27
Huge invites wave to Invision Studio
5 years ago from Wojciech Zieliński, UI/UX Designer
Yesterday I saw a lot of people getting access to Studio (myself included). What do you think about it so far?
120 comments
Account deleted 5 years ago Invision Studio has been hyped for so so long that I've lost all interest in actually trying it out anymore. Too little too late guys.
John Jackson, 5 years ago I really don't understand this logic. You are essentially saying that even if Studio increased design efficiency by 50%, you'd still refuse to try it because it was hyped for a long time and you didn't receive an invite while you were all hyped up.
I get it. I signed up the day that it was announced and I waited until yesterday to receive my invite. The hype died for me a while back. Am I going to sulk and refuse to try it because the hype died for me? No, because that's silly. I'm going to try it because I want to see if it's a tool that shows promise to making me and my team more efficient.
Cristian Moisei, 5 years ago
For an app to increase efficiency by 50% it would have to:
a. not have any new (as compared to existing software) bugs of problems to hold you back. b. understand and rethink the process to such an extent that you can on the whole be 50% more efficient.
I can't trust InVision to do a simple app where you upload images and click on them properly. So I think he has a point.
John Jackson, 5 years ago The "50%" was arbitrary. The point is that if you refuse to try a tool because "it took too long," you're selling yourself short.
That's a fair point, I'll try it to when they decide to release it, but I understand his frustration and skepticism with InVision too.
Nixson Sysanga, 5 years ago I would reserve judgement until you get to try it out first hand.
Of course, I am not criticising the product, but rather sympathising with the skepticism around it and criticising the company that makes it + those of their products that I did try first hand.
Stefano Tirloni, 5 years ago
More efficiency by 50% mean that I’m going to work 3 days out of 5 every week. yay!
Guilherme Schmitt, 5 years ago
It's amazing how Sketch managed to steal a lot of their thunder by releasing their Prototype tools before public availability of Studio.
Timing is everything.
Ariel Verber, 5 years ago
wait, people actually use the prototype tools in sketch?
Once Zeplin or Abstract support it... the vanilla InVision product is going to lose a lot of its appeal
Batuhan Dogan, 5 years ago I agree. They lied to us by shouting "JANUARY 2018". Then, they said, "oh, we MEANT EARLY ACCESS in January 2018". Still no early access. Bohemian Coding has a a great team who make great releases on right time. I dont think anyone can compete with Bohemian Coding.
Joshua Turner, 5 years ago
What you've described has become super common unfortunately.
I ordered this dock from HengeDocks last January, with the shipment scheduled for April. Then July. Then September. Then December. Then March. Now April again.
Being able to release your product when you say you will is as important as what you're releasing. If you're unsure of the deliverable timeline, don't give one.
John Jackson, 5 years ago There's no way I could see myself using Studio for any production work in its current state, so I can only imagine how it would have been in January.
tom giannattasio, 5 years ago
Hey Kuldar, it's Tom from the Studio team. I'm sorry to hear that the wait has gotten to you. Our team is certainly cranking hard to get everything in tip-top shape before rolling it out to the world. You may have noticed that we've started ramping up access quite aggressively over the past week. This will continue over the next couple of weeks until all early access users have it in their hands. Building software this complex is no easy task and we feel it's really important that our first release is robust and performant enough to handle your everyday needs. We're almost there and I hope you'll stick with us!
Ed Hoxha, 5 years ago
they are terrible.
Luis La Torre, 5 years ago
The moral of this story is don't make designers wait too long for a tool. This is not a Blockbuster movie.
Rey Alejandro, 5 years ago
I do believe they have to do it to retain users bouncing to Figma, if they don't hype their product or market it during Figma releases, they will lose a lot of designers.
Scott Savarie, 5 years ago
Hey All!
I’m Scott, one of the designers on Studio. I wanted to hop in on a few themes that have been popping up since we’ve ramped up access to Studio.
Performance We know it’s not there yet, and we’re actively working on it. Internally we have multiple initiatives going on right now to address animation speed in the preview window, better performance of desktop sized prototypes, faster panning and zooming in the editor, and quicker manipulation of layers on the canvas.
Sketch Import This is one of the trickiest pieces and we’re putting in a lot of effort to make sure all imports are 99% accurate. We have hundreds of complex Sketch files internally that we’re testing our imports against, and using to make the feature better and better. There are some feature gaps in the current version of Studio that don’t fully support everything you could have done in Sketch. For example: Flipped Layers, Image Fills, Background Blur. All of these items are things we’re tackling soon, which will result in much better imports.
Lack of features or being underwhelmed We’re obviously disappointed if we’re not meeting meeting or exceeding your expectations. We know they’re high, and we’re positive we have the right features coming which will make you happy. For the near future some things you have to look forward to are:
- Offset Pinning
- Containers
- Stateful Components
- More advanced Prototyping features
The one thing I want to make sure I get across is this: we’re building this for you. Tools like this are insanely complex and difficult to get right, we absolutely need your help along the way—which is the entire reason we’re rolling it out to batches of a few thousand people at a time. We’re not even at v1.0 yet! If you’re running into a bug, have a feature request, or any general feedback, please, please, please let us know. We’re listening!
