Item: OmniGraffle
Rating: 7
Author: Matt Railey

Overall Satisfaction with OmniGraffle

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Omnigraffle for some basic early wire framing of applications and for creation of workflow diagrams. It's stencil libraries enable quick creation of diagrams and documents since you're not having to draw everything from scratch.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Creating diagrams and workflows
Creating Static Wire frame drawings
Creating Specification documentation for an application

Cons

There is no capability for creating prototype or interactions, I've starting moving away from using Omnigraffle for wire frames for this reason as there are other tools that accomplish this while enabling interactive features.
It is difficult to create charts
Stability isn't where I'd like it to be. Although I don't ever lose much work due to how MacOS autosaves regularly, I do see crashes and weird glitches more often than I do when using my other productivity tools.

Return on Investment

Omnigraffle isn't an expensive software tool, so there isn't really any negative from the perspective of raw cost. Thinking in terms of time spent using it on a project - what you create in omnigraffle will inevitably lead to a dead end. It's useful only as documentation. There are other tools like Sketch that integrate into prototyping software and can create useable visual assets for applications in addition to being able to create wireframes.

Alternatives Considered

Sketch

To sum up:

use Omnigraffle for diagraming or for quick wireframe drafting
use Sketch for more in-depth wireframing that you can then flesh out into a high fidelity mock-up, export assets for production, and integrate with prototyping tools like Proto.io and UXPin.

Other Software Used

Adobe Photoshop, Proto.io, UXPin

Likelihood to Recommend

I think it is best suited if you're looking for a Mac native alternative to MS Visio. It does static diagrams and workflows well. It is also a good tool to quickly draw out a basic wireframe to use a quick first draft to convey an idea. However, I've moved on to using tools like Sketch, UXPin, and Proto.io for creating interactive prototypes and wireframes that can then be fleshed out into full high fidelity mock-ups within the same software.

Comments

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Omnigraffle is a good, if limited, tool