How To Create Dynamic Hotspot Templates Using Marvel and Sketch

One of the lesser known features of Marvel, but one that saves minutes and hours of manual work is our support for hotspot templates by using Symbols in Sketch when syncing your prototypes.

Here's a typical use case - you are working on an iPhone prototype which has 3 buttons in the Tab Bar which appears in the footer on most of designs in your prototype. You have everything linked up and working in Marvel, however it's decided that the tab bar needs one more button, plus it all needs to change order.

In the past, that would require you to change the link on every single hotpot and move it all around to make way for the changes. If you have more than a dozen screens that is a lot of manual work, but no more! We now have a great solution.

Here’s a quick video to show you how:

It works by allowing you to add hotspots to symbols within your Sketch files, essentially creating a hotspot template that you can add to any artboard, only needing to update it once to replace across every screen in your prototype.

Here's how:

1. Download and install Marvel for Sketch
2. Create a symbol in Sketch
3. Attach prototype links to buttons in your symbol, selecting the target artboard
4. You can now reuse your symbol throughout your artboard as a hotspot template

This feature came from your suggestions on our feature request page - if you have ideas for improving Marvel, let us know here.