InVision Studio is ready to shake up the design industry - Dispatch Weekly

InVision is unveiling a new desktop, screen design tool for digital designers in January 2018.

The team behind the popular app have removed the need for clunky photo editing apps when creating a web page prototype. For the first time ever, designers will have a purpose-built website and app design tool to create prototypes that can be viewed natively without the need for a myriad of tools that serve isolated purposes.

The Company

InVision was founded in 2011 by Clark Valberg and Ben Nadel. The two of them created the InVision app as a layer above conventional picture editing tools, to add animations and transitions that you would find once the prototype design had been implemented on a website or app.

The firm has received $235 million in seven rounds of funding. Most recently, at the beginning of November, the company received $100million in Series E funding to help them realise such a platform as the InVision Studio.

Currently, the platform is slated for a release in January 2018 however, it is currently being beta tested by early subscribers, and you can sign up for early access here.

An Alternative to Photoshop

The platform is ready to revolutionise the digital design industry. The issue many designers in the web or app design industry have is that there is no purpose-built tool that allows for fully functional prototypes to be designed.

Valberg stated that Photoshop is a photo editor and “Sketch is a reductionist version of Photoshop, baked down to just what you need to draw stuff on a screen”.

He received feedback on the InVision app from designers stating that the whole design process was too convoluted to create each prototype. The typical workflow leads from designing the static images and overall design on a photo editor and then migrating to a tool to supply the animation and transition features you see on a professional webpage.

The InVision Studio is a purpose built, all in one design tool that seeks to remove the reliance on photo editors such as Photoshop. This tool allows you to craft, animate and create professional prototypes natively with no need to export your project to different tools.

Collaborative Design

Another benefit of this platform is the shared design systems implemented. This creates a shared library of assets, hex codes and other design components so collaboration is extremely easy, especially in relation to the previous system where multiple tools would be used to edit a project.

InVision Studio also allows users to upload their works to the InVision Cloud, so clients, collaborators and colleagues can view the designs and then make appropriate feedback.

It will be hard for a designer to remain rooted to Photoshop and Sketch when they have a platform of this nature at their fingertips.

The benefits of InVision Studio means the platform has a responsive layout, allows for rapid prototyping, utilises advanced animation; and it allows for seamless collaboration via shared design systems and the InVision Cloud