Sketch UI

Improvements to Commenting

Comment management on design files is surprisingly underdeveloped, particularly around how comments from stakeholders and team members get actioned after reading.

Sketch offers no options at all, so once a comment is read, it stays read. Figma has “Mark as Unread”, but it falls short. I identified a better approach for Sketch in the form of a “Flag For Later” option.

Mark As Unread confusingly conflates two different things, namely a comment deliberately marked to revisit later, and a comment that's genuinely new and unread. Thus an important new comment could easily be overlooked, mistaken for one already marked unread on purpose.

The feature also creates unnecessary friction. Re-reading a comment, or checking its replies, flips it back to read, forcing you to mark it as unread again. This wastes time, and if forgotten, causes comments needing action to slip through the cracks.

Most critically, Mark As Unread is purely local, meaning it only affects your own view and not how others see the comment. This makes it useless for team collaboration. Conversely, a proper Flag is visible to everyone on the team, so one person can flag a comment for a colleague, who then sees it the same way.