Modular Plugins
Our research found non-designers and designers lacked tools to collaborate on product design together. Our vision for the Modular suite was to offer tools inside Adobe XD to fill these unmet needs. Connecting the dots from collaborative ideation to rapid screen design to final presentation, Modular plugins allow seamless designer workflow in a single app. These visionary tools preceded by several years what the competition eventually released.
Problem
Teams lacked tools to collaborate effectively on product design.
Solution
Build plugins to enable ideation, rapid design, and presenting all within Adobe XD.
The Team
Lance Shields - Design Director
Lorenzo Buosi - Sr Staff Designer
Julie Ip - Sr Designer
Daniel Wagner - Sr Software Engineer
My Role
Design Direction
Product Manager
Principal Designer
User Research
Whiteboard
At the start of the pandemic, whiteboarding suddenly became impossible. We made the Whiteboard plugin to support remote collaboration so teams can innovate anywhere anytime within their design tool.
Quick Mockup
Our research showed that designers and PMs alike needed better rapid UX design tools but Adobe XD was too complex as it was. This plugin lets users explore and iterate quickly - moving seamlessly from lo-fi wireframes to hi-fi designs in just one click.
Presentation
With designers making presentations in XD already, we wanted to offer an easy way to collaborate with non-designers. This tool made presenting design work easy through themes, slides and elements right within XD. Ahead of our time, Figma just released Slides two years after our tool.
Transforming Global Design Collaboration
I led the Adobe International Design Team in conceptualizing, launching, and optimizing this suite of innovative plugins within a focused two-year timeline. Our process began with targeted field research in Japan—a key market for design innovation—where we uncovered valuable insights into specialized workflows. These findings revealed broader global opportunities to address critical gaps in collaborative design processes. Leveraging an extensibility framework, we implemented an agile methodology that enabled rapid deployment and iteration based on real-world usage. The resulting Modular suite became one of Adobe XD's most downloaded plugin collections, earning widespread adoption throughout the global design community.
The Modular Suite of plugins were exceptionally popular in Japan and are pictured here in a Japanese book on using Adobe XD.
Outcomes
Identified Gaps in Collaboration: Research revealed a lack of tools for seamless collaboration between designers and non-designers in product design workflows.
Modular Suite Vision: Developed plugins to connect ideation, screen design, and presentation workflows within Adobe XD.
Whiteboard Plugin: Enabled remote teams to collaborate and innovate during the pandemic with in-tool whiteboarding.
Quick Mockup Plugin: Simplified rapid UX design, allowing users to transition from wireframes to high-fidelity designs effortlessly.
Presentation Plugin: Streamlined design presentations with themes, slides, and elements, ahead of industry competitors like Figma.
Impact and Adoption: The Modular suite became some of the most installed and widely used Adobe XD plugins, driven by agile development and global insights.