Last thing! I live in Berlin, which means it’s getting pretty late for me. If there are any replies or questions, I’ll be answering them in the morning!
Jan Semler, 5 years ago
Thanks for the insight. Is there a open buglist or feature request list out there? Would love to write feedback but don't want to write redundant stuff.
Stephen Olmstead, 5 years ago
Hey Jan- we don't have a publick buglist or feature request YET (though talking about that for future) but we do have a mainline feedback mechanism built into the app itself (look for the chat icon in app) which mainlines feedback to our team. This is actually directly linked into the dev team so they're reading and seeing everything that comes through. Doubling up on feedback is actually REALLY helpful because it reinforces the need and severity of a request, especially during early access where we're pivoting and evolving quickly week after week.
We'll also be opening a user community soon for all early access users so that folks can riff off of each other and interact with Studio in real-time for a more free-flow pace here.
Parker Hutchinson, 5 years ago Thanks man, I appreciate you taking the time to listen and respond to feedback. I think we can all agree we don't want a "No Mans Sky" scenario with the application.
I mentioned in my comment that the timeline is oddly structured. I hope that this layout can be edited in the future. The design pattern for animation / production timelines is top and bottom split, not vertical left and right split. I don't think re-inventing the UX on timelines is a wise choice. I can kinda see how this decision was made if all you cared about was mobile phones(the editor should work for all resolutions). My suggestion is to allow floating windows and/or an option to adjust layout.
The other thing I wanted to ask about was components. Right now they don't seem useful. Is the state update going to address overrides? And I cant say that I'm a huge fan of how the components don't update when editing the source component. Right now you have to manually tell components to update. Possible solutions would be to add UI to the edit component state to say "apply to all instances" instead of hiding that ui behind a button that is only accessible on the instance view. (edit) I do see now how overrides work, I guess what i want is more convenience UI like the competitor, like overriding text from within the inspector and not direct manipulation.
wishlist: pre-comps This might be what you are eluding to with "more advanced prototyping"or "containers" but being able to create an animated component would be a killer feature that would set aside studio from all the rest imo.
Good feedback here Parker!
The split vertical vs horizontal panel discussion is a good one. Vertical (like it is today) prioritizes more room for layers (anticipating having more layers stacked vertically in panel) and collapses on the time-based side of things (assuming interactions will typically be much shorter vs their video counterparts which prioritize based on length of clip vs amount of layers present). This was why this decision was made, however if you find yourself scripting longer animations where time-based component becomes a bigger focus I can see where ability to switch or toggle this behavior would be super helpful... nice insight!
Components are one area of intense focus as well right now. Overrides in some ways are so 'right there' that they can be easy to miss when you come to a more UI-driven approach to them. Really dig the 'apply to all instances' feedback, thats a nice timesaver. We've played with a few iterations of this here to link instances and such. Looking for the best balance of being immediately intuitive while having long-term power for users who are digging in deep over time.
Pre-comps you say? I haven't heard it referred to in this way but I like where your head is at. And without letting the cat out of the bag yet, you're VERY much thinking in the right direction. We have to nail down super tight some of these core preceding items, but once thats done we're going very deep with nested stuff like this (especially with timeline metadata as part of it)... it gets crazy helpful at that point and the stacking use cases are really fun. More to come here, have been playing with some internal experiments on that already that we can share more on soon.
This comment was super helpful- thx for the actionable feedback my friend- looping into the team now!
Parker Hutchinson, 5 years ago thanks for replying and passing along my feedback! P.S. the "pre-comp" term comes from After Effects its how you can create nested animations.
Thanks for your thoughts!
The reason we went with timeline on the left is we didn't want to duplicate the layers list just in a tiny window along the bottom of the screen, we also feel like this is a better workflow for when you many layers animating. Another consideration was that the width of the timeline only needs to accommodate for 2-3ish seconds, unlike something like AE where you'd be working with a very long timeline and multiple keyframes. All that being said, our assumptions could be wrong, and we might adjust the layout as we go. Agreed it's not the best for desktop designs, we need some way of resizing it at least.
I'm curious what's going on with components for you? Right now we allow: - Double clicking into a component instance to directly override the component - Editing Master and having those changes propagate back to component instances (while retaining any overrides) - Resetting size and overrides
Another area of improvement we're looking at for components is to automatically set the layout inside them once they're created. Right now if you wanted to make a resizable button for example, you need to set the background layer to 100% width and height, and pin your text center middle. Then when you resize the component instance everything repositions / resizes accordingly. Additionally—to your wishlist point—once we introduce component states, and state-to-state interactions, they'll become even better (I personally can't wait for this one).
David Thorn, 5 years ago
Is there a timeline for when these features will be visible? Or is this going to be another Adobe XD two year long process to get a production ready app (if you consider Adobe XD usable for day to day work...)
Hey David- we're measuring progress in terms of weeks at this stage, not months or years. Not sure if you have access to the early access build yet or not but if you do / once you do, I hope you'll see what I mean. Dropping new builds regularly with full change notes stemming directly from user feedback coming out of this stage. General availability is def not a year way- looking to move much faster than that. That said we recognize that we can only do that with awesome feedback and partnership with the folks using it, hence the EA release first. Looking forward to hearing more of your insights.
