TrustRadius Insights for Freehand by InVision are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Business Problems Solved
InVision Freehand has proven to be a valuable tool for various use cases, as reported by users, reviewers, and customers. Its low learning curve and real-time collaboration capabilities make it ideal for running UX workshops and collaborating with different teams. The software serves as a hub for UI/UX designers, developers, project and product managers, and key stakeholders to access visual design assets and details. It bridges the collaboration gap for remote teams, providing a space to add to the pool of meaning and align stakeholders. Additionally, InVision Freehand is frequently used in the early brainstorming and prototype phases to quickly collaborate and share ideas with the team. It facilitates clear communication of requirements between clients and the development team, reducing the scope for misunderstanding. Moreover, it serves as a centralized place for collecting and archiving documents and assets, collecting product requirements, and delivering annotated design specs. With its virtual whiteboard feature, InVision Freehand is valuable for remote brainstorming sessions and documenting business problems. Users appreciate the wireframe elements provided by InVision Freehand for customizing and building products efficiently. The software has been praised for its regular updates and enhanced functionality that brings value to designers' work. Overall, InVision Freehand is widely used across disciplines for collaboration, ideation activities, wireframing, project planning, design critiques, and much more.
We use InVision to review mockups that are provided by our UX Team. Developers use the mockups to develop solutions to resolve business pain points that need to be resolved.
Pros
Allows you to scroll through separate designs
Allows you to add comments to designs
Allows you to organize designs on the left panel
Cons
The login process could be easier but that may be related to the work setup
Likelihood to Recommend
InVision works well for designs that have different development components that need to be highlighted.
I use InVision Freehand primarily for wireframes for our products to show our developers what we want the product to show. We use it at an elementary level as we do not do extensive things within InVision Freehand. While InVision Freehand is a good product I feel like it could be better suited for users like myself who find it difficult to navigate when trying to find specific tools to use (for example: blurring customer information out, or highlighting an area of focus.) I find that InVision Freehand lacks certain tools that other products use. It's almost like InVision Freehand was designed with a minimalistic approach, and while I appreciate that in theory, this is something that needs more details.
Pros
Easy to upload a screenshot
Easy to use whiteboard
Sticky Notes
Most important- Collaboration
Cons
The tool bar needs to be improved.
Minimalistic is nice, but I think it needs to be expanded.
I wish you could tag co-workers somehow.
Likelihood to Recommend
InVision Freehand works really well for collaboration which is why our company started using it as we sometimes have multiple Business Analysts working on one wireframe at a time. It works well for wireframes and what we want the product to have.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Product Management (5001-10,000 employees)
I use Invision to manage and creative direct designers within my organization. I primarily use it to view their rough drafts and provide feedback within the app.
Pros
Allows for easy commenting and feedback
Alignment and organization
Text styling
Shape creating
Cons
Grid use and organization of design
Layer organization
Likelihood to Recommend
I love InVision Freehand for it's easy-to-use interface. It does the job well for me to provide feedback to artists. It could, however, have a better use of grid and structure so each document can be easily organized visually.
InVision Freehand is used in our organisation for doing a brainstorm sessions within the internal teams so we can quickly communicate with each other. It also helps the design team in generating the wireframes or discussing our flows with the product managers and it has been very helpful to us because it is a tool that anybody can use without any knowledge to use.
Pros
Wireframes
Brainstorming about the product flow
1 place for us to see everything
Cons
Notes (sticky) are distracting
It seems that you can not select a board from any position to drag it, you have to click on the left corner only
It does not detect the shapes created by marker
Likelihood to Recommend
In the brainstorming sessions when many people dive into a call, we earlier used to lose context because the conversation would divert, so in such cases it works excellently. Also, when we revisit to any project after a while to see what we did and why and when, InVision Freehand helps in giving the context and the boards too.
I use it for brainstorming, user flows, journey maps, and research affinity mapping. It is used by product managers, developers, engineers, designers, and researchers. It is how we collaborate and is useful for gaining consensus.
