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Sunday Rewind: How to avoid product discovery pitfalls, by Navin Nair

Guest Post

What a product manager does in three films and a box set 

Beks has over 2 decades experience working in Product Management, the last 14 years spent leading global product and design teams. Working at a wide variety of industries, product types; B2C, B2B, and B2B2C. Various domains;  financial services, payments, retail banking, SaaS, personal media and TV and most recently in Climate Tech. Beks is the founder of the Female Product Lead a community focused on empowering the female product leaders of today and tomorrow and is also a community leader at Product Mind community - the worlds only community supporting the mental health and wellbeing of product professionals globally.  

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Becky Yelland

Louron serves as the Editor at Mind the Product, bringing nearly a decade of experience in editorial positions across business and technology publications. For any editorial inquiries, you can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Louron Pratt

<h2>What can product teams learn from InVision’s decline?</h2>
InVision, a prominent New-York-based UX design and software company, is set to close its platform by the end of this year, marking the end of an 11-year journey. Only InVision’s Freehand app, which was<a href="https://miro.com/newsroom/miro-acquires-freehand-app-from-invision/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> acquired by Miro</a> in November, is saved.
<a href="https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/invision-design-collaboration-services-shutdown/?itm_campaign=default&amp;itm_source=homefeatured&amp;itm_medium=website&amp;itm_content=default%7D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In a blog post</a>, InVision CEO Michael Shenkman expressed his gratitude to its user community, stating: &#8220;On behalf of all InVisioners, I want to convey our appreciation for the trust and support you’ve shown us. Your commitment to InVision has been our heartbeat for the last 12 years, and we are genuinely thankful for the privilege of being part of your creative process.&#8221;
<h2>What caused InVision’s decline?</h2>
At the height of its success InVision was valued at close to $2 billion and was seen as a challenger to Adobe, so what went wrong? Common criticisms of the business include lack of innovation and limiting user experience. It also failed to respond to the rise of a strong competitor in Figma, which <a href="https://www.figma.com/blog/figma-adobe-abandon-proposed-merger/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recently called off its merger with Adobe</a> because regulatory approval proved too difficult.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38869127" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Users on YCombinator</a> were quick to weigh in on what caused the company to collapse, with comments such as:- 
“&#8230;InVision was unable to move beyond their original simple prototyping platform. They were way ahead of the curve when they began and simply never did anything useful beyond that”, and:-
“Invision Studio was competing against Sketch, Adobe XD, Gravit Designer and Lunacy all at the same time. Invision Studio didn&#8217;t really differentiate itself and it was super crash prone to boot. Then Figma came and ate everyone&#8217;s lunch. Invision clearly didn&#8217;t have the ambition or understanding of user needs as they simply kept copying others instead of innovating in the space.”
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/beckyyelland/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Becky Yelland</a>, Product Director at Arenko Group and a regular contributor to MTP, feels that style over substance has been a key failing for InVision. She says: “They [InVision] fell into the trap so many have fallen into before, thinking that they could ride the wave of their initial success.”  There were major issues that led users to fall out of love with business, she adds: its products failed to scale with customers, and administrative and collaborative limitations meant that users were frequently frustrated and not delighted.
In a blog post on Medium, <a href="https://ranzeeth.medium.com/sunsetting-invision-the-design-reflections-0d45e3303ec8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ranjeet Tayi</a>, product designer and long-time InVision user, says that InVision’s integration issues and persistent bugs also contributed to its non-competitiveness. He cites other factors too, including a failure to provide a seamless end-to-end experience instead offering a fragmented experience that is dependent on other tools, and neglecting customer feedback.
<h2>What can product people learn from this?</h2>
What can product teams and organisations learn from InVision’s decline? Most importantly, you can’t assume that if you solve a customer problem on day one, that it will continue to solve relevant problems forever. As Becky Yelland reminds us: “Customers needs change and evolve. To remain relevant, it’s imperative to continuously listen to their needs, and evolve your product offering alongside users as their workflows evolve.”
Ranjeet comments in his blog: “As a user and customer who once held a deep respect for the product and the company, witnessing this outcome is undeniably disheartening. The demise of InVision underscores the critical importance of prioritising innovation and maintaining a proactive stance to stay ahead of the curve.”
Perhaps the outcome would have been different if InVision had offered a holistic design ecosystem and then competed head-to-head with Figma as it grew. In 2017 InVision was pretty 60% of UX Designers/Product Designers used for InVision for Prototyping, with only 6% using Figma, according to a<a href="https://uxtools.co/survey/2020/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> UX Tools design survey</a>.  By 2020, 57% of respondents were using Figma as their main tool. Perhaps it should have taken the time to integrate some of its startup acquisitions into its main offering, or spent less on marketing and investing in the brand.
“Potentially, just one of these options could have been enough for this story to have ended differently,” says Becky. “Certainly, all of them together would have given Figma a better run for their money. One thing you can say for certain is they were not customer-led in their strategic decision-making.”

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What product teams can learn from InVision

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What product teams can learn from InVision

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