That's good to know. I haven't gotten my invite yet, but it sounds like I'm going to hold off anyways until there's more there, there.
Thomas Lowry, 5 years ago I have early release but will reserve judgement since I know the product is very alpha right now and going through lots of changes. Something worth mentioning was the sales push to get someone in the door to show us the tool. Demo by a non-designer and not able to answer most questions—maybe 10 min of the presentation was spent on Studio, the rest was up-selling Enterprise (which was of zero interest to us without the Studio piece). I mean, Enterprise features were demo'd in Sketch instead of Studio by an Invision person. Just passing on the feedback since the team as a whole was mutually not that impressed given that we want to see features which will help us build enterprise grade applications (not animate planets around in space).
Hey Thomas- sorry to hear that. These sort of team demos should be custom tailored to what your team wants to explore or would find valuable, not what we want to push. Can you email me at stephen[at]invisionapp.com here so I can find out more what happened here, make adjustments with the team, and ensure you're getting the a glimpse into the things that matter most for your workflow? Would def appreciate the opportunity to improve and do right by you and your team here.
Kenneth Jensen, 5 years ago
I played around for 10 mins and not impressed so far. It might change.
Ryan B, 5 years ago What are you not impressed with? Intrigued to know
Andrew Washuta, 5 years ago Not to answer on Ken's behalf, but I have the same feeling. The animation and "tweening" as I would describe it, just isn't as intuitive as I would like. It seems wasteful, in terms of duplicating artboards and the like.
Ryan B, 5 years ago I haven't had time to explore it much, but I will be playing with it over the weekend and report back!
Andrew Washuta, 5 years ago Keep me posted, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Ryan- I'd love to get your feedback and first take so to speak as well when you've had a chance to dig in and loop a few folks in from Studio team as well so you can directly chat with the folks pouring the blood and sweat into this each day. Def want to do right by you and hear your impressions- hit me up stephen[at]invisionapp.com.
I think it is just a start. For now you cannot build states with components, and when that is coming it will be cool.
Nixson Sysanga, 5 years ago Is there a software that you can compare it to that offers a similar set of features, but feels more intuitive?
Artur Eldib, 5 years ago Atomic.io
Hey Andrew- not sure if you've played with the brand new Timeline experience yet or not. We literally just dropped that yesterday afternoon so it hasn't been in their long. Prior to that it was a bit more of a chore to do the animation setup work. Timeline is a more visual way to do this that feels a bit more natural. This us an example of early access tester input having a direct and major impact on development of this product. We had overwhelming feedback and requests for this and chose to speed up its development and priority.
We REALLY want that feedback and I'd love to keep chatting if you're up for it based on your experience. Our whole goal during early access phase is to listen intently, dig in deeply on nuance, and push builds as quickly as possible with that actionable feedback. For those who have been on early access longer, I hope you can attest to the speed at which we're moving here. For those of you that just joined, look forward to showing the pace of development real-world as you see those new builds hit quickly. Point is- you all have waited long enough, were looking to move at a pace of development measured in days/weeks not months/years.
Hit me at stephen[at]invisionapp.com if you're up for a quick call, it is so critically important that we learn from your feedback so we can make this the best it can be- thank you! Open door here!
Jason Kirtley, 5 years ago
Interesting to see this little screen shot Stephen. Really what I am looking more out of studio for is prototyping/animating. Is there any good tutorials or documentation on how to do timeline style animation? I think that might be what I am missing from the first peek I took at it and could be helpful to get up to speed faster.
Totally hear you Jason- thats something we're gearing up around as well. Honestly we should have had more tutorials like this ready from the get go- sorry about that!
Team has been working hard to bring you a whole series of videos and tutorial will hit soon (I saw them last week and they're shaping up real nice). Part of this whole early access thing is that its a bit more raw and wild west. We're looking to bring a little more structure and civility to that wild west town though very soon- thx for the understanding, passion and digging in with us!
Cameron Sagey, 5 years ago
I tried it before you guys released the timeline feature. I wasn't impressed (slow and lacking features) when I first tried it but I'll take another look. Looks useful
Joe Blau, 5 years ago I have a question on that timeline. Why is it on the left hand side and not on the bottom? Every notable application video, animation, and editing applicatoin back to the Macromedia days has a vertically stacked timeline. What led to the decision to make it horizontally stacked?
Corey Ginnivan, 5 years ago
I imagine it's because it's essentially a replication of your layer panel (not a library) but with the addition of keyframes, so makes sense to have an expanded view in the same place. You're only setting up a beginning and end keyframe, so a full-width timeline isn't as necessary.
Hey Joe! Corey actually hit this design decision logic square on the head. With microinteractions / rich motion animations the timing aspects end up being shorter (for the most part) than their video counterparts. Video timelines are optimized for time-based focus because your clip might be .001 seconds or 100 minutes long while having less layers and video elements vertically stacked.
