Top software and hardware recommended by designers in 2019

The end of the year is a good time for summaries, recommendations, and plans for the future. You’ve probably spent some time using a lot of different types of tools – both software and hardware. Some of them might have made your life miserable, others might have become good candidates to your usual toolset. Some you’re throwing out (or replacing) next year, and with the others, you just can’t wait to make more magic. 

While here, at UXPin, we have little influence on your daily life, we do our best to significantly improve your work. And not only by making our product the best we can but also by providing you a list of what our fiends liked in 2019. 

We’ve asked our clients and community what was their top gear of 2019, and here are the most common or most interesting answers. 

Hardware recommended by designers in 2019

iPad Pro and Apple Pencil

“The technology behind the iPad has made such a huge leap! I remember one of my first iPad and the limits to it. Now, what I love the most is that with my paper-like screen protector, drawing is so life-like but also easy to erase and improve. I doodle all the time – much more than I used to. And that is a huge improvement in my design process.” 

Mouse

“My freshly purchased Logitech M590 Multi-Device Silent Mouse is the quietest mouse I’ve ever heard AND it comes in a beautiful gray!” 

Mechanical Keyboard

“I’ve been dreaming of a mechanical keyboard for a while now and this year finally I got the WASD V3. It 👏 is 👏 awesome! Do I still dream of building my own mechanical keyboard out of custom switches and everything? Maybe. But for now, I’m super happy with this one!”

Headphones 

“The Bose QuietComfort that I bought this year is the buy of the year for sure! The acoustic isolation is so good!”

…a wild card

“This year, my top design toolset discovery was my time spent at the real-life carpentry as a part of the design process. Regardless of the design area, it is always worth exploring the possibilities and limitations of the technology for which you design. And it goes to practicing more efficient communication between the designer and the contractor. Amazing experience, highly recommended.” 

Software recommended by designers in 2019 

Loom 

Loom is a hit browser-based video recorder that we all love for making the screencasts and camera recordings truly fool-proof. 

Drift

Drift is not only a cool tool for those who want to try the conversational marketing but also an amazing branding, web design, and customer experience inspiration.

Notion 

Notion. A practical soft for multiple purposes. Very neatly designed. Simple. 

Discord 

Discord started breaking out from the gaming world and making communication not only efficient, but also fun!

UXPin 2.0 

With UXPin 2.0 there’s a longer story.

Some of you might know that but in case you missed the big launch of our improved prototyping and design tool – that was a huge deal! We’d been adding core features like crazy for a couple of months, just to stop doing so in September, fix all the little user experience shortcomings, improve the speed of the app, and release it to the world – new and better.

We got a lot of amazing reviews on Product Hunt for which we are very grateful! This whole year was simply amazing. We’ve done a lot and we are more proud than ever. And it’s all possible thanks to you, our fantastic customers.

Keep your fingers crossed, we’re not slowing down – there’s a lot of cool new features and improvements to come in 2020. Happy New Year!