InVision is a collaborative design and prototyping platform with features such as freehand drafting mode and interactive mockups, collaboration, idea management, user testing, and integration with Slack and other collaboration tools. According to the vendor, 1 million designers are using the free version.
$0
Mural
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) from Tactivos (DBA MURAL) in San Francisco is described by the vendor as a digital workspace and visual collaboration tool, designed for creative teams to make the process of design more efficient for distributed teams, working remotely.
I have had an experience of working with all the three above mentioned tools--Miro, InVision, and Lucidchart--and I can confidently say that MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) beats all these three tools when it comes to performing any kind of online collaboration activities, which …
InVision is well suited for design reviews and immersing yourself in the experience of an app-to-be. As a Product Manager, it's difficult to take abstract concepts, user pain points, and business needs, and produce a vision for an app without a visual aid to communicate a vision. InVIsion offers PMs, designers, and developers the opportunity to sketch a vision, communicate about it with inline commenting, and shareable with other stakeholders.
I've recommended MURAL to a lot of people in a lot of fields. This is a great tool for any group of people that might stand around a white board if they were in person. Even if they are in person, I still recommend it pretty often because, unlike a white board, MURAL is virtual, so it can go offline with you. I've recommended it to other Software Teams, individual software developers, engineering teams, Sales Managers, Office Staff, Manufacturing teams, and more.
enables easy for all collaboration especially in the hybrid environment
makes brainstorming better as users can create digital sticky notes, draw diagrams, and add images to visually represent concepts and ideas
it helps to visualize data effectively - users can create charts, graphs, and diagrams to present data-driven insights to team members and stakeholders
Overall, MURAL is really easy to use, but there are a couple downsides. It's really easy to make areas of the board consistent because double clicking adds stickies that match those around the current one. It's really easy to connect the elements. And it's really easy to organize elements. Inconsistent controls, Panning, Line Connections, and latency are the only issues I had. My biggest issue is that the MURAL mouse buttons are very different from most similar software. This always causes me problems switching to a graphics software or 3D modelling software. Because MURAL uses the same button to pan and move elements, it's really easy to move things when panning around. The lines can also be a (sometimes huge) problem because thew will occasionally disappear or connect to things incorrectly. I think this is tied to latency issues which, in addition to causing phantom lines, can sometimes cause confusion to your team.
I didn't need to contact InVision support, as I've never needed it. They have an intuitive UI, and most of the questions are answered in their help portal or in tutorials online. Since many people use it, there a great resources available on for example YouTube. No problems so far with InVision.
We only tested out using Adobe XD for similar uses and found it to be more challenging to fit within our processes. It didn't have as robust a set of capabilities as InVision and wasn't as easy to use enterprise wide. I recall also having issues with working with Sketch.
Mural was easier to use and share compared with Whiteboard. Whiteboard's functionality is limited. It is also integrated into Teams in an odd way that makes it difficult for team members to refer to old whiteboards. Mural as a stand alone web app is better.
InVision helps our team better and more professionally portray the value and the work we do as designers, leading to more company buy-in in supporting and funding our work. In the past, we would create PowerPoints with screenshots to portray a user workflow that we would share out to stakeholders. Once we began to use this app, where stakeholders could click through and comment as though they were “real” users, stakeholders began to better understand our work, designs, and workflows. This has led to more productive conversations that, in turn, lead to more effective end products that have more consistently served our business goals in tangible ways.
InVision helps us save production time, effort, and cost, as we are able to solve design issues early in the process by having clickable prototypes to show to internal stakeholders and external users. It’s, understandably, difficult for people to provide effective feedback on screenshots. Using the clickable prototypes we created in InVision, we are able to get more effective feedback to solve user workflow issues before we spend time and money developing problematic designs (and later having to redesign them).
It’s easier to market designs to potential buyers with clickable prototypes than with screenshots. With these prototypes, we’ve been able to sell more digital products before product release dates, which has helped to secure many contracts and new business relationships that continue to this day.
