Balsamiq vs. iRise

Balsamiq is a great tool for quickly getting ideas into visual form. At first it seems like there are not that many UI assets, but this constraint actually adds to the speed. There are less things for you to fuss over, you can focus on getting your ideas down. This is a tool for lofi rough drawings not a tool for building beautiful prototypes for developers to code to. It is fantastic for ideation because you mostly just drag and drop components onto the canvas and move things around. It's great in a live workshop setting for that reason.

Incentivized

I can keep up with our UX/UI designer using iRise, and he's on a Mac and loves the Sketch, inVision software. I often trump him, by having all the direct customer feedback in place. This also works well with Pragmatic Marketing's approach to software. Requirements can be coded in line with Pragmatic's Strategy to Tactical framework. Love this software!

Incentivized

• Easy to use
• Produces good quality mock ups and prototypes
• Mock ups are obviously only just mock ups (this is important as if users see mock-ups in HTML, for example, they tend to think the system is ready to use or not far off)
• Has a good selection of standard shapes that mock real world fields / controls
• Allows not for profit organisations use it for free

Incentivized

• Recently my client has to have hovers as an enhancement to the current app. I used irise to show them how it would look in the future and they didn't like it. Finally because of the irise wireframe they decided not to have the hover - which was good before it was too late.
• Client wanted a new interface to import Excel docs into the interface. I used irise to prototype the whole functionality.
• Irise has helped reduce discussion times a lot.

Incentivized

• The sketch-like style can be off-putting to some stakeholders, and it’s not initially very clear that there is the option to turn this “off.” While I do think there is benefit to the default style, knowing from the start that this flexibility existed would have helped us be able to use this tool more often in the past and in different situations.
• There are very limited collaborative functionalities. When it’s early in the design process, it’s often really helpful to have a number of people in the design to offer in-app feedback so the designer doesn’t have the burden of collecting feedback from many disparate sources in order to incorporate the feedback.
• There are limited UI elements. As design evolves, there are more and more UI elements to consider, and many to stop using. Our Balsamiq wireframes would be a lot more effective in communicating design ideas to stakeholders if there was a wider range of UI elements to choose from.

Incentivized

• When working on a complex page that has multiple sections with multiple views of each sections, it gets difficult to navigate to the section you want. It would be easier if there was a search functionality for searching the sections or components within the page.
• Drag and drop controls to have more properties. e.g. for a button. It would be easier if the properties included BorderStyle, BorderWidth, Color, BackColor etc. Currently, these options are not available on the properties and we have to use the formatting tool bar.

Incentivized

I'm not sure how else we would be able to complete our work without Balsamiq or another similar tool. All of my experience with Balsamiq has been positive and they continue to develop new features so that my job gets easier. I would be very surprised if we didn't renew Balsamiq

Incentivized

This platform solves the problem that enterprise software sales teams encounter, and iRise cuts to the chase. Sales people often say "do your magic thing with the prototype" and the customer gives immediate feedback, we change it on the fly

Incentivized

Very intuitive and easy to understand. It only takes minutes to get the hang of it and get back to work. For new analysts (like, brand new, fresh out of school) it's not difficult and they need minimal to no hand-holding. The training content that is embedded is easy to find and use.

Incentivized

We haven't had to use the support feature yet

Incentivized

Creating digital wireframes in Photoshop is a nightmare. Photoshop was not really designed for this purpose. It doesn't have good collaboration options and it doesn't allow pattern libraries, which are essential for consistency and efficiency. We use UXPin and Axure for some time, but found that these platforms were a bit bloated. Balsamiq is much simpler than any of these options. It's a perfect wireframing platform for non-designers or for designers that want to focus on content and element-placement prior to design

Incentivized

We have used iRise instead of tools like Word, Excel, Visio, and other diagram tools found online. iRise is good because I think it captures the good parts of all these packages into one. I am able to easily create diagrams and mockups in one software package instead of cobbling together a bunch of other solutions.

Incentivized

• The product works very well for showing product owners and developers design ideas for purposes of discussion, debate and refinement.
• The products also works very well for specifying new designs for developers. This is best done in a series of screens that show various screen states and user interactions.
• I also use the products to document bugs in software products and websites we have developed. This includes outlining and documenting bugs and changes to user interactions and refinements to the usability of completed interfaces and user experiences.

Incentivized

• iRise allowed us to generate a very high fidelity mockup based on extensive business requirements gathered from stakeholders.
• This excellent mockup resulted in us being awarded a very large multi-year contract from a major corporation.

Incentivized