024 - A REVIEW of AI product demo generator, Fable.
The Pitch
Create stunning interactive demos in 5 minutes.
Fable is a unique application. Few to no apps like it exist on the market. I looked and really couldn't find anything like it. Its primary feature is creating demos for your product or website.
The demos created are typical product walkthroughs with popup annotations explaining the various features of your product. Although the AI feature isn't core to the product, I wanted to see how helpful it is, and that's the focus of this review.
The Experience
Getting Started With Fable
First, this app is a Google Chrome extension only. For something that focuses on product demos and onboarding, I had hoped Fable would offer an easy way into the app, and it did not disappoint.
After creating your login credentials, you land on your main dashboard, which walks you through a quick onboarding of its features. In addition, your dashboard has easily accessible user guides, making them easy to reference later. Overall, the setup was fast and easy.
Assessing Fable’s Usability
Working in Fable felt similar to using a whiteboarding application but without creative features like pens or shapes. Fable's interface will be easy to pick up if you've used any of those apps.
When adjusting your product demo, there are two editing modes. The first top-level mode lets you see all your product screens to demo in a nice user flow. Clicking on your screens takes you to a second mode, allowing you to customize the annotations on that particular screen or create new ones.
One of my gripes was the need for a zoom/magnifying feature. Fortunately, my mouse wheel has a zoom feature mapped to it, which made navigating the dashboard easy, but the devs should make that a default visible function.
The other gripe is the need for hotkey commands to speed up workflow. Hotkeys would be a welcomed quality-of-life improvement in a scenario with many screens to set up and edit.
Fable's Standout Features
Fable works by recording your onscreen actions from any URL you visit. Now, it doesn't produce a video file. Instead, it records and plays back your action in real-time, overlying its annotations. Once your demo is built, you can edit and embed it into other destinations like a website.
As I mentioned, I used this website to create the demo, but when my demo played back, none of the website images were visible and displayed as a broken link. This was quite annoying.
Regarding AI integration, Fable has an AI assistant named Quilly. Quilly assists in auto-generating your demo annotations based on descriptions of your product and the purpose of the demo. Like most generative AI, your prompts will be key to getting the best results. The more descriptive your prompt is in detailing the product features and user interface, the more accurate the annotations will sound and be positioned relative to the features of your product.
The Verdict
Why Should You Care
At its core, Fable works to simplify creating a product demo. But the AI features were nice to have and another bullet point to promote as an app feature.
Quilly, their AI, performed well on my second try when I made the prompt more descriptive. However, the time spent writing a descriptive prompt is better spent creating the product demo annotations yourself. Then, there was the issue with my website images not appearing, which I couldn't figure out how to solve.
Fable can be a good starting point for small businesses looking to create product demos quickly, but I wouldn't get too excited about its AI features, as building out the demo manually gives you a much better result.
Fable Facts:
14-Day free trial
AI features require separate paid tokens for each use
Google Chrome Extension only
Integrations with Mailchimp, Hubspot, Salesforce and more
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