Figma, headquartered in San Francisco, offers their collaborative design and prototyping application to support digital product and UI development.
$15
per month per editor
Microsoft Visio
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft offers Visio, a diagramming tool for building flowcharts, diagrams (e.g. network diagrams), org charts and floor plans, available online as a subscription and also in enterprise level packages (e.g. Visio Professional).
Microsoft Visio and Miro are both diagramming and visual collaboration tools, but they have some differences in terms of their capabilities and intended uses.One main difference between the two is the range of diagram types that they support. Microsoft Visio is primarily …
A solo developer or small team that wants to integrate development, feature planning and ui design in a single app can find a lot of value in using Figma, since the FigJam whiteboard and UI editor are in the same app. Business plans and software features can be mapped out on FigJam and then implemented in the UI editor, that way there is reduced context switching and teams can operate smoothly without having to toggle between multiple apps.
Given the versatility and diversity of the diagrams that can be created with Microsoft Visio, we use this tool for the most diverse activities. With our students, we use it to organize group activities and manage the tasks that everyone has to complete. In research groups, we use it to divide tasks and create organization charts. For research activities, especially the more complex ones carried out, for example, in PhD programmes, the diagrams allow us to display all the work phases graphically.
As a visual designer, I spend 90% of my working time in Figma. So, as a design tool, Figma is mature and feature-rich. It covers all the basic needs and provides extras, such as simple prototyping and the ability to use external plugins.
Collaboration: It’s very easy to work together on the same file in Figma. You can easily brainstorm together or use Figma as a shared screen.
Smartness of components: Figma provides many adaptability options for components that allow building very flexible and scalable layouts.
Visio comes with icons that can help differentiate processes within a map. These can be used to be a legend and helps create a visually appealing flow.
Visio is user-friendly and allows the user to easily navigate through the different creative options that can be used.
Because this is a Microsoft product, Visio works well with other Microsoft products for easy translation.
Access control - it wasn't apparent to me at first that a project was shared with everyone in the company vs just people i choose to share it with. I think the inverse should be the default.
Sometimes it struggles to import old sketch files - no clue how to make this better, but its frustrating
For me personally I cannot highlight anything specific that has any bearing on how I use the product. Everything is very straightforward and clearly signposted including template desgins and categories. The layout is easy to navigate and as it's part of the MS Office ecosystem means there is less to learn as I'm used to a lot of the cross product functionality.
We use Microsoft Visio to keep our diagrams updated and to that end we will need the subscription to keep using the software. Otherwise we will be left with PDF versions of the diagrams.
It's so simple to use! I have no background in UI design but basic designing and I was able to learn this software Figma within 3-5 days. There are tons of tutorials available on Youtube from so many popular YouTubers in the space, you can just go through them and start designing.
Some things that I think should be easy to do are not, at least not for a beginner user. I'm sure it's easy once you get the hang of it but the two main issues I have with Visio are the connecting of different states and searching for graphics/icons after you have chosen a starting template.
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.
Overall, I feel that Microsoft's support is weak. They are now such a behemoth that their model of putting documentation online for their users to sift through is totally outgrown. Given the amount of money you pay for these licenses, Microsoft should provide easy one-on-one support for their products via email or chat. The idea of paying their rates for support incidents is ridiculous. If you have an enormous amount of time on your hands, use their support websites and you will eventually find a solution most of the time.
Much more intuitive, Adobe XD fails to keep up with the newest market changes thus it did not let us stay on top of the technology. The big plus of Figma is that the majority of our clients worked with it, whereas it was not the case with Adobe XD. You can get similar results working with both, but the process will be different in Figmas favour
Even though it’s a more expensive solution, Vizio is built for the enterprise. Therefore, it integrates perfectly with our existing Microsoft stack, and quite frankly, because it’s such a more mature product, it provides exactly the functionality we need and expect.
Visio diagrams have help us streamline processes that reduce costs and improve efficiencies.
It is a very complete program, it allows you to make industrial and civil works diagrams. It also allows you to design 3D graphics. It is a very reliable program.
Its ability to work with vectors is a big plus. It can easily import SVG graphics, edit their individual lines and then being able to export the edited SVG again.
