On: InVision design collaboration services shutdown

[uxcolumbo]

Never understood what the appeal of Invision was. It was clunky. It wasn't a proper prototyping tool, just a gloried image hot-mapping tool.

And design to developer handover didn't exist either when I last had to use Invision.

For rich design prototyping nothing beats Axure or Just In Mind. Figma isn't there yet when it comes to rich prototyping. It's sufficient for simple ones.

Figma doesn't produce proper HTML based prototypes like Axure or Just In Mind and good luck prototyping heavy grid and form based apps with it. Also not great for user testing where internet connection is not reliable. Axure / Just In Mind let you export your prototypes as static HTML files, so you can use them offline. Not just useful for testing, but also sales demos where internet connection is unreliable, e.g. company booth at conferences, events etc.

Framer was even better for prototyping, but they pivoted to being a website creation tool, which was a smart move actually.

EDIT: clarity regarding prototyping needs.

[aurareturn → uxcolumbo]

>Never understood what the appeal of Invision was.

Invision was not a design-to-developer handoff tool. It was a user research tool and a feedback tool for executives.

I made a hundred Invision prototypes for testing design ideas with customers back in the day.

[diiaann → aurareturn]

I completely agree with the above poster that Invision was trash at any real prototyping. When it came out, Axure and Justinmind had already had sophisticated control flow logic. It did have a sleeker commenting system and most people I knew were too lazy to make more robust prototypes.

[aurareturn → diiaann]

Invision was free and simple to use by non-full-time designers.

[uxcolumbo → aurareturn]

True. Primary use case was for easily sharing designs with your stakeholders. My comment was in the context of Figma.

But you could have achieved the same thing with Axure and if needed take it to the next level and add more interactivity beyond hot-mapping images.

[schkolne → uxcolumbo]

I did a lot of design-to-developer handoff with InVision back in the day. It was great, perhaps you missed it.

Before Figma multiplayer, it was a great way to formalize the handoff, starting from Sketch, structuring everything, selecting some boards, and then using Craft (I believe it was called) to upload things to InVision, and then have more discussion there.

The devs never saw design files, just these cleanly structured handoffs. We could have conversations over details, etc. Worked well for the teams I was on.

Now the constant sync'ing was a hassle, not as fluid as Figma but it was a lot more formalized then Figma where devs are always asking "is this ready to review". I didn't explore prototyping very much, which IMO is still a big unsolved problem for the industry.

So, from me, cheers to InVision, yes times changed, sad they couldn't be a part of it, but their product was very awesome for me back in the day. PLUS, they had such a beautiful beautiful UI for their design exploration tool, everything was lightweight and contextual, it continues to inspire me to this day.

[uxcolumbo → schkolne]

Thanks for your perspective - clearly shows Invision was useful depending on what your needs were.

Mine at the time was purely on prototyping and Axure / Framer met those needs at the time.

I don't know when Invision introduced the redlining features, but I remember our team used Zeplin.