In motion design for digital products we've chosen to optimize for layer stacks vertically; recognizing that more often than not, you're going to want the extra screen real estate optimized for seeing many different layers and a de-scoped length of time on the player vs fewer layers visible with a scoped up length of time on the playhead. Does that make sense?
Hope that helps sheds some light here. But again, thats the whole point of an early access- if you feel like any of these decisions are omitting use cases or neglecting any typical user behaviors please raise your voice in the form of feedback to the team. Goal is to root out as many of those as possible and optimize this platform for you and your team.
Thanks!
Andrew Washuta, 5 years ago Thank you for getting back to me on this Stephen. I appreciate you taking the time to respond, and I'm looking forward to diving into the new version of Studio.
I'm actually going to get into it more this week, and I'll be sure to email you any feedback I may have along the way.
For the few minutes I had with it, the fact I can create some super smooth easing is pretty incredible, in and of itself.
In the example above, I assume you have the layers grouped and then "linked" together across multiple artboards, ex. all the text that eases in, if I'm not mistaken.
Either way, looking forward to practicing a bit more and playing with some of the tutorial files. Thanks again!
Right on, sounds great Andrew! Thanks so much for your passion and willingness here to help us improve. Looking forward to that feedback and getting a chance to action on it and help continue evolving this thing for you and your team.
Fabricio Rosa Marques, 5 years ago
Yeah, although, if you make heavy use of components it might be ok (in terms of duplicating artboards/content).
I actually liked the animation part the most in terms of Studio bringing s.th. new to the table, but all other aspects of the the app are just too weak. I'm seeing Figma as their main-competitor as it's the only other tool that does enable an e2e design workflow within the tool itself, but it's just so much more mature when it comes to the design editor tools or component handling. They have to do a lot of catching up.
Patryk Kabaj, 5 years ago
Did the same. For me performance was quite problematic (although I've imported Sketch file, fairly light yet still a Sketch file). Zooming in and out was slow, also I don't like the scroll hijack that's there.
I am going to give it another spin though!
Patryk- Sketch import is one area we're working on very intensely right now- it def an area of opportunity. There are a number of speed bumps there to be dropping soon.
Would be great to get your feedback based on a 'build from scratch' experience in addition to the 'import from Sketch' side of things as well. On performance side of things we've seen the biggest potential gains to be made on refining the import side of things.
The core building tools from Studio should be fairly solid at this point (though continuing to improve). If they're not for you, would love to chat further so we can find out whats causing it.
In the meantime were cranking hard to make that import experience better, faster, and more responsive. Thanks!
Awesome to hear a response from you !
I haven't had a chance (yet) to design anything from scratch yet, I might give it a go this week. I bet Sketch imports (and I imagine it also saves to Sketch?) might be a tricky thing.
I'll keep you posted and keep up the good work!
--
On a side note, in general: having a very strong marketing team behind a launch of 1.0 of any software - raises expectations to very high levels. People seem to get narrow-minded - once they spot a bug - their expectations are not met. Your marketing materials and the whole "campaign" in my opinion was too powerful. It's the product that must defend itself, not the marketing materials.
I am still hopeful though, I'll play with Studio soon :))
I'm not either. This is another one of those cases of a product getting overhyped (this is going to change your life!) and it's nothing that great. I won't be jumping ship from sketch anytime soon
Kenneth- we'd love to chat with you and dig in deep on specifics as to why this is. Lots of hard working going into this and first impressions matter a lot. Care to hit me up at stephen[at]invisionapp.com so we can get something on the books to dig in more? This is 100% the type of stuff we'd love to dig in deeply with you on to extract more info so we're making the optimal decision for your workflow- moving very, very quick here with new builds- thanks in advance!
John Williams, 5 years ago Just went for a spin. It's nowhere near release. Here's what I've found on my first time using it.
- Missing SVG Export.
- You can only export one size at a time and it's limited to only .5x, 1x, 2x. RIP Android and iPhone X users.
- Missing Border Radius for individual corners.
- It doesn't snap to the margins between your objects. Say you have three boxes with 20px margins. It doesn't know that the 4th box you create needs 20px margins.
- The animation pane is more confusing to use than Principle and Haiku.
- Copy and Paste from Illustrator is missing fills.
- Zooming is very slow.
Aaron Wade, 5 years ago
Some of these functions are actually in the app, just hard to discover (individual border radius, for instance). I'm not sure when the right time to submit feedback is though, so I've been holding back in case I stumble across something I thought wasn't there, but is... somwhere..
Hey John!
SVG Export, oh god I know, we need to get this in. We've just been balancing the bigger features with some of the table stakes features, and this one hasn't made it in yet. I have a much better export ux specced out and ready to roll. We'll get it in soon.
- Re border radii, this actually exists, just add multiple values in the radius input like you would in css. So: "10 5 5 0" for example. No commas or semi-colons needed.
We have a larger fix for panning and zooming which will likely hit the next release. We ended up pulling it out of 0.10.3 at the last minute as we didn't feel like it was good enough.
An extra info on the Illustrator import would be really helpful for us to debug and improve the feature!
Curious what you found confusing about the Timeline Editor, could you share more details?
