving, their design and development teams were working smarter, not just harder. In the words of Shawn Cheris, Adobe’s Senior Director of Experience Design, “…visual trends have come and gone, design systems have grown from a niche emergent practice to a bedrock of product design, and the level of quality that users expect from digital experiences is higher than ever.” As time went on, users’ expectations for a clear and consistent interface grew and the latest mobile devices were gaining the power needed to run handheld versions of Adobe applications. The latter required completely new directions in UI design.