Whimsical is a visual workspace application from the company of the same name in Denver, allowing users to create collaborative wireframes, mindmaps, flowcharts, and sticky notes.
Marvel is a very strong tool in scenarios where designers seek to quickly create simple prototypes on their desktops using a simple, intuitive interface. It offers “just enough” functionality to create somewhat realistic designs to present to stakeholders and other designers. However, there’s a limit to how “realistic” those designs can be, given that Marvel has somewhat limited functionality around animations. Marvel is not a strong option for those who want to create very complex prototypes with many animations, or for those who want to edit prototypes on their tablet or phone. Marvel is a jewel for simplicity but starts to be difficult to use when creating complicated designs. For creating more complicated prototypes, I would recommend a more robust tool, such as Axure.
This is my go-to mind mapping tool, and I use this both for business-related work and personal though organization and brainstorming. Can't think of any scenario where it is less appropriate, except for maybe, a larger enterprise where data confidentiality may be an issue.
I really miss being able to duplicate, make a copy of the prototype I'm working on. Sometimes, I want to make a comparison with detail changes and without being able to duplicate it is difficult.
Compared to other similar services, I feel the animations could be more fluid and smoother.
It could have more free sophisticated icons and images.
Whimsical is overall very easy to learn and remember. One issue with the usability occurs when you attempt to move connected boxes around the workspace. Frequently connections break or do not add easily, causing further disconnects. You can manually fix these issues, but it's a oprobem that seems would have an easy fix
I reached out to support, as I was interested in possibly investing in the organization, and they quickly and happily informed me they are a bootstrap organization and do not take on investors at this time. The swift response and information readily available for my consumption was extremely helpful and shows how solid the team behind it is.
Ultimately, InVision was just a better fit for our company's needs. It's probably faster to create prototypes using Marvel, but InVision's collaboration features (comments, notes, etc.) are much more robust, which was helpful for our large team spread across multiple continents. InVision also offers more advanced features, and Marvel felt a little too limited for our overall business needs.
Whimsical is so much easier and has a better interface, so I think it's more suited to our workflow if compared to other tools like Google Charts. I really love this tool and I'm looking to learn and use it even more, as it helps us optimize our time, planning, and delivering more efficiently.
