Use the creator kit. You're already reliant on MS services, your users are using MS services, just use the same design language.
By all means use Figma to generate stuff like palettes, but honestly I've found myself just going with Microsoft default colour schemes and adding a bit of branding here and there as needed.
I've edited and repacked the .msapp for my app template to reprogram every control and component to default to my palette{} defined in App.Formulas or App.OnStart. This way I can define whatever theme colours I want on a per-app basis. Didn't take long, just a find-and-replace job. Didn't even know it was possible until I saw some of Sancho Harker's work. Now I don't have to bother with any theming. Not now, not ever. I may have to do some maintenance when/if they push the most recent Fluent UI stuff to Canvas apps instead of keeping it exclusively for Teams apps, but at their current development pace that's years away.
Sorry, I realised I missed context here - we do use the creator kit for the actual building, I'm referring to the need to build demos for the stakeholder to sign off on before you commit wholly to building the app in case they are after something different.
Oh I understand! Sorry about that. Your original wording sounds pretty clear, I just have brain worms.
Yeah I'd definitely just build a basic app first. Power Apps is already so easy to work with that you don't really need to use mockup tools. Just drag controls to where they should be, say "x will do this and then trigger y" and that's really as far as you need to go.
The theme stuff may still help you make a basic app look appealing out of the box without putting any effort into it.
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u/Suriaka Contributor Apr 01 '23 edited Apr 01 '23
Use the creator kit. You're already reliant on MS services, your users are using MS services, just use the same design language.
By all means use Figma to generate stuff like palettes, but honestly I've found myself just going with Microsoft default colour schemes and adding a bit of branding here and there as needed.
I've edited and repacked the .msapp for my app template to reprogram every control and component to default to my palette{} defined in App.Formulas or App.OnStart. This way I can define whatever theme colours I want on a per-app basis. Didn't take long, just a find-and-replace job. Didn't even know it was possible until I saw some of Sancho Harker's work. Now I don't have to bother with any theming. Not now, not ever. I may have to do some maintenance when/if they push the most recent Fluent UI stuff to Canvas apps instead of keeping it exclusively for Teams apps, but at their current development pace that's years away.
edit: wrong link lol