Figma is a solid design tool to craft the UX design concepts/solutions for digital products. For printed marketing materials such as brochures, marketing flyers, press releases, etc, other design tools such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign might make more sense to use for those use case scenarios.
The best Marvel scenario is when you have an application that has different navigability options, and it is a long project. Marvel works to design these applications, as well as give a demo in the design to present it to customers and visualize how your application will be on the client side. This is an advantage for the whole team because the client knows what to expect, and the developer know what to develop. I also appreciate the logical order between options and navigation, which allows you to carry everything out very cleanly when working. Now, if there are projects that are short and do not have a level of design that requires you to present your application to a client in a visual way, it is not necessary to work on Marvel, since the ideal use of this application is to really see the scope of a project, to see in a visual way what will be presented and how it will look, and to see functions and features that will be available in some way when the application is developed. That is the great advantage of using marvel.
Tappable overlaid layers - bugs on fixed components, such as an app navigation footer in a prototype
Swapping a component but retaining inputted copy or imagery.
Performance on prototypes to work better in UserZoom - having to delete hidden layers manually, optimize images, and streamline the file, in general, is time-consuming
Folder structures - larger teams need multiple layers of folder structure to help find things.
Branch performance - we need better, more user-friendly solutions to get designs to merge better.
Branch performance - branching with the option to choose which pages you want in the branch without deleting each page you don't need.
Default sharing options need improvement.
Responsive ratios' in prototyping without having to recreate pages.
Better collaboration with Jira to bring in links in the design mode not just dev mode.
Figma is a pretty cool tool in many areas. My team almost uses it on daily basis, such as, brainstorming on product/design topics, discussing prototypes created by designers. We even use it for retrospectives, which is super convenient and naturally keeps records of what the team discusses every month. Furthermore, I do see the potential of the product - currently we mainly use it for design topics, but it seems it is also a good fit for tech diagrams, which we probably will explore further in the future.
It's easy to use for designers who are familiar with design terms and functions from Photoshop and Illustrator. However, non-tech and non-designer collaborators have a hard time figuring out how to leave comments and apply changes, compared to other online design tools like Canva and Squarespace. Even simple drag-and-drops and rearrangement of certain blocks become too complicated due to uncommon functions like Hug and Lock.
I haven't used their support lately but in the past, they had a chat that I used often. They often responded in a few hours and were able to give a satisfactory solution. I would imagine it's less personal now but the community has expanded drastically so there are more resources out there to self serve with a bit of Google magic.
In-person training has its own benefits - 1. It helps in resolving queries then and there during the training. 2. I find classroom or in-person training more interactive. 3. Classroom or in-person training could be more practical in nature where participants can have an hands on experience with tools and clarify their doubts with the trainer.
Online training has its own merits and demerits - 1. Sometimes we may face issues with connectivity or the training content 2. The way training is being delivered becomes very important because not everyone is comfortable taking online training and learning by themselves. 3. With the advancement of technology online training has become popular but there is a segment of people who still prefer class-room training over online one.
I learned UX Design using Sketch and my team was using Sketch when I joined. We no longer use Sketch, and therefore I cannot compare its current functionality to Figma, but at the time of our switch, Figma just had more advanced capabilities- better collaboration, auto-layout tools, prototyping, etc. From what I can tell, it remains best in class for UX Design tools.
Marvel isn’t the most robust prototyping tool, but its simplicity is what makes the tool rise to the top when it comes to creating quick, simple prototypes to elicit feedback on designs and iterate upon them. While tools like InVision and Axure provide many tools to make more realistic, animation-heavy designs, Marvel is a go-to for a simple interface that enables designers to “just design.” Sometimes it is not necessary to have all of the bells and whistles of a stronger tool, particularly when a designer is low on time. Marvel’s simplicity allows designers to quickly design and iterate in time crunches without the distractions of fancy bells and whistles.
Creating prototypes of applications, or sites in marvel, guarantees me a considerable return, as it saves time and effort, because the client is quickly introduced to the various stages of prototyping, which avoids rework.
Another plus point, it's free!
No need to download programs, it's all done online.
