I don't particularly like their video intro. I feel like they've tried to fit it under a specific time limit (which is great) by doing everything faster, speaking faster and weirdly skipping animation. For instance, they take 20secs to talk about drag and drop and pressing prev/next to show the next mockup. He said "You can click the previous arrow or the next arrow to go to the next mockup". It's not relevent in an intro video. I.e. if the interface is well made, I'll figure out how to go to the next mockup when in that page.
Better would be to stop saying every little actions and talk on the high level goal. For instance, don't say "I'm gonna select a color to put on the front-end of my project".
Also, seems like the website is really well designed but the balsamiq part is still with the old flash design. Is it from the same company? Did they chose to not change the old balsamiq because clients were already used to it? Or was that too complicated? Is there an html only version incoming?
I've been using Balsamiq for a couple years, and I've been looking forward to the online product. I have a few project collaborators that cannot install software onto PCs they have to use at work; a webapp is a godsend.
I actually waited for what seemed like an eternity for Balsamiq's online product to come out (I really had zero interest in the desktop product). When it finally did I tried it and found it was exactly what I was looking for. I am now a happy paying customer.
Thanks for the feedback, appreciated! I'll try it out. I'm doing more and more mockups tweaks for our coming SAAS product (see profile if interested); it could help us work more "asynchronously" with our designer when needed.
I've been pleasantly surprised by Google Drawings recently. It's like somebody took Omnigraffle and trimmed it down while also making it easier to share.
I wish they would have integrated collaboration into the web app editor. Right now it feels like two web apps - the balsamiq editor and then a comment system. But they feel like separate apps and don't integrate with each other.
The video does not explain why the product is great, and jumps straight into feature details. I think the video also assumes familiarity with the desktop product, which I don't have. I lost interest quickly.
I've used Balsamiq to sell business groups inside of very large corporations to sign off on project estimates. It's a fast, easy way to show them what they're getting for their money, and becomes v0.1 of the design as well, with enough fidelity to discover usability & flow without locking into many other design choices.
I think there's at least a slight difference between UX design by committee and creative design (for want of a better term) by committee.
UX design in groups makes more sense- there are a series of rules and guidelines you can follow to make a good UI. Everyone can co-operate on that, in the sense that they have a rule sheet, and can assess how the design fits those rules.
The more creative side of it (logos, colour schemes, etc) is far more subjective, so attempting to do it by committee always brings everything to an "offend no-one" median.
Our ISP (WPEngine) did a full scan and couldn't find anything fishy, and we can't figure out how to reproduce the issue (none of us sees the warning). Can you please email me if you still see it? So sorry for the hassle.
Better would be to stop saying every little actions and talk on the high level goal. For instance, don't say "I'm gonna select a color to put on the front-end of my project".
Also, seems like the website is really well designed but the balsamiq part is still with the old flash design. Is it from the same company? Did they chose to not change the old balsamiq because clients were already used to it? Or was that too complicated? Is there an html only version incoming?