Abstract vs. Thomson Reuters HighQ

• Large teams with dedicated design operations support
• UX managers that want a facilitated workflow for their teams
• Disciplined teams of individual contributors that want to adopt a process in their UI workflow
• Cross-discipline teams that want a central collaboration space for reviewing and critiquing UI artifacts
• If your files are named "FOR-REALS_FINAL_FINAL_FINAL_Super-Important-Project (copy).sketch"
• If you're managing multiple pattern libraries

Incentivized

HighQ Collaborate is well suited to situations where a law firm maintains numerous documents for a client and the client needs access to them on a regular basis. For example, we may store the client's minute book (which is relatively common for a large corporate law firm to do), but the client may need access to documents in that minute book on a regular basis. Likewise, we have an internal system at the firm for hosting digital versions of closing books, however, many clients would not have a similar system because they would only receive closing books irregularly. USBs get lost and the client might not want to put the closing book on the main server where anyone can access it. By putting the closing book on the extranet site, the individuals in the client's organization who should be able to access the closing book can do so.

Incentivized

• Versioning for desginers
• Collaboration between team members

Incentivized

• Document sharing. This product makes it easy to upload, review and organize documents related to a particular project or matter.
• Permissions. Collaborate allows very granular permissions to be assigned for shared documents and administrative activities such as workflows.
• Reliability. The product is cloud-based and rarely, if ever, unavailable.

Incentivized

• Asset exports are not as great as Zeplin and others.
• Filtering within files.

Incentivized

• It is just not that exciting. We host documents on there for clients but the extranet sites have ultimately turned out to not be a product that our clients are clamoring for or that we are regularly pushing.

Incentivized

Abstract has a difficult learning curve. If a feature-branch workflow is new to you, then it will take some getting used to. They make a lot of updates to the interface and these feature releases get ahead of their documentation. They rely heavily on an excellent customer support team and are present on various Slack channels to help design professionals with issues.

Incentivized

Abstract by nature is complex and has to respond to whatever changes in Sketch. So there are frequent issues. Support can be slow to respond and are not always helpful, but they are quick to find and patch the bugs. Overall, it's not the best support, but it hasn't been detrimental.

Incentivized

The interface is easy to use and overall the software seems pretty robust (I haven't had any crashes yet), so I haven't had to use the support very often. Likewise, I don't think I've ever had a client e-mail me with questions or issues - the software is pretty idiot-proof.

Incentivized

I purchased and administer Abstract. It was requested by our design department who evaluated it.

Incentivized

I feel that HighQ does not really have any real competition in this space because it simply accomplishes its goals far better than the competition at lower cost, while requiring less training and administration.

Incentivized

• Single source of truth for the team.
• Could quickly get expensive with corporate accounts.

Incentivized

• Permits fairly simple administration by a single person for hundreds of Extranets
• One shop stopping for reliable, secure document sharing and signing with external parties
• Simple enough to use that internal and external users do not need training to take advantage of the product.

Incentivized