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UX Journal - j01

Analysis of Procreate - User Perspective

By Tamanna Haider - October 14th, 2022

Strengths: Right off the bat, Procreate provides a decent menu. Everything is aesthetically laid out and the “canvas area” (part of the screen where you can draw) is maximized. Every separate menu item was well organized. This organization is crucial because it gives the app learnability. Basically, the layout makes all the functions and options of this app to be learned very easily. The brush menu offers a wide variety of brushes and textures and the color wheel is very easy to navigate.

Weaknesses: Though there are many strengths to Procreate, there are also some drawbacks. For example, the Brush Studio is complicated. When designing a brush, it looks one way in the preview of the brush, and another way when drawing on the canvas. It’s difficult to go back and forth to adjust the brush settings and tendencies in order to make it look the way I want to. Another problem with the Brush Studio is that it doesn’t always allow different colors for the brush, but there’s no way, or seemingly no way, to change the settings for that. Lastly, the Layers menu item has some features that are confusing. (Layers allow for overlapping designs and keeping them separate from each other). When you select “Merge Down” it takes the selected layer and the layer beneath it, and turns it into one layer. However, when you select “Combine Down” it takes the selected layer and the layer beneath it, and groups them together. Some of the functions just don’t do what you think they’re going to.

Solutions: There could be a preview space in the brush studio where rather than having the computer genarate an image of the brush stroke, you can draw as you would on the canvas in the preview box to make sure the tendencies are exactly the way you want them. Second, they can make a tab specifically to adjust the settings for what colors the brush can use and how. For the problem with the “Layers” menu, they could turn “Combine Down” into “Group Down” to make it more self-explanatory.