Axure RP is a software prototyping tool used by UX designers, from Axure Software Solutions in San Diego.
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InVision
Score 5.8 out of 10
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InVision is a collaborative design and prototyping platform with features such as freehand drafting mode and interactive mockups, collaboration, idea management, user testing, and integration with Slack and other collaboration tools. According to the vendor, 1 million designers are using the free version.
Axure RP is a great user experience design toolkit that gives UX designers the ability to create user flows, Low-Fidelity, and High-Fidelity mockups all within the same tool. Overall, it works well with teams of designers looking to collaborate on the same project(s). Axure RP allows you to set up masters and components, giving you and your team the ability to share and re-use styled objects. This not only cuts down on the time allotted for wireframing, but it also means design styles are upheld and the overall software becomes more consistent. I would not recommend Axure for High-Fidelity visual design mockups (use Sketch App instead), as Axure is limited in it's the ability to style components.
InVision is well suited for design reviews and immersing yourself in the experience of an app-to-be. As a Product Manager, it's difficult to take abstract concepts, user pain points, and business needs, and produce a vision for an app without a visual aid to communicate a vision. InVIsion offers PMs, designers, and developers the opportunity to sketch a vision, communicate about it with inline commenting, and shareable with other stakeholders.
High fidelity prototypes: Axure is excellent for creating prototypes that are visually indistinguishable from the real product. You do not need advanced Photoshop or other image editing software skills to create mockups that look real with Axure. If you do have Photoshop skills though it definitely can help as you can easily bring in edited images into Axure from it.
Realistic interactions: On top of creating prototypes that look real, you can also easily make them interact like a real site would. This is useful for not only showing developers and stakeholders but for user testing as well.
Sharing prototypes: Sharing Axure prototypes with others is easy, even if they don't have the Axure software. You can either upload your file to Axshare, Azure's free hosting service or host it on your own servers and share the link with viewers. The link allows users to interact with the site as though it were real as well as easily switch between pages with a collapsible site map.
Designs can be very slow to load on mobile devices, particularly when they include many screens.
There isn’t an offline version of the full app, which feels less-than-ideal for many of our teammates who live in areas with more spotty internet.
There are limited functionalities to portray animations and transitions. This hasn’t been a huge issue, but it makes the app feel a little out of date, considering the range of such functionalities in other apps.
Axure feels like a tool that started with a simple interface that wasn't redesigned over time. Simple tasks sometimes require clicking through multiple layers. Crucial pieces of functionality are hidden under text links, or just flatly aren't discoverable. Much of the quirks of the interface only come from having screwed up numerous times, and knowing that certain things are just difficult to accomplish.
I've never used the support for Axure but they do have an online community that can be helpful when you're unsure how to accomplish a specific bit of interactivity. Overall the community for Axure is a great benefit for the software. There are also a lot of shared library assets which can help reduce the time you spend on projects.
I didn't need to contact InVision support, as I've never needed it. They have an intuitive UI, and most of the questions are answered in their help portal or in tutorials online. Since many people use it, there a great resources available on for example YouTube. No problems so far with InVision.
I think that the online training videos cover all product features and are a great resource to point people to. The newsletter is also frequent and passes on a range of tips and techniques for users that are eager to learn more, or just want to keep themselves up to date
Axure stacks up pretty nicely against other tools, in terms of available functionality and support for users. It’s probably the best tool I have used to create the most realistic and complex prototypes for sales purposes. However, its interface is outdated compared to other tools, and it’s a less efficient tool than other tools, such as Sketch, that enable users to create and iterate upon designs more quickly. We will continue to use Axure for complex designs, particularly for prototypes that need to be external-facing, but we’ll opt to stick with Adobe XD or another tool for internal use, to save time and energy by using a more straightforward tool.
[InVision] provides the ability to iterate really quickly, in fact, it is so intuitive that can be applied on live wireframe designing, while the ideas are being scratched and stormed from the team in a single discovery session, as well as allowing and giving access to the whole organization to the final outcome
When understanding the minimal needs to describe multiple dimensions of UX using this tool, a designer can very quickly create a prototype using this tool and can help reduce the time needed to assess very usability requirements and business validity for an application.
The generated files source code absolutely cannot be used in the application code. Measures should be taken to ensure the code is not used in the application code or else you risk rework in development/implementation.
