Balsamiq vs. Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite vs. SmartDraw

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.

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Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite is effective for process documentation and knowledge sharing across teams. For us, we used it to map out individual roles and specific tasks within each role to create clear and visual workflows that others can follow at any time. A key scenario where it works well in our business for business continuity during absences another colleague can pick up the role by following the process on Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite with minimal disruption. The visual diagrams are easy to understand and a written document.

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I believe SmartDraw is a great tool for small- to mid-sized organizations for simplifying the production and management of org charts. We've also had the PMO experiment with the use of some of their flow charts as well. If an organization has an HCM with the capability of producing (good!) org charts, that is likely the best option... but many that I have used in my 30-year HR career don't. So there is definitely a need for SmartDraw in the market!

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• 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

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• Large number of predefined charts, diagrams, flows
• A great repository of various symbols and objects
• The easiness of using and manipulating objects and shapes. There is a lot of auto-editing and adjusting which the software does for you which saves a lot of your time.
• Easy way of duplicating shapes.
• While working with the app everything feels organic and natural. You don't get the clunky/limited feeling which happens with some other similar apps.

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• Provides examples to work off of--these are helpful when you don't know exactly where to start.
• Provides a number of stylistic options without making things too complex, so you can be creative without getting overwhelmed.
• Provides a wide variety of templates, meets a wide variety of needs.

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• 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.

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• The sign in page could use some help. When I first signed up, it was really difficult to login, unless I was logged into the perfect Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite software. It doesn’t seem to have a route to get people to the right place if you’re in the wrong place.
• It’s nearly impossible to move content off of the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite if you’re looking to get your content into a different platform.
• Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite requires frequent updates and refreshes of the pages (at least daily).

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• A month-to-month plan would be ideal for users that don't have a need to create many projects
• The sidebar navigation can be a little confusing with all of the tools listed.
• Offering customizable plans with only the feature you need would simplify navigation

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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

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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.

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The usability of Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite is bar none and incomparable to any other tool used in the past. There is such a vast offering that covers all the needs of any user in industries far and wide. It is no doubt that this is a firm recommendation for anyone and everyone to utilize this tool for all their needs.

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I rated 8 because its simple to use and easy to create network topologies quickly. I liked the drag and drop option which makes designing the network topology and flow chart easier. In general its does what it needs to.

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We haven't had to use the support feature yet

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I reached out about being able to access Linear through their new acquisition partner, and they kept pointing me to the same article even though I told them it wasn't giving me the information I needed. I asked for a meeting with a CSM and they didn't reach out to help. I've also tried to contact some PM friends to give feedback, but no one seems to care

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They are always very helpful, we get computers every two years and I have to call them to move the license from one computer to another and they do it with a smile in their voice!

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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

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Lucidchart is well beyond Microsoft Visio and is constantly improving. Visio is pretty much stagnant and hasn't been improved for several years, Lucid is constantly adding new functionality like AI powered functions and tools. We have no reason to pay for Visio licenses when Lucid can provide so much more for less.

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We have used Corel Draw and Adobe Acrobat. Both of those tools were good when they came out but the abilities of SmartDraw far outweigh both those tools. Corel Draw was also more complex to operate and do tasks, as was Adobe Acrobat in which some basic tasks took additional steps to complete.

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• 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.

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• Though I can't necessarily provide hard numbers, I can confidently say that Lucidchart has saved countless hours for myself and my teams as we don't need to try to develop some type of complex diagram using markup or any kind of code.
• I have previously been able to build a complete ERD using Lucidchart in a past position, which the company never had before. It ended up being used by countless teams in the company and ultimately in a large-scale data stack migration effort.

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• SmartDraw has provided good return for our internal purposes. Using it to understand an organization's structure and inner workings has been valuable. On the client side, creating steps and businesses processes has also been a big plus. It has helped decrease confusing reporting structures and has provided a detailed map for individuals to understand where they fit within their organization.
• Unfortunately, SmartDraw has been somewhat inefficient with some of the more complex projects on our plate and has really deterred certain employees from even wanting to use it.

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