First of all, you should know that we support importing and copying and pasting from Balsamiq. We don't want folks to have to start from scratch in Indigo if they already have assets in Baslamiq.
Now, to answer the question, Balsamiq Mockups (and other static wireframing/mockup tools) are designed with a slightly different philosophy in mind. While you can rapidly and easily make static wireframes in Indigo Studio (we have found it is at least as easy and fast as Balsamiq, if not more so in some ways), Indigo is an interaction design tool. Defining interactions is a central concept in Indigo, while it is an afterthought, if a thought at all, in static wireframing tools.
In our experience and in talking to other designers in the field, we have found that even though they know the superior value of interaction prototyping in the design process, their primary concern/argument against actual interaction prototyping is the perception that it is too much of an investment. While this may be true of other software prototyping tools, it is a core design principle of Indigo to support rapid interaction prototyping, what we like to call sketching prototypes. Our goal is to make sketching prototypes as easy as sketching static UIs.
And indeed, if you start sketching a static UI in Indigo, it feels just as easy--if not easier--than in many static wireframing tools. We have made every effort to get Indigo out of your way, and to let you focus on your designs, from the user's perspective. And here's the coolest part--you can almost invisibly create a simple clickable prototype, even if you are just staying focused on the static UIs. All you have to do is just design it like you want it as you go along naturally following a user path. It feels like you are just designing static UIs, but when you finish, you have a clickable prototype that not only can you share with clients, stakeholders, and colleagues, but you can actually test it with users. Also, if you feel that an animation/transition would help, all you have to do is tweak the timeline for that interaction.
As we said, Indigo Studio is an interaction design tool; it considers interaction design holistically (that, too, is why we support integrated storyboards). Our core focus is to facilitate and enable people to discover the best design by keeping the focus on users throughout the design process, facilitate rapid interaction prototyping that you can evaluate with people and iterate cheaply, and then to implicitly minimize the communication burden because rather than slapping a ton of notes to describe interactions, you can simply and quickly just show them.
But you don't have to take our word for it. Just download Indigo Studio and try it out for yourself. If you want a quick primer to give yourself a head start, the Getting Started videos are great for that. Enjoy!
List of Indigo Advantages
If you're looking for something more list/capability-based, here you go. Assume that, more or less, Indigo does everything a tool like Balsamiq does for rapid wireframing, plus:
Is there any consideration for exporting the design into Visual Studio to help developers get moving faster, having had the user interface design done ?
In Balsamiq, there are add ons that allow this. Getting a mockup moved quickly into a working prototype, where the real business rules can start to be applied is very powerful and much needed.
How does this fit in your plans ?
Can you point me to the VS targeted add in you are talking about? I hadn't heard of that and didn't see it after a quick search.
We are not specifically targeting VS at this time, however, we are working on getting useful code assets out of the prototypes. We're targeting HTML-based first, so if you have other specific target tech you'd like, please feel free to suggest that on the UserVoice site.
Have at look at :
http://support.balsamiq.com/customer/portal/articles/135659
Under the sec ion:
OK, thanks, Brett. I got thrown off by the VS-specific comment.
So yes, we are definitely working on getting code out of prototypes for ya, but currently nothing VS-specific.