Box vs. Freehand by InVision

I think Box is great for research teams or anyone that has a large number of files that need to be securely stored. Particularly in the case of social science research, where it is important to protect identifying data, Box is a great option. In cases where teams need a more reliable means for real-time collaboration, I would probably consider a different alternative

InVision Freehand has quickly evolved to be a very robust solution for our pre-design process and collaboration with stakeholders and other product teams. It has brought a lot more hands-on workshopping opportunities and created engaging spaces for cross functional teams. Internally to our design org we are able to prototype ideas faster and generate insights or changes BEFORE going into more hi-fidelity design tools or processes.

Incentivized

• The main feature that I like the most in Box is that it makes collaboration seamless, workers can easily check the documents any time and make changes according to the needs.
• Box manages and backs up all of your files on its cloud servers, and provides a very nice interface for creating, viewing, editing, and collaborating on the most commonly used file types (PDF, XLS, DOC, etc.).
• Over the past few years, Box has built on top of its basic cloud storage management with a host of other tools, such as workflows, AI, monitoring, and analytics.
• It is helping us to make good connections with clients and our workers themselves as to its syncing and viewing feature to all is very much helpful and easy to go.

Incentivized

• Bring in and embed external files and view them on the board without having to move out of freehand. eg. pdf's, power point, youtube etc.
• Creating wireframes, flow maps, all and any kinds of created art boards to share with team members.
• Ability to create text and link to external sites
• Can format and create pages with text and bullet points right in freehand, rather than having to go to another software to do the same.
• Collaborate with Team members all on the same board and project at the same time and get feedback live in a meeting and/or even later.
• Love the different templates that have been provided for me to use as a starting point.

Incentivized

• The graphic design of the dashboard should be simpler and more tangible that can be changed to the liking of the Admin.
• Sometimes there are some syncing issues in the background.
• The product has very limited functionality in some areas which could be a bit frustrating at times.

Incentivized

• The resolution: Our webpage designs always pass the resolution threshold to where freehand starts to work its compression. During presentations, it can be a little embarrassing when we can't read the copy because it looks like potatoes.
• Embedding videos: GIFs are only good to a certain point, and creating Vimeo embeds is tedious. I wish I could embed MP4s or web assets a lot quicker.
• Touchpad panning: I can't tell you how many times I've "gone back" in my browser when I'm just trying to pan across the freehand. Has honestly made me wanna force quit on many occasions.
• Sticky notes and text in shapes: Overall, it's really hard to use the sticky notes and text inside rectangles without the text just getting all over the place. It's different sizes, it gets too tiny, it gets way too big, and overall, it just doesn't look professional, even with a lot of fussing.
• No ability to crop/mask an image. Nice to have, but sometimes we just need to delete a chunk off a screenshot, and it requires opening PS or taking a screenshot to edit anything.
• Wish there was a way to have "internal comments" that are not visible to our clients.

Incentivized

I like the security features and I like the website. It's easy to use and create and move things around as needed. The main reason for a lower rating is because the Box Sync app is just not a good program. It's a memory hog, it's slow, transfer speeds are slow, and it's not the most efficient route. If you have a large Box account and you need to get a computer up to speed on a large amount of data within Box, you are in for the long haul. Last time I had to do this, it took 3 days to sync all of the files and we are talking around 100 GB worth of data

Honestly as in any organization it's up to budget. I feel like every organization I go to I'm constantly striving to keep InVision as part of the main funded tools used by the team especially in a remote environment. I feel there is a push to move to Figma and Zooms new white boarding tool but I'm still not a fan of Zoom's tool. Microsoft also created a white boarding tool which has been buggy.

Incentivized

Everything with Box is seamless. It can be integrated into virtually any other software or application. You can even get the app for your phone or tablet to work on the go. File syncing is so quick. The only reason I gave it a 9 is the issue I discussed earlier about the local file application rebooting and not continuing to sync files. Other than that, it's great!

Incentivized

Color Selection can be tricky when changing colors for shapes and text I've seen other users struggle with creating sticky notes and getting text to fit in the box properly and had to abandon the tool for a workshop for this reason After having a demo, I learned of new features I wasn't using. I don't know it would have been intuitive to find on my own.

