The feisty underdog of design tools

The new design tool on the block

I recently came across Wondershare Mockitt, an alternative to Sketch or Figma that’s quickly gaining popularity due to how easy it is to pick up.

As I explored it, I was pretty surprised at the robustness of some of their features, which sometimes far surpass some of our traditional design softwares.

Here’s a quick rundown of their features and how they compare to our local heavyweights.

Basic Workflow

Summary: (👍) Browser based (👍) Easy to pick up

Mockitt is completely on your browser (although there is a desktop app), meaning it’s cross-platform and multiple people can work concurrently on a project. The layout will be extremely familiar to Sketch and Figma users.

The only major difference I noticed is the floating widget window.

Mockitt lets you create multiple pages in a project, and multiple artboards in a page (as is the norm). One thing I do like is the ability to group your pages, which makes it much easier to organize large projects.

A folder structure I created within my project.

Widgets

Summary: (👍) Large built-in library (👍) Easy for non-designers to use

‘Widgets’ is Mockitt’s equivalent for Sketch symbols, or Figma components — except these can also have dynamic states and animations. More on that later.

Mockitt surprised me with how many widgets it provided out of the box — anyone who can drag & drop can have a Material Design or iOS styled page up in minutes.

This can help non-designers convey their thoughts quickly and efficiently without needing advanced knowledge of the platform.

The tooltip and sticky note symbols can come in handy during brainstorming or for writing business logic.

Design Library Management

Summary: (👍) Manage widgets and icon libraries (👎) No text or color styles

If you’re building a design system, Mockitt allows you to add your custom widgets to a widget library. It’s simple enough to use, but lacking in a few advanced features such as text styles or color styles.

From my testing, one can maintain text styles by creating a widget that’s only text, and then nesting it within other widgets. However this seems like an inconvenient workaround at the moment.

I’d recommend the current system for building out design systems where it’s unlikely to have sweeping changes across fonts or accent colors.

The floating Widgets window has a section for your custom design library.

Mockitt also has inbuilt icons to get started with, as well as the ability to categorize your icons packs.

Animations & Transitions

Summary: (👍) Incredible animation & transition support

This is what blew me away about Mockitt. Creating a traditional animated prototype across multiple screens is just the surface of what Mockitt can do.

Mockitt calls user interactions events — an event can be tapping, swiping or holding on a specific element. An event can be attached to a basic element or a widget.

Each widget can have its own set of states that can interact with itself or other elements on the screen via events.

For example, in the screenshot below, I’ve added an event to the tab bar widget to change the state of the tab bar to highlight item two. State changes also have animations attached to them, allowing you to do some pretty nifty things.

When I click Item Two, the widget will change state, changing it visually while remaining on the same artboard.

Boom, I can animate between Widget states on the same screen!

Project Management & Sharing

• Folder structure similar to invision
• Version history

Summary: (👍) Easy to share with devs (👍) Version control on enterprise

I found the project management and sharing features to be roughly on par with Invision’s.

One can share the entire project or specific artboards within it. Sharing allows developers access to inspect detailed element properties similar to Zeplin or Invision.

Basic but effective project management tools.

There’s a ton of customization in how you choose to share your screens.

Conclusion

Mockitt seems like a great alternative to more traditional tools, with a host of beginner-friendly features that let you hit the ground running. It’s also does a good job for interaction designers that want to provide detailed micro-interactions and animations along with their prototypes.

The only place it currently falls a little short is if you wanted to maintain and update a large design system library.

Overall, I’d recommend this to collaborative teams that enjoy an iterative approach — Mockitt really shines at wireframing and quick prototyping using the inbuilt symbol library.