Scratching many itches—some areas better than others
Updated December 07, 2022

Scratching many itches—some areas better than others

Bumhan YU | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Freehand Enterprise

Overall Satisfaction with InVision Freehand

Share the working design development in progress with stakeholders for discussion. Have an easy-to-use, cloud-based, real-time brainstorming and collaboration platform. Have a centralized place for collecting and archiving a variety of documents and assets. Collect product requirements and specs before starting a project Deliver annotated design specs and interactions to the engineers Have a regularly updated live document and a retro board
  • Realtime collaboration and brainstorming
  • Bringing in external resources like a Figma or Sketch, and keeping them in sync
  • Collecting comments/feedback in a thread directly and visually in context
  • Integration with Figma is rather minimal. Key features like inspecting design specs and embedding prototypes are completely missing.
  • Browsing between spaces and viewing files across them can be done differently. In the absence of proper breadcrumb and/or global navigation, it takes work to navigate and is often disorienting.
  • I'd like to see the "Space Overview" editing mode evolving a bit. Perhaps along the line of other tools like Notion or Coda. I understand it's not a core feature of InVision Freehand, but would be a nice bonus.
  • Real-time collaboration & online whiteboard
  • Figma integration — missing features: inspect style details, prototype import...
  • DSM — missing features: click-to-copy style values, custom layout, custom URL
  • Figma is the internal design tool of choice, and the limited integration with Figma makes it rather difficult to justify the usage of InVision. Many of the design process features—e.g. prototyping, comment threading, freehand whiteboarding, etc—are already baked in in Figma, while certain InVision-specific features can also be accessed via another tooling (e.g Google Drive, Google Doc, etc).
For real-time collaboration and whiteboarding Comparable to Mural and Miro Better and more flexible than Figma For written documentation: Different features and more limited than Google Doc Similar to Notion in editing experience but more limited in features For creating flowcharts, diagrams, and wireframes: Lucidchart can be more practical for standard flowcharts Balsamiq can be more feature-rich, but I prefer InVision's simpler approach InVision Freehand might be a more practical tool for wireframing than Figma or Lucidchart—unless reaching for Balsamiq. As a generic diagramming/drawing tool, Figma is more robust and feature complete. For sharing design artifacts and gathering feedback: Comparable to Figma and Zeplin Figma integration is rather limited, unlike the fuller feature support for Sketch. For scrapping/archiving a variety of resources Comparable to Miro in terms of visual embedding (e.g. visual assets, PDFs, etc) Different purposes than Google Drive: less file repository and more visual pinboard. --- Freehand does a lot of things that many other apps do to a different degree, while not fully specializing in one thing. It's a whiteboard, wireframing tool, discussion tool, and design tool—doing a better job in some areas than others. Certainly helps close gaps between work areas, but not 100% scratching the itch.

Do you think Freehand by InVision delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Freehand by InVision's feature set?

No

Did Freehand by InVision live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Freehand by InVision go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Freehand by InVision again?

No

Good: Gathering feedback and continuing discussion on design artifacts. Providing design annotations and specs along with design deliverables. Collaborate in realtime and brainstorm freehand Putting together quick wireframes or other sketches Less appropriate: Collecting a variety of types of data content, documents, and files (probably better suited for Google Apps, Notion, Dropbox) Directly accessing design specs from Figma and its prototypes (probably better done natively in Figma, or via other spec tools like Zeplin)

Evaluating InVision Freehand and Competitors

  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Prior Experience with the Product
The project stakeholders within the company who need access to InVision are in three big categories—designers (who led the purchase decision), engineers, and product managers. Given the different level of technical skills and preference in tooling, we needed something very intuitive and visually straightforward in terms of UI and organization. Since we primarily intended this to be brainstorming, feedback gathering, and artifact archiving purposes, the support for external links and real-time whiteboarding was very much appealing.