Pros
I like the templates; they give lots of options that I hadn't even thought of. They also save a lot of time.
The boards make it easier to organize content.
I love that you can increase the size of the font by pulling and dragging.
Cons
The limited number of sticky note colors is really annoying. We need more colors for affinity mapping.
Sometimes it takes forever for images to load. Sometimes they never load. Why does it take so long?
I often get connecting lines/arrows when I don't want them. I'm just trying to move the sticky or the shape.
I'm going to mention it again because this is hugely important to me; please add more colors to the sticky notes.
Likelihood to Recommend
Our team uses Invision Freehand for planning out individual products - with user flows, journey maps, screen flows, brainstorming, and planning. These are created by designers and often shared with non-design team members. The boards are also used for research affinity mapping and reflection. Finally, we also use them for team social meetings for our book club, jeopardy, and other team games or activities.
VU
Verified User
Contributor in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
I use InVision Freehand to run affinity workshops for our internal teams. We can group research insights we've distilled and collaborate on solutions together.
Pros
Notes
Reactions
Easy drawing
Cons
Sometimes it's not easy to see who has collaborated on what pieces
Likelihood to Recommend
If you are trying to do something low fidelity or collaborate with the team on something, it works great. If you need more high-fidelity designs or a more structured collaboration environment, it might not be the best tool for you.
We use Freehand within our design team and with Product managers in a few different ways, primarily as a noodling and collaboration tool. Since most of the team is in different geographic locations and time zones, FH provides and easy collaborative space that is fun, easy and full of valuable features; both for new and power users. In addition, the UX team likes to use it as a planing space for user flows, design thinking exercises and early wireframes of our products.
Pros
Provides great templates for a multitude of activities, ceremonies and meeting objectives. Allowing team to save time and use proven methodologies.
Survey tools for design reviews and other feedback tools are easy to use and provide rapid direction and insights.
Presentation frames allows designers to have design Playgrounds and experiment freely yet rapidly clean up and show only the most relevant variants and design options.
Cons
The search function sometimes does not find the right files, particularly when naming conventions are not clear amongst a big group it can sometimes be challenging to find documents.
The archive/library can also be hard to visualize the complete set of files and experiments. Discovery and browsing can be challenging.
Notifications could be easier to follow as somethimes we receive a lot of notes and corrections and need an easy way to check off/close comments and notes.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
I collaborate with team members by creating and sharing product wireframes, research boards, educational material, product and component research findings and recommendations, flow maps, journey maps, etc. InVision Freehand addresses my ability to share my work online collaboratively with team members and receive comments and approvals since I work remotely. I have also been able to share boards for user research studies and focus group studies.
Pros
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.
Cons
Would like for Freehand to bring in Sketch files without having to use Craft as a plug-in. eg. like it does for Figma and XD files.
Likelihood to Recommend
I love collaborating and creating wireframes, concepts, etc., within InVision Freehand with remote teams. However, I would not use Freehand to prototype or create any hi-fi here.
It's a great way to collaborate remotely as well as share screens with the client and allow them to make notes
Pros
Flexible ideation
Easy sharing of numerous screens
Note-taking
Archiving ideas
Cons
Organization of large boards with many images
Load time
Sometimes frequent refreshing is needed to get things working again
Likelihood to Recommend
As a UI designer, it's great for sharing user flows with many screens, showing multiple options, and notating feedback right on the screens themselves. It's also good for collecting inspiration and ideas in a flexible format. Most of all, it allows my team to work in one file and have a single source of truth.
In such a large team, it is very important that we all have access to everything: designs, feedback... InVision allows us to have it all in one place. Also, this tool favors teleworking since no matter where we are, we are always connected. I think InVision is a must-have tool for large teams.
Pros
Organization
Live View
Loading time
Cons
to make the images look better
be able to upload gifs with fewer restrictions
Likelihood to Recommend
InVision freehand is a very good option for companies that have large teams working from different locations, thanks to this tool we can all be connected and keep up to date with any updates in the designs. However, I think InVision freehand sometimes falls short and does not let us upload some heavier designs.
