Friend of mine was mentioning how some companies are looking to dump Figma in favour of Replit. It reminded me of this old blog post from the (now retired) Signal vs Noise by Basecamp.
https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1061-why-we-skip-photoshop
Note, this is from 2008 when people made website designs in Photoshop. However, this applies to design tools today as well. Some of the complaints in this post are alleviated in modern tooling (like collaboration). The core idea of using the actual medium to make designs is still hugely valuable.
If you are hiring a designer, I’d highly recommend getting someone who can prototype in HTML/CSS (and perhaps React so they can use the prescribed design library alongside). Nothing like the real thing. Nothing like being able to squeeze that browser window to see if it works on a smaller screen.
Most importantly, there will be no ambiguity when it comes to deploying to production. Developer just has to wire it up and it’ll work just like the designer thought it would.
Skip the tools, go straight to the medium that customers experience the product in.
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