First impression of InVision Studio

Before we jump into our 2019 goals, we have a little breathing room to try out InVision's new tool, Studio to see if it's game-changing enough to switch from Sketch.

What I liked

• Beautiful onboarding process.
• Dark UI is pretty slick. Though there is a plugin for Sketch that supports a dark theme.
• Sketch shortcuts carry over so there's no cumbersome relearning.
• Percentage based geometry.
• Ability to handle all touchpoints of a project; from wireframing to hi-fi design to prototyping.
• Can open Sketch files.
• Create freehand of project quick and easy.

What I didn't like so much...

• Lack of third-party plugin community. Recently, InVision has announced that they plan on allowing third-party developers to build products for Studio with their API so this is on the horizon for them.
• Performance issues when sending a preview to a client. Multiple issues such as the design not loading at all and animations that seemed broken.
• Performance issues while designing in the program. It can run slow at times and have a delay when switching between pages.
• No icon text. There are tooltips and some icons can be inferred but just makes navigating around more convoluted.
• Can adjust the width of the layer panel BUT not the height which makes dealing with a complex project with many pages more annoying.

The verdict

I think Studio definitely has the potential of giving Sketch and Adobe a run for their money if not the top platform of the three. However, the issues when shipping the product for preview and the general performance of the platform still makes Sketch part of our main workflow. We're open to revisiting Studio's potential once some of the points above are addressed.

As of right now, InVision Studio is free for users which may be a foreign concept to most designers when dealing with software. I suspect that InVision will follow the same pricing model of their prototype platform and limit the amount of projects you can create. For now though, users can take advantage of this offer.

Also worth keeping in mind that InVision Studio is still very much in it's early days. Boasting that it's the "world's most powerful screen design tool" may be premature as there's a lot of room for improvement. We'll make sure to post another update as the platform grows but we definitely recommend giving Studio a shot to see if it's worth adapting your workflow to it. Until then!