Mattan Ingram, 5 years ago
Why are all these tools so focused on animation now? I need a tool that lets me lay out web designs faster and more reflective of actual web technologies. How many websites or even native apps do you have that have this many full screen crazy animations happening all the time? If I was a developer I would be terrified that all of a sudden designers are going to be coming to me with ridiculous animations that take forever to code or simply can't be done in a performative manner on the web without a ton of work.
Does Studio have a 9-point reference tool that lets me measure, move, and resize things relative to a corner OTHER than the top-left?
Does Studio have hover, focus, etc states? Can we easily mock up inputting text data without faking a keyboard? What about making an element sticky once it reaches a certain part of the page?
Does Studio allow content to resize parent containers? Can I have containers that flow and wrap like Flexbox?
I get that animation is sexy, but none of these design tools have even the basics that Illustrator has had for years when it comes to actually putting shapes on the page (not asking for Illustration tools), and none seem to be introducing anything that goes beyond the Sketch basics.
I mean am I crazy to want :hover styling BEFORE full page animation transitions? Is that so much to ask?
Norm Sheeran, 5 years ago I think most tools in this bracket tend to be focused on mobile native app design so hover events don’t exist.
I totally agree on your point about animation, but I guess it has the cool factor that is sure to impress a client. In my opinion any animation on UI should be used sparingly.
That's my problem with a lot of the stuff Invision does. It's super clean and looks great, but it feels like it's all catering to some kind of corporate design team or convincing a product manager to buy the software.
Andrew C, 5 years ago These animations are all based on CSS animations... so on web it would barely be a blip on performance so long as the layout method was used properly (up to the tool to do that).
For mobile, though, you may have a point. iOS uses a literal physics engine to do their shit. Not sure how well CSS will translate to that.
Sure you can theoretically do most of this with CSS animations, but when you can animate a bunch of absolutely positioned stuff nicely in a single artboard it is very different from animating elements in a variable size browser window and have it look nice for everyone.
Also once you have enough animations, or more complex animations, performance can be an issue even with using only opacity and transform animations.
Regardless of implementation, I want a tool that actually understands the environment I'm designing for. I'm thinking of switching to Webflow for a lot of web design stuff, but then it isn't cross compatible with more absolutely positioned design work.
Andrew C, 5 years ago You have to start somewhere.
Sure, why start with animations? Why not start with something no other popular tool has and is far more widely needed than animations.
Andrew C, 5 years ago Studio is competing largely with Sketch, and Sketch doesn't offer animations out of the box. So the rationale might be that baking in animation provides a competitive advantage that Sketch doesn't have. Not a foolish strategy by any means.
Whether that's the most important problem to solve; you may be right. I won't be the judge of that.
Dominik Levitsky, 5 years ago
Got an invite, yay! No Windows version, nay :(
Matt C, 5 years ago So funny to me that Figma's competitive advantage is supporting the most widely used operating system on the planet.
Brad McNally, 5 years ago
Strange, one of the things they hyped at a workshop I went to was that there is a Windows version. (Maybe they haven't released that part yet?)
John Jackson, 5 years ago A Windows version is coming, but it isn't released yet.
Sorry about that Dominik- early access is Mac only but feedback has ramifications on Windows version which we'll be rolling out after.
Tony Gines, 5 years ago
Got an invite. Also underwhelmed. Figma is way ahead so far.
As a web software designer, mostly for desktop users, I am constantly frustrated by the huge push to native prototyping tools. It seems simple enough to build a tool that mimicks css capabilities like flexbox and padding. Having to rely on extensions that partly get you there is frustrating.
Here's what I want in a tool:
- Dynamic buttons
- Padding/Margins
- Components with dynamic elements like text/images
- Flexbox layout methods
- Individual border attributes (top, right, bottom, left)
That's really it. I can rely on other tools for icon design and vector stuff. I can rely on other tools for amazing animation. I can even rely on other tools for dev handoff. But I'll be damned if I want to make a box with text and have it dynamically change size or want to put a bottom border on a box without faking it with a shadow or drawing a line and pinning it to the bottom.
Tom Gantzer, 5 years ago
I've been on the waiting list since October 2017! I'm not sure how much longer I can wait... Anyone from InVision a member here that can scratch my itch? :(
Hey Tom- at this point were cranking fast and furious on the early invite sends. A massive amount went out this week with continued large groups going out all next week. You should get on soon- if you're curious in the meantime though feel free to this up studio-earlyaccess@invisionapp.com and you can ping them to see if they can find out where you're at.
Thanks for the update. Fingers crossed it's soon! Got some serious prototyping coming up on my project in the next few weeks and excited to test it in my workflow!
Right on buddy- also feel to ping me (my DM's are open on twitter) and I'll do my best to check in on where you're at.
Abram Goglanian, 5 years ago Same. I signed up back in October as well. Haven't heard a peep since!
Ryan B, 5 years ago I got mine yesterday, so stoked to try it out over the weekend! I've only had 5 minutes in it, but managed to create a simple log in screen prototype in that time!
Oleksandr Valius, 5 years ago
I'm wondering how many time you need to do it in Sketch for example
Ryan B, 5 years ago Around the same amount of time - but for me, because we use InVision heavily at our agency it's about having a seamless experience through wireframe > design > prototype. So I'm all for Studio!
