Ohhhhhh, that's how it works?

I believe Axure still finds its uses amongst seasoned users, but the approachability of Invision (and recently Sketch) makes them the goto for rudimentary prototyping. You'd find the most if not all design tools both current and incoming will have some sort of rudimentary click-based prototyping. For anything more advanced, people tend to use Principle, Framer, Flinto, Kite Composer.

The core tenets of product design hasn't changed much (more nuanced skillsets can be searched on their own), but the design tools have no doubt evolved significantly within that time when it comes to UI design.

While Sketch was a fairly buggy program way back in 2014, it's become the staple design tool for the industry since then as it's grown leaps & bounds in features and stability. Design system creation & management has become significantly streamlined with support for it in Sketch (as 'Libraries'), Invision DSM & other competing apps. Design versioning has become popularized and easy to do with Abstract. Prototyping is easier than ever.

The combination of maturing UI tools with the popularization of flat-design ("easy-to-make" interface) dethroned Photoshop & Illustrator as necessary tools. But while that is the case, they still remain in the toolkit of select designers, as Photoshop remains unparalleled in crafting more conceptualized and detailed interfaces along with Illustrator's familiar vector workflow for logos & icons.

The big noteworthy design tools that have either emerged or grown in those 4 years include Figma, Framer Classic, Framer X, Invision Studio, & Principle. Figma is a web-powered interface tool with powerful collaborative features, available for free for individual use. Framer Classic is a code-powered prototyping (then later interface) tool that allowed for much more nuanced animations you couldn't normally achieve with other tools. It was succeeded by Framer X, a prototyping tool of the same nature powered by React. Invision Studio is a Sketch-esque interface tool that still needs some time to grow, but is worth looking out for. Principle is a pure visual-based prototyping tool that is great for quick-fast animations.

Huh, may just be the sample size but Sketch's staying power amongst designers is fairly impressive. Figma definitely looks to challenge that but damn.

I wonder if we'll ever get to a point in 2-3 years when the iPad Pro becomes a popular interface tool of choice. Granted the apps aren't there yet but Apple's direction and support for the iOS platform makes it feel almost inevitable. Almost.

Sketch's prototyping for just simple transition from screen-to-screen, Principle for any basic animations, and Framer Studio (not X) for anything more complex than that. I would use XD if not for that fact that it's layer styles are still barely enough for anything more than basic shapes.

I'd imagine Figma might have had a considerable boost since last year, with the hype for Invision Studio and Framer X somewhat dying down a bit.

Never mind all the nonsense, I'm just waiting for Skala :D