What was even more wild was watching them clearly dump money into gimmicks and sales over their product. I worked at a large agency during invisions heyday and they were constantly pitching all levels of employees on whatever their new thing was, typically with sales people flying out for in person visits, buying whole office lunches, etc. I prob sat through a dozen pitches in a year where literally nothing about their product fundamentally improved or changed. People who had no idea what a design system was would pitch a half baked "design system manager" or similar, but were unable to really talk to any depth about design systems or answer questions about gaps in their product. It was very clear they would not succeed.
Invision Studio came on the scene just as Figma was starting to eat Sketch's lunch, and lacking both Sketch's feature set and Figma's speed, it simply got caught in the crossfire. It must have been incredibly expensive to build, and its failure probably played a big part in locking Invision into its current path to eventually shutting down.
Invision clearly didn't have the ambition or understanding of user needs as they simply kept copying others instead of innovating in the space. Invision had a big headstart on others but still fell flat.
Their prototyping product was limited and full of bugs, and in many senses, it was a regression compared to older prototyping tools. Based on that experience, I was highly skeptical about the ability to deliver for InVision Studio. The Studio beta was extremely slow and unstable. It was dead even before the rise of Figma.
And design to developer handover didn't exist either when I last had to use Invision.
For rich design prototyping nothing beats Axure or Just In Mind. Figma isn't there yet when it comes to rich prototyping. It's sufficient for simple ones.
Figma doesn't produce proper HTML based prototypes like Axure or Just In Mind and good luck prototyping heavy grid and form based apps with it. Also not great for user testing where internet connection is not reliable. Axure / Just In Mind let you export your prototypes as static HTML files, so you can use them offline. Not just useful for testing, but also sales demos where internet connection is unreliable, e.g. company booth at conferences, events etc.
Framer was even better for prototyping, but they pivoted to being a website creation tool, which was a smart move actually.
EDIT: clarity regarding prototyping needs.
Invision was not a design-to-developer handoff tool. It was a user research tool and a feedback tool for executives.
I made a hundred Invision prototypes for testing design ideas with customers back in the day.
But you could have achieved the same thing with Axure and if needed take it to the next level and add more interactivity beyond hot-mapping images.
Before Figma multiplayer, it was a great way to formalize the handoff, starting from Sketch, structuring everything, selecting some boards, and then using Craft (I believe it was called) to upload things to InVision, and then have more discussion there.
The devs never saw design files, just these cleanly structured handoffs. We could have conversations over details, etc. Worked well for the teams I was on.
Now the constant sync'ing was a hassle, not as fluid as Figma but it was a lot more formalized then Figma where devs are always asking "is this ready to review". I didn't explore prototyping very much, which IMO is still a big unsolved problem for the industry.
So, from me, cheers to InVision, yes times changed, sad they couldn't be a part of it, but their product was very awesome for me back in the day. PLUS, they had such a beautiful beautiful UI for their design exploration tool, everything was lightweight and contextual, it continues to inspire me to this day.
Mine at the time was purely on prototyping and Axure / Framer met those needs at the time.
I don't know when Invision introduced the redlining features, but I remember our team used Zeplin.
https://invisioncommunity.com/
I thought everyone just installed cracked pirate copies ("nulled", as it was called) of IPB. How are they making money? Who is paying them for their software?
I'd love to read a behind-the-scenes story of what it was like at InVision during this time.
Not sure how Marvel app is faring.
Surely wouldn't take that long to create one and would make it a lot less painful for users who have bug archives of old stuff there they may want to keep.
To ease the pain, I worked on a service to make parting with the platform easier (https://invisionbulkexport.com/). Disclaimer: I own this site and we are not affiliated with InVision in any way.
> InVision will fully shut its doors shortly after December 31, 2024
> Unfortunately, a bulk export is not available, so you'll need to export each document one by one. Please note that our Support team will not be able to export documents on your behalf.
Ouch.
> InVision will fully shut its doors shortly after December 31, 2024
https://www.bennadel.com/blog/4109-working-code-podcast-epis...
For goodness sake, if you had to use one of these cutesie titles (you don't) why not InVisionaries?
InVision was good, but Figma hit hard.
Invision focused on dumping millions into marketing and enterprise sales and growth hacks…yet had a mediocre piece of software.
Meanwhile, Figma created a better product (and I’d guess spent wayyy less on marketing for the first 5 years) and they won.
Over the years, I've noticed that less and less folks are using it so I worked on a service to make parting with the platform easier (https://invisionbulkexport.com/). Disclaimer: I own this site and we are not affiliated with InVision in any way.
Sorry it's The Information, I'm not aware of any paywall bypass.