Right Ryan- thats great to hear, thanks for the feedback! We'll keep on running hard on this to make it the best we can for you. Keep on hitting us with feedback via that in-app button- it gets routed directly to the Studio team. Much respect to ya! :)
Spent an evening with Studio, still feels very rough and far away from prime time ready (Due to bugs).
Apart from that, the new things Studio brings to the table are rather underwhelming. The editor itself is inferior to Sketch or Figma. Animated prototyping is great, but def not enough. Component handling is rather bad.
I think Figma is still killing it, esp. with the release of the latest web API. If they "just" add animation to their prototyping game it already killed Studio in all regards IMO. Similar could be said about Sketch, although I like the web-based nature of Figma as it allows for true and immediate x-team collabo.
Mike Mulvey, 5 years ago
A designer I work with got access a few weeks ago and I checked it out. It's not even half-baked. It's barely useable. Application interface conventions we take for granted just don't work (yet).
GOOD LUCK, 5 years ago
Sorry, but this is another "electron/wrap" app, so do not expect good performance. Just look on "hyped" apps like framer, figma etc. which are shitty, to be honest from the performance point of view. I love those ideas (I totally do), but really, professional tools like this should be NATIVE.
Peace!
Eugene Paryhin, 5 years ago That's a myth. No issues with Figma performance. In fact, I feel it's even faster than Sketch.
Well, it is funny how easy "marketing" can blur the truth for some people. Good for you.
For me, the story is totally different. Every time I working in framer, there are multiple glitches, loading times, a real performance issues. Every single time, on really powerful machines.
But, anyway.
Parker Hutchinson, 5 years ago What does that have to do with electron / react? As a developer myself, I am aware that application perf is different from application to application. It is not indicative to the platform. You run into perf issues on native applications too. When you say "multiple glitches, loading times," that has nothing to do with electron/react thats just bad coding on the platform. There are apps that have bad perf like Slack and in your case Framer. But then theres Discord and VSCode, explain those apps? It's really all about the quality of code and not the platform.
Marciano Planque, 5 years ago Hey there! Marciano from Framer here. Sorry to hear about you running into performance issues. I would be more than happy to go investigate and see if we can resolve these issues. Could you tell me more about these glitches and how I would be able to reproduce them? If you could drop a line here or send it to marciano (at) Framer (dot) com then I will take it from there. Thanks and have a great weekend :)
Thomas Lowry, 5 years ago Aside from initial load of project, Figma performance is noticeably more responsive than Sketch, just rapidly change zoom levels and you can see it. I switch back and forth between both all the time. In the latest version of Sketch it is particularly noticeable. Nothing to do with marketing blurring any truth.
C W, 5 years ago Figma has performance issues? Not sure which version you tried, but it's one of the fastest design tools I've used in recent memory. I've started using it over Sketch for one production project and half a dozen personal projects and it's making it very hard to use Sketch because it's so much faster.
You've mentioned this being "marketing blurring truth" in other comments, but I'm saying this as someone who has spent probably 300 hours in Figma at this point, so it has nothing to do with marketing.
Mirko Santangelo, 5 years ago That's an incorrect statement. Figma is by far one of the fastest and smoothest tool currently available. The Figma guys are keeping a very toned-down profile in terms of marketing, the quality of their product speaks alone by itself. You should definitively check it out.
Thomas Lowry, 5 years ago So true. I went into the public beta super skeptical because non-native, blah blah. The performance and "feel" blew me away and smashed any preconceived ideas I had going in. They seem to take performance very seriously. Hard to make blanket statements about Electron apps. VS Code is also lightning fast.
Artur Eldib, 5 years ago I was really excited as well - got mine last week and didnt impress me at all
Same - all hype. Nothing special.
Artur & Jason - Would love, love, LOVE some more specific feedback as to why this was, seeking to improve constantly. Can you hit us at studio-support@invisionapp.com or hit that feedback button in-app so we can help make this something you totally dig?
Just imported my working file. Some symbols not imported right. To laggy to work as well. Not recommend to switch
Hey Oleksandr- Sketch import is one key area of focus and improvement right now. We added it a few builds back, and while its not optimized right now its getting better with each pass. We'd love to hear more about your 'from scratch' experience in the tool as well (not importing but starting a new file). We recognize that there are still some big speed gains to be made on that import sequence. Thanks for being part of the early access- keep hitting that feedback button in-app and shoot us anything you run into- we're reading every single one of these and adjusting our focus and priorities accordingly.
Robin Goyal, 5 years ago
Well, I haven't got mine.
Account deleted 5 years ago I got mine too, but I think we are not supposed to share publicly what we think of it?
Ryan B, 5 years ago InVision actually retweet what people think of it - https://twitter.com/talkaboutdesign/status/976810834105196544
Greg Warner, 5 years ago Got mine. :) But I agree, the install request to not publicly discuss the beta process seems really weird/unusual.
Account deleted 5 years ago that says enough then...
