Top 11 Tools for User Experience Designers in 2023

User experience or UX design is crucial to any product, website or app development. It is needed to improve the experience of current and potential customers. If a customer is not pleased with their experience using the product, website or application, they will likely not return to that product. So to keep your customers and attract new ones, it is essential to have a good UX design.

To have a good UX design, you need the right UX tools for your design goals, and there are a lot of tools out there to choose from. In this article, we will explain what UX tools are and the best tools to use in each stage of UX design.

What are UX tools?

UX tools are used through the different stages of the UX design process. They help in making the process easier and faster. The different phases are:

Information gathering

Information gathering is the first stage of UX design. You can’t start a design without knowing the audience you are delivering to. You have to collect user information and feedback through research, questionnaires, interviews, observations, etc.

Flowchart/ User flows

After collecting user information, you must make a chart to align your products' needs.

Wireframing

Here, you and your designers decide on the design and layout elements, i.e., how certain elements should be arranged on the product, website or app.

Design/ Prototyping

Once you’ve decided on the arrangement of the elements of your design, you can now begin to design the product and make a sample (prototype) of it. This prototype will be released to the market for testing.

Usability testing

The prototype developed in the previous stage is given to a few users to test whether it is good. If areas need to be fixed, the designers get feedback and fix them accordingly until it is ready to be released to the public.

The best tools for UX Designers in 2023

There is no one-size-fits-all tool for UX design, at least not yet, but some come close. Various UX design tools are available, but choosing one that fits your needs and helps your product reach the right audience is advisable. Here are the best UX design tools in 2023 that will up your UX design game:

Wireframing

Balsamiq

Balsamiq is one of the best UX design software and a popular wireframing tool among designers, product managers, and innovators. Balsamiq was explicitly created to generate low-fidelity wireframes, allowing users and testers to concentrate on the usability and flow of the interface.

Despite its simplicity, it is advised for UX designers of all levels to show the uses of their proposed website or application quickly. Anyone can use this design software even if they don’t know how to code because it has a straightforward learning curve. It has a free version and a 30-day trial for those who want to test its functions before investing. It is mainly suitable for Wireframing, prototyping, and mockups.

Features:

• It is compatible with Windows, macOS, and browsers
• It helps create low-tech wireframes that emphasise functionality and user flow.
• It provides a drag-and-drop editor to make designing quick and easy.
• It gives designers a variety of tools and reusable icons to use to produce captivating mockups quickly.
• Allows you to include links in interactive prototypes for usability tests or demonstrations.
• It enables you to use interactive PDFs and images to present wireframes on the web.

Price: Starts at $9/month

Adobe XD

Adobe XD is an enterprise-grade app and is arguably the leader in UX tools for creatives, sure to assist you in designing, prototyping, sharing, and collaborating. Using its excellent asset management library, you can create a mind-blowing design with personalised properties that can be used throughout your website or app. It is mainly suitable for Prototyping and Designing. It also has a free version and trial available.

Features:

• It works on Windows and macOS
• Features grid layouts for precise design, optimised vector tools, and responsive asset resizing across platforms.
• It excels for designers at large businesses and organisations needing asset consistency.
• Features a “Repeat Grid” feature that enables designers to define a style and an asset library that allows quick changes to graphics and styles.
• Adobe XD is best suited for UX designers using the Adobe Creative Cloud toolkit due to integrations with Photoshop and Illustrator.

Price: $9.99/month

UX testing

Browsee

Browsee is a UX tool that helps to identify if there are problems with your UX designs. Browsee uses AI to identify subjective issues in your UX with greater than 70% accuracy.

You can learn more about how your users are utilising your product, what issues they are having, and what features they value by watching session recordings of their interactions with it.

To give you precisely targeted sessions to watch, Browsee tags session recordings based on AI.

Features:

• Helps identifies UX issues and tags and expectation mismatch.
• Pinpoints reason for network slowness, slow page load and broken links
• It helps reduce confusing design and client-side errors.
• Calculates quantitative metrics like page heatmaps and rates of rage clicks.
  

Maze

Maze is another outstanding user experience (UX) design tool on this list. This tool can carry out comprehensive tests with and without prototypes.

Testing theories and mobile app concepts are made a lot easier with the help of this UX design tool. It supports various testing types at every stage of the development process. It is good for Remote testing, A/B testing, rapid prototype testing, and usability testing. It also has a free version and trial available.

Features:

• It works on Browsers
• Supports usability testing to collect detailed user insights using follow-up questions with no set answers.
• Calculates quantitative metrics like page heatmaps, misclick rates, success rates, and A/B tests.
• Provides numerous third-party tool integrations, including InVision, Marvel, Sketch, Adobe XD, and Figma.

Price:

Maze provides three plans for its usability testing platform:

• Free: $0 per month
• Professional: $70.00 per month
• Organisation: Custom pricing
  

UserFeel

Designers all over the world can efficiently conduct free user testing with UserFeel. In addition to choosing your target audience and setting up the necessary tests, you can also gather videos of users completing the required tasks.

Designers gain insights and feedback from a pool of multilingual user tester panels through moderated and unmoderated tests.

Features:

• Screen recording allows designers to watch videos of testers performing their assigned tasks.
• Designers can choose between longer, moderated tests with more feedback and shorter, unmoderated tests with less feedback in both moderated and unmoderated tests.
• UserFeel offers testing in 40 different languages across mobile, desktop, and tablet platforms.

