Freehand by InVision vs. Miro

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

For me, Miro works best for messy internal processes. One of the instances include there are updates in math guidelines or reorganizing how topics should flow. I can put everything on the board, drag things around, color code it, and suddenly everything actually makes sense. It's also a common interacting space for the team to think out loud. Keeps everyone aligned without different documents floating around. It has a downside too. When the board gets big and full of screenshots or reference files, it slows down and I have to wait for things for so long.

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

• Makes it easy to design and visualize different label hierarchies which keeps labelling rules unbiased and intact.
• It has unique unique feature where team members can jump onto same board, edit and comment in real time. Makes it efficient.
• Built in templates in Miro really helps in making quality board layouts fast making it easy to organize sections.
• Its infinite canvas never runs out. Helps me in mapping many interconnected topics or focusing on future model.

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

• Sticky notes cannot be easily resized. It would often be useful for them to transform into workspaces, because they become actual text content rather than just notes.
• Perhaps there is no option to sort the work boards according to specific criteria (such as alphabetical order or date).
• The various functions available should perhaps be explained clearly with a tooltip or something similar while you are working with the various tools. I often don't realise that certain things can be done.

Incentivized

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

I have advocate for the renew of Miro quite few times, however, it is not under my control as the decision is made in another team with their own budget. I would buy for my own entrepreneur projects (1-2 members) as I do know the value and work there 100%. So, I would pay out of my own pocket to get the value. However, If I wouldn't know the value it provides, it would be hard to decide with the current freemium features

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

Solid usability, we transitioned from Mural, so some of it is a learning curve from what we were used to in the prior tool. As previously mentioned, the scrolling feature and moving around the board is not as intuitive as I would like. Outside of that, the functionality seems to mee the expectations we have for a collaboration tool

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

I only give a 9/10 because of the speed at which it loads. I have never experienced issues with Miro logging me out early, or some other technical issue causing the program to crash, or even it just loading in perpetuity without ever actually coming up (unlike other programs such as SFDC). It take a minute for all of my boards to come up after I click on it in my favorites, but besides that, it's all good.

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

Sometimes it gets quite slow and there is a correlation between this and the size of the board. Hence we are trying to segment the boards based on product stages or projects so that the size doesn't go big. When you go from discovery to delivery on a simple board, it will get large and difficult to load, even crash or go white screen

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

We have never reached out to or contacted support because Miro's platform has been incredibly intuitive and user-friendly. The comprehensive resources available, such as tutorials, documentation, and community forums, have provided all the guidance we needed. The seamless integration with our existing tools and the reliability of the platform have ensured that we rarely encounter issues that require external assistance. This self-sufficiency has allowed us to focus more on our projects and collaboration without interruptions. Overall, our experience with Miro has been smooth and efficient, eliminating the need for additional support

Incentivized

There was a series of webinars which Miro hosted with our organization that went over the basics, then progressively became more advanced with additional sections. The instructors were knowledgeable, and provided examples throughout the sessions, as well as answered peoples' questions. There was ample time and experience on the calls to cover a range of topics. The instructors were also very friendly and sociable, as well as honest. Of course Miro isn't a "God-tool" that does absolutely everything, but the instructors were aware and emphasized the strengths where Miro had them and sincerely accepted feedback.

Incentivized

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

Easy to learn, Miro has a series of videos on YouTube that effectively taught this program to my team members and me. The program is drag-and-drop and works excellently. People pick up on how to use it efficiently, and it's great for organizing ideas more freely. This product is more challenging for some older audiences who are not accustomed to using a touchpad, but for most, it was very easy to use.

Incentivized

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

While not as feature rich to be honest as some of these focused tools, it still replaces a vast majority of them. It is enough to make it easily replace the listed tools if you wish to do so. This not only saves time pivoting between tools, but also money with licensing which is an easy sell to my management.

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

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

Maybe is possible now so... Could be useful to manage in some way source code for the projects? not to edit so when we make solutions with different components in MIro, maybe each component could redirect to the source code of this component

Incentivized

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

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

• We did a dynamic activity based on actionable insights from a research study that I conducted. It was great to see people interacting, and one of the proposals was successful, resulting in a 6 million (in local currency) contribution to the company!

Incentivized