Google Jamboard is a collaborative whiteboard, available as an add-on to Google Workspaces.
$4,999
InVision
Score 5.8 out of 10
N/A
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.
[Google] Jamboard's functionality allows anyone to create a visual representation of information while remaining open to collaboration with others. Students can use the program to solve math problems by writing on their touch screens, while others create timelines of their lives with different shapes, formatting, and text options. Teachers can use it jointly during professional development to brainstorm new ideas and make note of those they would like to implement. The possibilities feel endless.
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.
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 This hasn’t been a huge issue, but it makes the app feel a little out of date, considering the range of such functionalities in other apps.
It's a tool that's easily accessible from your Google Suite. For a whiteboarding workspace, it provides a good basic platform. Multiple whiteboards can be created in one workspace, so you can share a session with multiple teams/plants. Compared to more advanced whiteboarding tools, it has limited features. You'll need to have access to the Internet to take full advantage of the collaborative workspace. The amount of storage space required for your session will use up your Google Drive quota.
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.
Google Jamboard is part of the Google education suite so it's easily accessible and part of our single sign-on authentication. Padlet is another tool that supports active learning web boards, but it is not easily integrated with our LMS and it's yet another tool to support. We've also heard about Mural.co, but that one seems more complicated to use compared to Google Jamboard. It's also more expensive and we try to maximize the resources we have available.
[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
