Figma, headquartered in San Francisco, offers their collaborative design and prototyping application to support digital product and UI development.
$15
per month per editor
Loom
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Loom is a screen recorder for Chrome, Mac, Windows, and iOS from the company of the same name in San Francisco, presented as quick to install, easy to use, and boasting a functional free edition.
Figma is a solid design tool to craft the UX design concepts/solutions for digital products. For printed marketing materials such as brochures, marketing flyers, press releases, etc, other design tools such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign might make more sense to use for those use case scenarios.
Loom is a must, I am not sure how many other tools like this one there are but Loom really becomes a key player in a team collaboration, specially if that team collaborates remotely or internationally. You can use the video links to embedded these in other places or downloadthem for editing
Loom is valuable for creating video tutorials and onboarding materials.
It allows trainers to record step-by-step instructions, share best practices, and provide visual demonstrations, facilitating the learning process for new employees or team members.
Sales teams can create personalized video pitches or product demonstrations to engage prospects effectively.
Collaborating between timezones and replacing meetings/ emails with quick videos.
Prototyping in Figma is pretty much nothing more than a glorified slide show. Sure, variables, etc are available but it takes way to long to set them up and even more time when there are revisions needed.
It would be helpful if there were a contextual help system for various functionality. For example, advanced autolayout (like space between) can become very tricky to implement sometimes. I often wish there were an AI assistant to ask for help. I often use ChatGTP to help me through these times.
Searching layers needs to be much easier and more intuitive.
I would like to be able to make groups like the layers palette in Photoshop. That would help with organization and speed a lot.
The still screenshot feature should let us edit/mark up the images.
I work on 3 X monitors and the desktop version of Loom still can't seem to know that I always want to record on the screen from which I open the app. Short of that, it should ask us what screen we want to record on instead of making us catch the fact that it's set to record on some other screen. This causes me to have to stop the recording and restart because it was recording the wrong screen.
You can't yet transfer a video seamlessly between workspaces. This causes you to have to download and then re-upload to the other workspace if you happen to work for numerous companies using Loom.
Figma is a pretty cool tool in many areas. My team almost uses it on daily basis, such as, brainstorming on product/design topics, discussing prototypes created by designers. We even use it for retrospectives, which is super convenient and naturally keeps records of what the team discusses every month. Furthermore, I do see the potential of the product - currently we mainly use it for design topics, but it seems it is also a good fit for tech diagrams, which we probably will explore further in the future.
It's easy to use for designers who are familiar with design terms and functions from Photoshop and Illustrator. However, non-tech and non-designer collaborators have a hard time figuring out how to leave comments and apply changes, compared to other online design tools like Canva and Squarespace. Even simple drag-and-drops and rearrangement of certain blocks become too complicated due to uncommon functions like Hug and Lock.
It's dirt easy for the one thing it does exceptionally well. If you think, "hmmm, I should make a quick screen capture of this thing on screen, you can start recording in seconds with almost no additional effort." Once you're done, the recording is automatically uploaded to your account site, and automatically creates a URL you can copy and share with your target audience. From IDEA to EXECUTION to DISTRIBUTION is literally seconds.
Loom is one of my favorite solutions and I've been a raving fan since they first launched. The value of quickly sharing videos in seconds is amazing. Our customers love it so much that they have even downloaded the Loom Chrome extension for their own use with their clients! It's so simple, and nothing else compares or competes.
I haven't used their support lately but in the past, they had a chat that I used often. They often responded in a few hours and were able to give a satisfactory solution. I would imagine it's less personal now but the community has expanded drastically so there are more resources out there to self serve with a bit of Google magic.
I use Loom for simple tasks. Never used customer support really. It's so simple to use. I haven't had any real issue with Loom which would require customer support to help me out. So I just put 5 because I don't know if the customer support is good or bad since I never used, so I'm kind of neutral.
In-person training has its own benefits - 1. It helps in resolving queries then and there during the training. 2. I find classroom or in-person training more interactive. 3. Classroom or in-person training could be more practical in nature where participants can have an hands on experience with tools and clarify their doubts with the trainer.
Online training has its own merits and demerits - 1. Sometimes we may face issues with connectivity or the training content 2. The way training is being delivered becomes very important because not everyone is comfortable taking online training and learning by themselves. 3. With the advancement of technology online training has become popular but there is a segment of people who still prefer class-room training over online one.
Figma compared to other tools has user friendly UI which is very easy for all levels of designers. Compared to Adobe XD and Sketch Figma is stable, while in other tools I have faced software crashing in the middle of the work which resulted in loss of data/design. Compared to other tools it's fast and shows less lag. Collaboration in Figma is very easy as it is cloud based but in XD it's not that smooth working with other designers.
When we evaluated the alternatives, Loom was by far the most advanced tool, with multiple types of integrations. Additionally, Loom also provided a Free plan, which made it easy to consider as an alternative. Vidyard and similar tools integrated better with certain other tools (Vidyard + HubSpot), but Loom had better overall integrations with most tools we use.
Loom has increased my efficiency and value to clients so much. I save a ton of time by being able to send them video recordings walking through their website rough drafts and final tutorials.
Loom is incredibly affordable. I am satisfied with their subscription cost.
Loom has helped me communicate clearly to clients, so there's less room for error/misunderstanding (especially when talking about design decisions).
