Play - The first native iOS design tool

Morning! I'm Fede, part of Play's design team. I fell in love with prototyping a few years ago, I've tried every prototyping tool, but when I saw Play's launch video, I was amazed and knew I wanted to be part of this dream team. I genuinely believe Play is the future of design. And I've never had more fun at work than right now. We are also here to help you learn it, we will support, create and keep improving the app. Thank you!

Hello Product Hunt! 👋 This is Dan and I’m one of the co-founders of Play. I’m excited to tell you more about the new design and prototyping tool we have been working on the past couple of years! 📱Play is a modern product design tool that was born out of a need we experienced when designing mobile products in the previous company we were at. We found that while vector drawing tools play a role in today’s workflow, there are a number of limitations, especially when designing mobile products. 😩 Some of the pain points we're working to address with Play are the limitations in our traditional tools' ability to create high fidelity, native interactions, the constant need to develop hacks and workarounds to recreate native iOS UI, ignoring many real-world guidelines of product design which make collaborating with engineers challenging, and lets not forget the endless context switching from desktop to the phone, relying on mirror apps that only emulate the native app experience. 💡We saw these pain points as an opportunity and took a different approach when building Play. We started with the medium you’re designing for—the phone—and imagined a design platform that used the phone as an input device. This opened up a world of new opportunities! 😎 Here are some of the benefits of Play and what makes it unique: ✨ 1. Design with real iOS materials. Use the same library of native elements and gestures that Xcode offers, without writing any code. Live maps, input text fields, haptics, switches, pickers, steppers, blur effects, UIMenu, and native gestures are all at your fingertips in Play. ✨ 2. No more simulations and spaghetti artboards. What you create in Play is rendered with the same technology as a finished native iOS app. You have access to gestures like pan, drag, advanced scroll triggers and much more that aren't possible in other tools. ✨ 3. Experience your design as you create it. Unlike traditional design tools that require you to context switch and simulate the mobile experience, Play is the first tool to make contextual design for mobile possible. Design from both iOS and iPad. ➡️ How can I use Play Today? Today, Play is free to use for your iPhone and iPad, where you can work seamlessly across both platforms. You can start designing from scratch or import your existing design components from Figma. Invite team members, collaborate, and share prototypes that are previewed as a real native app. 📲 Download Play: https://apps.apple.com/app/id147... 🎥 YouTube for tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/c/create... 📖 Support Site: https://learn.createwithplay.com/ 👋 Discord: https://discord.com/invite/C8jwY... 🕸 Website: https://www.createwithplay.com ➡️ What’s on our roadmap? We’ll be making some exciting announcements in the coming weeks but the team is working hard on new Play platforms and new ways for engineers to be brought into the design process. And of course, we’ve got a lot of exciting new things rolling out for iOS and iPad, from spring and bounce animations to new Swift Charts and much more! ❤️ A big thank you to all our early users for your continued support and feedback! Thank you to Chris Messina for hunting us as well. Our team has poured their heart and soul into this product. It is an ambitious vision and we're excited for you to give Play a try. Looking forward to hearing your questions and comments! —Dan

it's a game changer I will definitely try it

Congrats to the team! I remember the time when I first discovered just the landing page of Play and was blown away by the ways in which its possibilities were presented visually. When I tried out the product, my initial reaction got solidified more. Looking forward to creating mini-apps and interactions.

I know lot of people who cannot wait to use that, nice product ! good luck for the launch

An incredible product focused on developing your creativity. It changes the concept of design turning into a “play”. Designing magically from your device is a revolutionary experience. A game changer without any doubt. 🚀🚀

Stoked for this approach, looking forward to try it!

It is one of the best user experiences to design from a mobile screen. I highly recommend Play! 🤩

Good work!

One of the best and most ambitiously design-led projects I’ve ever seen (and was lucky enough to briefly contribute to). There are so many fundamental “design tool” software features that have had to be re-imagined for these new form factors—like the objects list or properties panel—and this team managed to invent entirely new solutions that really work. It’s worth the ticket just to take the tour!