

MyBalsamiq: remote, collaborative UX Design - thibaut_barrere
https://www.mybalsamiq.com

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phzbOx
I don't particularly like their video intro. I feel like they've tried to fit
it under a specific time limit (which is great) by doing everything faster,
speaking faster and weirdly skipping animation. For instance, they take 20secs
to talk about drag and drop and pressing prev/next to show the next mockup. He
said "You can click the previous arrow or the next arrow to go to the next
mockup". It's not relevent in an intro video. I.e. if the interface is well
made, I'll figure out how to go to the next mockup when in that page.

Better would be to stop saying every little actions and talk on the high level
goal. For instance, don't say "I'm gonna select a color to put on the front-
end of my project".

Also, seems like the website is really well designed but the balsamiq part is
still with the old flash design. Is it from the same company? Did they chose
to not change the old balsamiq because clients were already used to it? Or was
that too complicated? Is there an html only version incoming?

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zachanker
It would be nice if "Plans & Pricing" on <https://www.mybalsamiq.com/>
actually took you to <http://balsamiq.com/buy?p=myb> rather than
<http://balsamiq.com/products/mockups/mybalsamiq#pricingtable> and then having
to click another "Plans and Pricing" link.

Looks cool though, will definitely have to check it out.

~~~
balsamiq
Fixed, sorry about that.

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ghurlman
I've been using Balsamiq for a couple years, and I've been looking forward to
the online product. I have a few project collaborators that cannot install
software onto PCs they have to use at work; a webapp is a godsend.

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thibaut_barrere
I'll surely give it a try at least. Just curious, are there any other "remote
collaborative UX" tools recommended by HNers?

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jsdalton
I found none that made me particularly happy.

I actually waited for what seemed like an eternity for Balsamiq's online
product to come out (I really had zero interest in the desktop product). When
it finally did I tried it and found it was _exactly_ what I was looking for. I
am now a happy paying customer.

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thibaut_barrere
Thanks for the feedback, appreciated! I'll try it out. I'm doing more and more
mockups tweaks for our coming SAAS product (see profile if interested); it
could help us work more "asynchronously" with our designer when needed.

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dave1619
I wish they would have integrated collaboration into the web app editor. Right
now it feels like two web apps - the balsamiq editor and then a comment
system. But they feel like separate apps and don't integrate with each other.

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kky
The video does not explain why the product is great, and jumps straight into
feature details. I think the video also assumes familiarity with the desktop
product, which I don't have. I lost interest quickly.

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psweber
Does anyone have experience using Balsamiq for large, complex projects? Had
success using it for client work?

My company is pushing for everyone to use Axure. I hate Axure.

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ghurlman
I've used Balsamiq to sell business groups inside of very large corporations
to sign off on project estimates. It's a fast, easy way to show them what
they're getting for their money, and becomes v0.1 of the design as well, with
enough fidelity to discover usability & flow without locking into many other
design choices.

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wushupork
What are your thoughts on the whole design by committee? This seems to foster
that.

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untog
I think there's at least a slight difference between UX design by committee
and creative design (for want of a better term) by committee.

UX design in groups makes more sense- there are a series of rules and
guidelines you can follow to make a good UI. Everyone can co-operate on that,
in the sense that they have a rule sheet, and can assess how the design fits
those rules.

The more creative side of it (logos, colour schemes, etc) is far more
subjective, so attempting to do it by committee always brings everything to an
"offend no-one" median.

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ronbo
chrome is giving a malware warning on this site...

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balsamiq
Our ISP (WPEngine) did a full scan and couldn't find anything fishy, and we
can't figure out how to reproduce the issue (none of us sees the warning). Can
you please email me if you still see it? So sorry for the hassle.

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dariobarila
Nice UX!

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rorrr
Watching the video was like - WTF, this UI needs a complete redesign, it's so
fucking complex.

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infocaptor
can you check out the collab features of <http://www.mockuptiger.com>