Price:

Price for unmoderated testing:

• Bring your tester: $30
• UserFeel’s tester: $60

Price for moderated testing:

• Bring your tester: $60
• UserFeel’s tester: $120

UX research

Optimal Workshop

Optimal Workshop is not just a user research tool but a comprehensive toolkit. It can be used to recruit participants for both qualitative and quantitative user research. With Optimal Workshop, you can view your data as simple, understandable visualisations and see participant responses as they come in—perfect for imparting your insights to others. Using Optimal Workshop, you can carry out surveys, first-click testing, tree testing, card-sorting exercises, and more.

Features:

• You can conduct numerous tests on this platform and record qualitative research insights.
• Service for participant recruitment (offered in more than 70 languages)
• View the feedback provided by the participant
• Accessible data visualisations through the Optimal Workshop dashboard
  

Price:

Optimal Workshop provides a free plan, so you don’t need to upgrade. But if you need more features, paid options include:

• Starter plan: $99/month
• Pro plan: $166/month
• Team plan: $153/month
  

Lookback

Lookback is a video research platform for usability tests and moderated and unmoderated user interviews. Using the collaborative dashboard, you can sync your research, tag your teammates, and make highlight reels of all the most helpful insights. You can also create online observation spaces, record user interactions with your app or website, and write up user interviews.

Features:

• User testing sessions and moderated and unmoderated video interviews
• Timestamped notes recorded in real-time during sessions
• Invite participants to observe user research sessions in virtual observation rooms where they can converse with one another.
• Keep track of and capture participant touch activity on mobile devices during interactions.
• Make highlight videos and compile highlight reels from them.
• Interactive dashboard

Price:

Lookback provides a free 14-day trial period. After that, a variety of paid plans are available for you to select from:

• Freelance:  $17/month
• Team: $99/month
• Insights Hub: $229/month
  

User flows

FlowMapp

FlowMapp works best for IAs, sitemaps, user flows, and website wireframes. FlowMapp allows multiple teams to view workflows at a glance. It also offers status-tracking features, allowing you to iterate on a conventional tree-diagram-style sitemap. It is good for Wireframing, Web design. It also has a free version and trial available.

Features:

• It works on Browsers
• Offers user research functionalities.
• A user-friendly sitemap tool that facilitates teamwork and the creation of web pages.
• The Personas function assists in creating buyer personas.
• Provides collaboration, content planning, and communication tools for various projects, including websites, apps, and digital products.
  

Price: Starts from $15/month

UXCam Screen Flow

If your product is a mobile app, one of the best features of UXCam is its ability to record and analyse user screen flows. You might believe users move through your app in one way, but what are they doing? You can easily find out using UXCam's Screen Flow feature.

Features:

• It works on Web, Windows, macOS, and mobile apps.
• It gives you a general idea of how users interact with your app from installation to closing or sending it to the background.
• It allows you to examine users' routes after seeing a particular screen.
• Displays which screens they visited before their current screen.
• It enables you to examine the reverse flow to discover from which screens users exit the application and which other screens they visit before exiting.
  

Price: Upon request

Team collaboration

Qualaroo

Qualaroo makes it easy to collaborate between and within teams by allowing you to design surveys for testing your prototypes. Different teams and stakeholders can share their thoughts on the prototype to make the final product perfect. Qualaroo is good for Research, Design feedback, and Collaboration. It also has a free version and trial available.

Features:

• It works on Browsers, Android, and iPhone apps.
• Offers sample pre-made survey templates so you can get started right away.
• Helps with market research by utilising pop-ups.
• It enables you to share surveys on social media.
• Offers advanced targeting and segment responses.
• It supports integration with various applications, such as Intercom, Zapier, HubSpot, and others.
• Make surveys available in multiple languages to reach a larger global audience.

Price: Starts from $69 per month.

Figma

Figma is one of the most popular UX design tools. It has a drag-and-drop user interface editor that makes it possible for collaboration across organisations. Figma is one of the few UX tools that allows designers, developers, and project managers to collaborate.

Some of its most compelling features for designers include limiting the position of graphic elements on-screen, Boolean operations that allow you to precisely combine multiple shapes and 60 frames per second interactive editing so you can see your design.

This tool enables UX designers in larger organisations to scale the design process with developers and project managers quickly. CTOs will value various security options available, including access to activity logs. It is suitable for Design and collaboration. It also has a free version and trial available.

Features:

• It works on Browser, macOS, and Windows
• It takes pride in being an organisation's single source of truth; you can upload authorised reusable elements, icons, fonts, and styles.
• Team members can use the developer workflow to examine code and export visual assets and CSS from the design file.
• Enables SAML-based SSO integrations with the identity provider used by the company.
• The case studies on Figma include businesses like GitHub, Square, and Uber.
  

Price: Starts from $12 per editor or month

Conclusion

Many UX tools are available to help you or your company improve UX research, design, and testing; which one you select will depend on your specific requirements. The tools mentioned above include the best available in each category and are a great place to start your search.

Although mastering these tools frequently requires patience and persistence, the effort is well worth it. They assist you in assessing your level of competence as well as in determining where you can make improvements. The right tools can make UX design much more effortless and more seamless.