Joe C

Joe C

Design & Development Lead Joined almost 10 years ago via an invitation from Brandon J.

  • 24 stories
  • 283 comments
  • 601 upvotes
  • Posted to Invision bought Trunk and closes it, Feb 13, 2019

    Seems like this as a good place as any to pile on criticismrants feedback about Invision.

    I too am in the process of moving my whole team off of Invision as our platform for sharing prototypes etc. 3 years ago it was the go-to, everything was working smoothly and the "quirks" I figured would be ironed out as the product matured. (Example quirk: when setting up a link in the web app you can search by screen name in the dropdown...unless you are adding the link as an overlay. Then you have to scroll in a seemingly randomly ordered list of 300+ screens. I reported this over 2 years ago and got a jolly "We're aware of this issue and we're keeping it in mind for v7").

    The last year has been a horrible experience full of regret that we adopted Invision so heavily. I'm constantly getting seeing people struggling with syncing/craft updates/performance/downtime/speed and downright confusion, especially for clients. (add in some aggressive sales tactics/lack of transparency about direction/constant content marketing and you've got a real tire fire).

    Our shop is not, it seems, the intended audience of Studio. We do not use animation at all in our prototypes, and most of our work is desktop enterprise software. I have no use for the kinds of app screen animation-transitions that seem to be the selling point of Studio. This isn't a problem, I don't think all products need to be geared towards my use case at all. However, Studio is being pushed as a All-in-one screen design tool and a replacement for the web-app we use today.

    Reading what I'm writing here, it seems I'm just salty that I thought they were building a simple product that suited my work perfectly, only to see the company go in a different direction while still (somewhat) leading us on with the launch of v7 of the core product. I am embarrassed that I helped to convert team members to the tool previously, and I don't think I'd ever be able to adopt anything from Invision again.

    Unfortunately, there is no other alternative I would recommend instead. Sketch's prototype solution is good enough for now, and once we get overlays then I'll be satisfied I think. XD can also do this now, so I think us in the 'boring' design space will need to stick to the core basics of these tools.

    /rant

    Edit: markdown

    12 points
  • Posted to Confessions of a Flawed Designer (comics), Oct 25, 2018

    Hey Pablo, thanks for your honesty. You rock.

    0 points
  • Posted to Padding is coming to Anima Sketch plugin, in reply to Jon Myers , Oct 23, 2018

    Yup, me too. Stacks is useful, but I can't trade off the screen real estate.

    1 point
  • Posted to Design Appreciation: Itsycal – a free menubar calendar app with VIM-like depth to it, Oct 04, 2018

    Completely agree. I've been used it for a couple years and it keeps getting better and better. Thank you Itsycal dev!

    2 points
  • Posted to How do you feel about the Designer News search experience?, Aug 03, 2018

    I usually just google "$searchTerm site:designernews.co"

    8 points
  • Posted to Apple updates MacBook Pro with faster performance and new features for pros, in reply to Mike Stevenson , Jul 14, 2018

    Which dongle do you use? Mine is an eyesore!

    1 point
  • Posted to Ask DN: Upgrading workstation advice, summer 2018, in reply to Eduardo Tello , Jun 27, 2018

    Yeah, I feel you. Do you have a backup plan? I'm slightly worried that if Apple come with consumer-level only hardware in the fall, I won't really have any other option than to upgrade to that. There's no way this MacBook is lasting until Sep 2019 haha.

    0 points
  • Posted to Anyone using Gallery from Google for handoff?, in reply to Florian Grau , Jun 08, 2018

    Yeah, I saw a few problems coming up with nested symbols, that's obviously a dealbreaker. Thanks for the reply.

    0 points
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