The Lost Legacy. The Future is Design?

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Exploring the Fall of InVision and the Lost Legacy: A Journey Through Disruption and Design Transformation.

1. InVision and Design Education ??

InVision , by releasing documentaries such as "Design Disruptors", "Squads", "Transformation by Design", and "The Loop", offered the global design community unique glimpses into how design can power disruptive innovations and transform entire industries. These documentaries demonstrated the profound impact that 21st-century-centered design has on businesses and society, inspiring designers and non-designers alike with stories of companies that place design at the core of their business strategy.

2. The Rise of Figma and the Decline of InVision ??

InVision's trajectory was marked by a meteoric rise followed by a gradual decline, contrasting with the rise of Figma, which emerged as a highly adaptable and user-centered collaborative design tool. InVision's inability to innovate and stay relevant ahead of agile competitors like Figma illustrates a cycle of innovation and obsolescence in digital design. This cycle not only impacted InVision's business operations but also threatened to erase its educational and documentary legacy Dorve & Mind The Product.

The shutdown of InVision marks a significant point in the design industry, highlighting the rise and fall of a company that was a pioneer in collaboration tools for design. InVision faced numerous challenges throughout its existence, including persistent technical problems with its integrations and a complex pricing structure that failed to keep up with market evolutions, such as the simpler and more effective approach adopted by Figma UX for AI.

Furthermore, InVision lost "The Moment" to competitors like the Marvel App even before Figma became popular, indicating that the company's challenges began well before Figma emerged as a leader in the prototyping and design collaboration space Medium.

The decision to cease operations was influenced by a series of questionable strategic and operational choices over the years, including an over-reliance on external tools like Sketch and the inability to create a coherent end-user and consumer experience Hacker News.

While Figma offered an integrated and accessible design experience, InVision struggled with a platform that many considered outdated and complicated, resulting in a gradual loss of consumers and users LogRocket Blog.

However, InVision's legacy is not just a story of decline but also a reminder of the risks of innovation in the fast-paced digital design world. The company had moments of brilliance and helped shape collaborative design practices that are still valued today. Even with the end of its operations, InVision's contribution to the design industry still resonates in many of the tools and practices currently in use Fast Company & Tech Startups.

3. The Disappearance of Valuable Resources ??

With the announcement of InVision's shutdown by the end of 2024, the design community faces the loss of not just a collaborative platform but also access to these documentaries and other important historical design viewpoints: influential documentaries and educational materials that outlined an era of innovation are at risk of disappearing, possibly leaving a significant gap in the resources available for the study and practice of design. These resources, which captured an era of innovation and inspiration, are at risk of becoming inaccessible, leaving a void in design education and history.

With InVision's imminent shutdown by the end of 2024, the design community is already facing the potential loss of a rich source of knowledge. This potential disappearance highlights the fragility of digital files and the urgent need for effective strategies for preserving history and knowledge in the design field.

The transition of these resources to other platforms, like Miro, which acquired Freehand, offers some security but does not guarantee the preservation of the original format or InVision's vision and intentions of conveying meaning.

Ephemerality of Digital Platforms. Digitization promised easy access and unlimited distribution. However, it also reveals an intrinsic vulnerability: dependence on support infrastructures that can be withdrawn anytime. The closure of InVision services demonstrates how business decisions and market evolutions can effectively eliminate access to tools and content that many consider permanent DesignWhine.

Consequences for the Design Community. For many, the closure means more than just transitioning to new tools; it represents the loss of a repository of collaborative and historical work accumulated over the years. The need to export and migrate projects to other platforms under time pressure raises questions about the fragility of digital files and the long-term security of data stored digitally.

Reflection on Digital Sustainability. This event serves as a crucial reminder for organizations to consider the sustainability of their digital practices. Digital preservation requires more than just backups; it necessitates a strategy that anticipates technological changes, market evolutions, and the possibility of service discontinuation. Companies need robust plans to protect and migrate critical data to ensure continuous accessibility, regardless of changes in the technological landscape.

4. Reflecting on Digital Sustainability ??

The loss of InVision's documentaries and other content is felt as an irreplaceable loss in terms of design learning resources and a gap in the ability to capture and convey the evolution of design as a discipline. These documentaries are essential for understanding how design has shaped and will continue to shape future technological developments and business innovations.

The design community must find ways to preserve this knowledge for future generations. Show what originality, authenticity, and failure in Design mean, as brilliantly done in Design Disruptors, so that with this socially transformative power, future design Squads can reverse the Loop of Business Outcomes that are mistakenly interpreted as Design.

Ensure that Design has a seat at the decision-making table so that "The Whole," the process, and the system can apply a strategy and, through Transformation by Design., be understood as the real value of this discipline.

5. Conclusion ??

The closure of InVision is not merely the end of a company but also a warning about the importance of preserving knowledge and cultural legacy in the field of design and other areas and of thinking sustainably. It is crucial that the community finds ways to keep accessible the knowledge and inspiration from these documentaries and so many other contents that InVision, like many other companies, has shared and made available to the community for free and altruistically, ensuring that the legacy of innovation and education does not get lost in time and space.

If we do not change this handicap of the digital paradigm, is the future really Design?

Personal Note

The issues I raise here also relate to my views on sustainability and my experiences in a company I worked for in the 1990s and 2000s, which did not have the scale of InVision but was a national market leader in technological innovation and internationally inspiring at the time.

As always, everything stated is just one opinion—mine.

Thank you for making it here!