“There were features in both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator that customers were asking for, and we knew we needed to make the decision to keep iterating on Sketch and Draw, or build a powerful new painting and drawing app that was easy to use, like Sketch and Draw, but that contained the pro-level features that Photoshop and Illustrator artists were used to. “These apps utilized the power of Photoshop brushes and Illustrator vector drawing, and many artists used them for professional, paid work on a daily basis,” Brooke Hopper explains. Both are available as phone and tablet versions for both iOS and Android. Establishing a user needĪdobe already had two free drawing apps on the market: Adobe Photoshop Sketch (pixel) and Adobe Illustrator Draw (vector). In this article, Brooke Hopper, lead designer for drawing and painting at Adobe, gives us an exclusive look behind the scenes to understand just how important user research was-and still is-in the creation of Fresco. With this in mind, Adobe’s design team carried out user research at every step of the design process when planning the new digital painting and drawing app Adobe Fresco. From establishing an actual need to identifying workflows, user research can provide invaluable insights into your audience to ensure you’re on the right track. An enormous amount of leg work goes into building a great product before even a single pixel is laid down.

Adobe fresco art