Abstract vs. zeroheight

• Large teams with dedicated design operations support
• UX managers that want a facilitated workflow for their teams
• Disciplined teams of individual contributors that want to adopt a process in their UI workflow
• Cross-discipline teams that want a central collaboration space for reviewing and critiquing UI artifacts
• If your files are named "FOR-REALS_FINAL_FINAL_FINAL_Super-Important-Project (copy).sketch"
• If you're managing multiple pattern libraries

Incentivized

For creating and maintaining a component library, it is a fantastic tool that creates an interface between Developers, UX Engineers and Designers. It is easy to get both general information about a component, but also incredibly detailed information when looking at the component on a pixel-level, where information on paddings, margins, colors, fonts etc. can be easily accessed.

Incentivized

• Versioning for desginers
• Collaboration between team members

Incentivized

• showcasing components and other topics
• ease of seeing detailed information on components (colors, paddings, sizes etc.)
• ease of finding information
• possibility of going to previous versions of the design guideline

Incentivized

• Asset exports are not as great as Zeplin and others.
• Filtering within files.

Incentivized

• when opening a component image (which opens a new page where the detailed information like paddings and colors are shown), the zoom can only be done by buttons, I'd prefer to be able to use my mouse scroll and for vertical / horizontal scrolling to do ctrl+scroll or ctrl+shift+scroll or something like that

Incentivized

Abstract has a difficult learning curve. If a feature-branch workflow is new to you, then it will take some getting used to. They make a lot of updates to the interface and these feature releases get ahead of their documentation. They rely heavily on an excellent customer support team and are present on various Slack channels to help design professionals with issues.

Incentivized

Abstract by nature is complex and has to respond to whatever changes in Sketch. So there are frequent issues. Support can be slow to respond and are not always helpful, but they are quick to find and patch the bugs. Overall, it's not the best support, but it hasn't been detrimental.

Incentivized

I purchased and administer Abstract. It was requested by our design department who evaluated it.

Incentivized

I have used and still use Sketch and Zeplin too, but they serve other purposes for us. Sketch is used to design the components themselves and they are then exported to Zeroheight where they are showcased and enriched with textual information. Zeplin is used to design application pages, and again the components are exported to Zeplin from Sketch. But Zeroheight is mainly used for the development of the components themselves as well as a documentation for our design guideline in general. It is also used by us for design tokens and patterns, as well as other information on the design guideline, so if someone wants to understand the "why" of a design decision, the explanation can be usually found in Zeroheight too.

Incentivized

• Single source of truth for the team.
• Could quickly get expensive with corporate accounts.

Incentivized

• increased quality, as less misunderstandings or communication problems occur
• increased speed of development, as it is a single source of truth for us. The developer can rely on the information in Zeroheight being correct so that he doesn't have to iterate his code again and again.

Incentivized