Javier- thx for mentioning this. The confidentiality agreement when you join the early access is to ensure that folks understand things are changing super rapidly. As such we're trying to avoid the confusing dance of having reviews come out that are constantly changing or falling out of date in less than a week's time where possible. Example: we just dropped Timeline for rich motion yesterday. This drastically changes the motion creation experience.
As this is not a general release yet we're trusting folks to honor that as best they can when they agree to join the early access group. We love reviews and opinions but during early access what we'd really love most is to interact directly with folks wherever possible. It makes it much easier to action and improve vs chasing it down on social. Of note here: we're working on getting some early access community groups setup to make this process even easier.
Norm Sheeran, 5 years ago Very surprised by the comments here, I really thought Studio was going to tick most of the boxes and be a hit. It’s a tough gig creating software, especially in the creative space. We all expect quantum leaps but the reality is, they are super rare.
Good luck to the team, I hope they can still smash it out of the park.
Thanks Norm- we're moving quick and the most important part is that folks are passionate about their tools (don't know if you could tell that from here or not... har har). That passion and that willingness to talk honestly about what is needed to take tools to the next level is critical. We're listening and actioning and believe firmly that you'll like where we all end up together. Can't wait to have you on the early access so we can pick your brain and learn from you as well!
Norm Sheeran, 5 years ago That’s the best attitude to have. This post is basically a gold mine for you guys.
Short insights that might be already out.
Performance For me key. For now it is a bit laggy but i think down the road it will go better.
Animation For now really rudimentary screen to screen similar to what principle does without drivers. It will be interessting to see what happens when States for Components will be ready.
Shortcuts Some are missing, for example cmd + to zoom in does not work on the numpad keyboard.
Export SVG currently not supported only JPG and PNG, no go for me. Also no export for Prototypes you have to use the app or invision web.
Bottom Line from me:
It will take another year, then it might be usable for production.
Hey Jan- were intent on keeping up a very intense pace to be measured in weekly builds and def not year to GA (much sooner). Care to jump on a call with me and the team to dig in here and get some more deets (or even by email is fine): stephen[at]invisionapp.com.
Octavio Cruz, 5 years ago
Got my invite yesterday as well. I feel lazy to try it out.
Emi Roze, 5 years ago
Lucky! I'm so jealous, I can't wait to get access and try out the animation tools.
Joe Villanueva, 5 years ago
Tried it, but its nowhere near ready. The performance is insanely slow, to the point that this is unusable. I can't draw rectangles or move artboards without extreme chop, and I feel I have a mid-grade device. (iMac Retina 5k, Late 2015 3.2 Ghz Core i5, 40 GB DDR3 RAM)
I want it to work, but it seems like I'll have to wait some time before it is even in a decently testable state.
Joel Carey, 5 years ago Just received my invite. I started with an imported Sketch file and it was completely unusable, dragging an element around the page feels like I am running an emulator with MAJOR delay. I chalked it up to a complicated Sketch file and decided to start from scratch. I began with the HD Desktop artboard and instantly felt the same delay without adding a single element, it wasn't as bad but still unusable.
Has anyone ran into this problem and fixed it? I cannot imagine everyone is seeing the same issues or the comments would reflect that.
I am running: iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014) 4GHz intel i7 16 GB ddr3 AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2BG
*UPDATE: Seems to only happen on the 5k Retina screen. Still an major problem considering Sketch does not have this issue.
Agnimitra Pathak, 5 years ago Scott turned out to be a White Walker's dragon, really toned down the heat on Studio. Even if you are not a EA Studio member you can still provide feature requests to invision through twitter. They really take genuine features ahead to their dev team.
Andrew C, 5 years ago i've been using it for the last hour and a half. The biggest issue I have with it thus far is that I didn't really enjoy being "in" it. I'm willing to revisit this in a month or so though. But ultimately I felt I was struggling to understand some of the fundamental changes to standard interaction patterns. All I could assume was the designers deconstructed elements and over simplified them at the cost of general usability. I was re-learning to use inputs and icon buttons just to understand the system... when I shouldn't have been. I should have been designing stuff.
Anyway, some specific feedback:
– I was surprised to see it was a desktop app. I, like I think many others by the comments I've read, assumed this was more browser based.
– I'm skeptical that the .studio format will be as friendly to people as the .sketch format was.
– The dark UI seems overly... claustrophobic somehow. I feel like it's encroaching on my design decisions. For example the dark hero intro on the fake website I made while testing this out didn't look good on the dark. Grey is less opinionated IMO, and better for showcasing work (this is why graphic designers typically use it to mount their work when pitching). A small related item: Your layers are distinguished largely by symbol alone, not strong colour (though some color). The blue folders in Sketch are much easier to skim from the layers or symbols. It's uglier, but more functional, so I'm ok with that.
– The way the Component Library and Pages are nested in to multiple folder hierarchies rather than a flat one add unnecessary friction that's cumbersome to navigate. Which leads me to the #1 problem I found so far...
