Over the past few months we've been working on a new Marvel that will lay the groundwork for the future of the platform.
It's been a wild ride. As many of you know, Marvel started off as a side-project built in the summer of 2013. At that time prototyping was still fighting for its place in the design process, regarded mostly as a 'nice to have if there's time' activity.
Fast forward to today and prototyping has truly transformed the workflow. In fact, it's now harder to find teams who aren't prototyping than those who are.
"Fast forward to today and prototyping has truly transformed the workflow"
We've seen prototyping go beyond the design team too, from 5 year olds and 7th graders letting their imaginations run free to landing your next job. Across the board, prototyping is now a stepping stone to a new industry, a way to tell a story and communicate your ideas, no matter what level of design or technical skill you may have.
Our aim is to make design and prototyping accessible to the world, removing friction and complexity and making it fun. The Marvel users of today could be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow and that's an incredibly exciting part of our mission. The upcoming release of our new feature Canvas will play a big role in that vision.
We also want to continue helping teams small and large work better, our new Stories section includes case studies from the likes of Dice, ustwo, Deliveroo, Transferwise, Digitas LBi, and Marks and Spencer, who all use Marvel to create products and services that millions of people use each day.
So what's new in Marvel 2.0? Let's go!
New in Marvel 2.0
- We've cleaned up and redesigned the web interface, using our new (soon to be open-sourced) style guide.
- Added the ability to organise your work into folders!
- Import users from Slack or Asana into your projects and directory
- New users roles for team members including Account Admin and Reviewer (a read-only mode for collaborators) roles
- Several parts of the app have been reengineered in React and now work faster and smarter. (If you're passionate about React and building design tools, get in touch)
- Removed 7 features
- A new website, blog and logo!
It's not just the product that looks different, the team does too!
Team
We've grown to 15! It's been an absolute pleasure to work alongside this talented bunch - big shout out to Sophie, Oleg, Joe, Danil, Sean, Dean, George, Colm, Elliot, Brendan, Jonathan, Rali, Max and Yav for making it all happen! Oh and we're hiring.
What's in store for 2016
Over the past 12 months, we've spoken to thousands of you, the insight has been amazing. The nature of the product and userbase means we don't just get written feedback, but designs, flows, sitemaps and visuals too! Keep it coming!
We're now focused on bringing a wide range of improvements to existing features such as comments, teams and prototyping - whilst also creating innovative new products to add to our eco-system.
Marvel now has 265,000 users around the world (with nearly 1,000 joining each day) and we couldn't have got this far without the support of the community, so a HUGE thank you from myself and the team.
Can't wait to see what you make with Marvel in 2016!
