Comp CC, Adobe’s New iPad App Allows Designers to Sketch Ideas on Mobile
The tightly integrated mobile apps of Adobe is continuing to grow as they’ve added a new member to the family: Comp CC. The app is available for the iPad and it aims to make the lives of designers so much easier by allowing them to sketch the idea in their head directly into the iPad. Whether it’s a layout for a new website or a new interface for a mobile app, all this is made possible through Comp CC.
Will Eisley, the principal product manager of Adobe, told TechCrunch last week that the company believes creative people are looking at mobile devices as an extension of their creative workflow. Then again, almost all designers still start out the design process using the trusty old pen and paper which they then recreate on a desktop computer.
What Comp CC aims to do is to allow designers to start the process on mobile and then use existing assets in the Adobe cloud to take design further than basic wireframes. Then, they can continue on with the design process on their desktops using Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign.
Since it would be impossible to take a wireframe created by hand and convert that to digital, Adobe created an array of gestures which the app would translate into certain layout elements.
For example, if you want to draw a rounded rectangle, all you had to do is draw a rectangle with a small circle at the bottom right corner. The app then translates this into the shape that you desire.
According to Eisley, the idea behind Comp CC isn’t to create an InDesign or Illustrator for iPad, but it’s to make sure that all the standard tools designers use for the first phase of their workflow are available.
One thing about the app though is that a two-way flow doesn’t exist between it and the desktop app. Meaning, you can send a design to the desktop and continue work on the iPad, but you can’t send an edited desktop file to your iPad.
The Comp CC project was started in 2013 after the team had discussed with former New York Times design director Khoi Vinh about the challenges present in the early part of the design workflow. When the team identified the problem, they presented Vinh with a prototype and later showcased a prototype of the app in its current form at Adobe’s MAX conference.
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