– It took me a really long time to understand how to put a Component on a page. This is because IMO you're priming me to add things from an "add to workspace" dropdown toolbar/menu (rectangles, artboard, images, etc) and then changing the pattern for Components (you have to go to the Component lib and drag the object on). I can surmise this was done to avoid the dropdown pattern system Sketch uses. But so far I don't think this was a good decision, because you're doubling up interactions between navigating pages or your component library with adding it to a page. An "add" menu is a clearer event for that. I feel like I may be missing the "add component" menu somewhere in the UI, but I haven't found it yet.
– I haven't yet been able to view all symbols (called Components in Studio) together in a flat display. Maybe there is a way to see all of the Components spread out for comparing—more exploring needed on that for me. But without this function there's a good chance I'll repeat Components without realizing. The likelihood I'll remember what my fellow designers name the blue primary button is very low, even though I know it's a blue primary button... I'm guessing. Use visuals to... convey visuals.
– The performance isn't quite there yet, but it's not TOO bad. Sliders particularly are slow for Corner Radius and Opacity. Since this is a free product I wouldn't hassle InVision about that during an alpha launch.
– My components frequently don't update automatically when changed. Had to figure out to manually reload it (I've seen this complaint already). When I drag or interact with a component that's been altered it will often update, though.
– Components don't seem to shrink down for me when scaled.
– I really really don't like the lack of combo boxes for font-size and other inputs. This design choice overly simplifies an otherwise good and established interaction—that is I often use the same sizes that dropdown's afford me the luxury of getting to quickly. I only really want to input numbers when I have to (the interaction cost is much higher for inputs than it is for simple point-and-click)
– Zoom to 100% often didn't zoom to the artboard currently focused.
– Twirling closed a folder closed the entire artboard a few times. Though once I had multiple artboards going this seemed to stop.
– Small thing, but having to delete and remove different fills and styles in the inspector menu is tiresome. I don't like how clicking anywhere in the header adds colours, either. I can see this cumbersome housekeeping being a mild annoyance maintaining larger files with lots of artboards
– The UI generally optimized its buttons to be icons without labels. Though sleek looking, I find myself often initiating actions because unsure what the icon will do (for example, a twirl down icon next to a folder simply opens the folder, but a down arrow in the export dialogue initiates a download dialogue). I feel I should know better, but I forget anyway. Lower signifiers like this force me to muddle when I shouldn't have to.
– Related to the last point, but tooltips take forever to pop-up. If they came up quicker I could muddle a bit easier.
Anyway—not bad for a closed beta! I'm not loving it more than Sketch, tbh, but it's also more feature-complete than Sketch was originally (I wasn't an early adopter of Sketch, either).
Cheers to all the hard work, good luck in the weeks to come.
Diego Beas, 5 years ago Can't wait for my invite! I've been waiting patiently. I've been trying to use Framer but it's too hard to create prototypes. Hard because I have no time to learn coding.
I have a paid account with my employer, when will we get the invite? :(
Marciano Planque, 5 years ago Hey Diego. Thanks for giving Framer a try! Sorry to hear that you found it to be too time consuming to learn. I would be happy to help you get started. If you have some minutes then I would recommend watching Pablo Stanley's "Framer Crash Course"on YouTube, which should get you started in no time. If you could tell me what you +- are trying to create then I would happily help you get started. Let me know!
Diego Beas, 5 years ago Thanks @Marciano Planque Framer is a beast! Pablo Stanley is awesome! I was able to get the hang of it while I was following his crash course...but I got lost when I wanted to create my own projects from scratch.
I finally got my Invision Studio invite, and I am liking it so far. The only thing is that I can’t view my prototype on my phone. @invisionapp
Orhan O., 5 years ago I actually quite like it what I've seen so far. Looking forward to for future updates. Also their attitude and attention for support is superb. They are very kind.
Parker Hutchinson, 5 years ago I want to like it, but they are very far away from launch imo(like early summer). The components right now don't make any sense. Timeline view layout is perplexing, in what world is the timeline split 1/3(editor) 2/3(preview) vertical?! (you can see a preview on the website) without an option to resize or move into traditional timeline editor layout. It had a huge performance bump from the latest build so hopefully they can at least achieve Figma level of perf.
There is a lot of development left to do as the team mentioned in the release notes from yesterday. So with that being known my feelings right now are Meh. It's not bad but again its not as revolutionary as they would want you to believe. The new animation tool is really nice(regardless of the layout).
I want to address some of the comments on here:
The animation timeline is nothing like sketchs prototype tool. sketch's version is VERY prototype where as Invision Studio timeline is more like this cool plugin for sketch.
for the web app haters. Im curious what you think of VSCode or Discord? both very performant, and in the case of VSCode the most performant. VSCode is a marvel or engineering, its easily the fastest code editor I've used. Also I was shocked to know Discord is react/electron as well. that app puts slack to shame. In the case for both Figma and Invision studio, they use canvas and webGL renderers for the drawing layers. Meaning it is a hardware accelerated application so there is opportunity for further perf enhancements.
Mike Stevenson, 5 years ago
I got mine, but I can't use it on my external display. They did email me back and say they were working on a fix, so hopefully it comes soon!
Signed up on day 1. Nothing yet. :'(
Login to Comment
You'll need to log in before you can leave a comment.
LoginRegister Today
New accounts can leave comments immediately, and gain full permissions after one week.
Register now