Top 6 Ideation and Visual Collaboration Software for Customer Experience Professionals in 2022

Dale Clifford

October 12, 2022 • 4 min read

#IdeationSoftware

If you’re a Customer Experience professional, you’ll have a colourful toolkit of sticky notes, sharpie pens and diagraming paper.

But as more and more teams are working remotely, it can be difficult to collaborate online without the right digital toolkit.

One of the challenges we’ve seen are large groups of people try to collaborate online, but they’re often met with latency issues, or people who are unable to follow the rest of the group because some people have large monitors and others are using smaller devices or tablets.

It’s really important to test different solutions with your team before you embark on a design sprint, you will want to make sure that the tools you use are effective and easy for the people you work with.

A lot of people are comfortable with pen and paper, but not everyone is able to design on a computer.

That’s where collaboration tools that include a lot of templates and layouts that make it easy to get started will help your teams achieve a better outcome.

A lot of the time, we know what the best solutions are, but it’s difficult to visual and express the ideas we have in our heads.

Over the past three years, the number of digital collaboration tools have skyrocketed.

When deciding which tool your team needs, there’s a few things to consider:

• Is is easy to use with a mouse and keyboard?
  A digital whiteboard is not always as intuitive as sharpie and large sheets of paper.
• Can you build low and high-fidelity prototypes?
  You can avoid rework by choosing a solution that can do it all.
• Is it possible to actually test and validate your designs?
  You will want a solution that you can share with your clients to get in-context feedback.
• Can you export or integrate with online storage such as OneDrive or Google Drive?
  Your business’ Intellectual Property should be easily exported from your collaboration tool.
• Can multiple users edit at the same time, with live collaboration?
  The best results are iterative, and working together means you’ll come up with better solutions.
• Are there templates and layouts to help you get started?
  The quicker you can get up and running, the easier it will be to focus on designing.

Our recommendations

Our pick of the top 6 Ideation and Collaboration tools:

• LucidChart – Lucidchart is the intelligent diagramming application that brings teams together to make better decisions and build the future.
• Moqups – Make wireframes, mockups, diagrams, charts, and prototypes within one creative context.
• Miro – The online collaborative whiteboard platform to bring teams together, anytime, anywhere.
• Smartdraw – Quick-start templates for 70+ different diagram types from flowcharts to floor plans.
• Cacoo – Visual collaboration for diagrams, wireframes, and flowcharts.
• Diagrams.net – a visual mapping tool for process design and IT architecture teams.

Before you start collaborating

An online collaboration tool will make it much easier for your team to come up with an idea or solution that incorporates all of the feedback and inputs from your whole team, but you need to practice.

A great way to get started is to design something trivial, so your teams can practice.

Try building a basic flowchart to describe the process of making a cup of tea, or use a digital whiteboard to play a game of tic-tac-toe, as Miro suggest a great way for teams to become familiar with online tools.

By doing so, your teams will become familiar with the toolbar in the app, so when it comes time to designing, they’re more confident using the tool and better collaborators.

The winner for CX design — LucidChart

Lucidchart is the intelligent diagramming application that brings teams together to make better decisions and build the future.

Lucidchart is a web-based diagramming application that allows users to visually collaborate on drawing, revising and sharing charts and diagrams, and improve processes, systems, and organizational structures.

Create a shared vision Quickly visualize your team’s processes, systems, and organizational structure. Intelligent diagramming lets you visualize complex ideas faster, clearer and more collaboratively.
Get everyone on the same page, literally A common visual language accelerates collaboration and improves communication. It’s easier to align and stay aligned when everyone collaborates in the same space. Lucidchart makes it easy to involve the right people to make the right decisions.
Bring plans to life Even the best ideas need help to become real. Lucidchart allows you to stay focused and sprint forward with purpose. Bring to life the plans that will propel your business.