Incentivized

Yeah, it's always worked, I've never had any kind of connection issues, the only issues I've had it I've been on our end when the Internet hasn't worked.

Incentivized

For availability, we never have to even think about whether inVision Freehand is going to be available for us to work with. There has never been a time when we have opened up the application and had any issues of any kind. I can't imagine why anyone would work with a platform that is unreliable. inVision Freehand is realibel, stable, and getting better all the time. Whether it's their built-in tools or the expanding of Templates to work with Freehand has been a reliable go-to platform for us.

Incentivized

The general operation and management of Box is very efficient, both when accessing the account, and when adding files, downloading or modifying any document directly. The web platform, mobile and desktop versions work really well and quickly, making all the work and process flow smoothly and without setbacks. So far I have not been able to observe any inconvenience

Incentivized

It is a little slow when bringing artboards from Sketch to Freehand using Craft. I have had some issues loading and redrawing pages when I have a lot of images on my freehand board. It gives me an error message while I am in the file and starts to reload and redraw all the photos again. Not sure if it has a limit on how many images it can handle on a board at a time.

Incentivized

I found their support community lacking in clarity when I experienced a login issue. The error messaging was poor on my Box Sync application. I did not reach out to support staff for help, instead, I reasoned that I should try downloading the Box Sync application again and reinstall it. That fixed my issue, thankfully. I think a less computer-savvy user would've been much more frustrated.

Incentivized

I haven't had to use the support team for anything, which is great news because that means the product usually works as expected! In terms of online support, I've been able to find videos that show how new features work. Also, many of the people I work with have experience with the tools so they are a great resource for me.

Incentivized

The in person training was done in house and I helped with the training, people seem to respond well.

Incentivized

The documentation is good. Since Box is a popular service, there were also a number of YouTube videos and other sources that were helpful as we were considering the product and planning for deployment. Also, the ability to try the free version helped to prepare us.

Be careful with settings. It is easy to get overwhelmed with updates. For example, you don’t want to be updated when doing historical data uploads. I recommend taking off notifications initially and then turn on post you have done your historical data upload.

The implementation is pretty much easy-peasy and plug-n-play. We simply download the applications and install, signed in and were good to go. I really cannot imagine that there would be anyone who would have any difficulty whatsoever in getting started in more than just a few minutes. It's really how implementing these officewide improvements should always go.

Incentivized

They are kind of the same. And both of them do their job as promised. But for company and project wise I think that Box slightly wins for some points. Which [makes him] win over Google Drive (don't forget that Google Drive is very easy to use and has a lot [of] nice features too).

Miro (formerly Realtime Board) is the original product concept for this tool and I used it for 3-4 years for product development. Invision is aesthetically a carbon copy of the tool but lacks in fine usability controls. We actually didn't choose Freehand, it just came as an added tool under our Invision subscription. It's helpful but knowing the previous tool, it's been a hard sell because it's just not as good. Again, it's really fine tuned usability things like navigation, zoom, switching from tool to tool, selecting and deselecting, etc

Incentivized

Getting set up with inVision Freehand was super simple. We figured how many of our team members were going to be using it and we set up our account knowing that. There were no negotiations, contract hassles or anything that would have been a waste of our time, efforts or resources.

Incentivized

It's great, as we put more files on there it's done very well.

Incentivized

Not everyone in the company has access to Invision, and they can't view the links I provide to them. I also wish everyone could view a file without logging in to the enterprise account. It comes in handy when I am doing focus-group studies or other studies with our customers that don't have Freehand. Unfortunately, if that is possible, I don't know how to do that.

Incentivized

We didn't use an outside vendor - that's why I gave this option a 10.

Incentivized

• Box has been an only positive experience. It provides a seamless way for me and my team to collaborate on documents in such a way where we're not sending the document back/forth via email. It's a huge timesaver.
• Box reduces the risk of sharing a sensitive document to the wrong person via email.
• Box has provided a platform where my team can share notes in meetings - this has helped streamline and organize our meetings. Our meetings are more productive and actionable.

Incentivized

• Positives all around. Everyone is able to see and collaborate.
• Granting access is sometimes a pain. Sending the link does not always work, and I get emails as people try to access boards.
• No negatives really, I love learning all of the different ways it can be used.

Incentivized