Conceptboard is a collaboration software built for teams of any size. Its primary features are project management, team whiteboards, integration into business workflows, and real-time collaboration.
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Figma
Score 9.0 out of 10
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Figma, headquartered in San Francisco, offers their collaborative design and prototyping application to support digital product and UI development.
I like ConceptBoard better than Miro. Miro also offers a similar virtual "whiteboard" but Conceptboard has a better UX and is easier (and more fun) to use.
I've used Figma extensively, and still do, for UX planning and design but have moved away from them for brainstorming. Figma…
Well suited - 1. Whiteboarding, brainstorming, designing, workshops, etc. 2. Templates - Pretty good repository of ready-to-use templates esp for project management, agile, etc. Less appropriate - 1. Anything that requires integration with existing enterprising software - limitations like no integration with Jira, Asana, etc. 2. Embedding anything related to images, videos, etc. The embed is not very smooth, it lags, and sometimes straight out doesn't work 3. Image search - Many competitors provide this feature and hence Conceptboard lacks here
Figma is a solid design tool to craft the UX design concepts/solutions for digital products. For printed marketing materials such as brochures, marketing flyers, press releases, etc, other design tools such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign might make more sense to use for those use case scenarios.
Great user interface that's very intuitive and easy to use. This is an important aspect of collaboration, brainstorming sessions often involve a lot of people coming from different functions who may not be too familiar with these tools
Allows users to see real-time changes and actions done by others from sticky notes/comments down to their cursor movements
Lets users add/attach files and annotate/comment on each directly on the board which skips the hassle of having to look at files using different programs/platforms and referencing on the board
Prototyping in Figma is pretty much nothing more than a glorified slide show. Sure, variables, etc are available but it takes way to long to set them up and even more time when there are revisions needed.
It would be helpful if there were a contextual help system for various functionality. For example, advanced autolayout (like space between) can become very tricky to implement sometimes. I often wish there were an AI assistant to ask for help. I often use ChatGTP to help me through these times.
Searching layers needs to be much easier and more intuitive.
I would like to be able to make groups like the layers palette in Photoshop. That would help with organization and speed a lot.
Figma is a pretty cool tool in many areas. My team almost uses it on daily basis, such as, brainstorming on product/design topics, discussing prototypes created by designers. We even use it for retrospectives, which is super convenient and naturally keeps records of what the team discusses every month. Furthermore, I do see the potential of the product - currently we mainly use it for design topics, but it seems it is also a good fit for tech diagrams, which we probably will explore further in the future.
It's easy to use for designers who are familiar with design terms and functions from Photoshop and Illustrator. However, non-tech and non-designer collaborators have a hard time figuring out how to leave comments and apply changes, compared to other online design tools like Canva and Squarespace. Even simple drag-and-drops and rearrangement of certain blocks become too complicated due to uncommon functions like Hug and Lock.
I haven't used their support lately but in the past, they had a chat that I used often. They often responded in a few hours and were able to give a satisfactory solution. I would imagine it's less personal now but the community has expanded drastically so there are more resources out there to self serve with a bit of Google magic.
In-person training has its own benefits - 1. It helps in resolving queries then and there during the training. 2. I find classroom or in-person training more interactive. 3. Classroom or in-person training could be more practical in nature where participants can have an hands on experience with tools and clarify their doubts with the trainer.
Online training has its own merits and demerits - 1. Sometimes we may face issues with connectivity or the training content 2. The way training is being delivered becomes very important because not everyone is comfortable taking online training and learning by themselves. 3. With the advancement of technology online training has become popular but there is a segment of people who still prefer class-room training over online one.
Miro is a superior product with more capabilities and better suited for advanced users. We selected Conceptboard as a short-term solution that was low-cost compared to Miro but allowed users to create boards. Once users are versed in Conceptboard, they are better off using Miro which has more integration, better capabilities, and is overall a more complete product.
Figma compared to other tools has user friendly UI which is very easy for all levels of designers. Compared to Adobe XD and Sketch Figma is stable, while in other tools I have faced software crashing in the middle of the work which resulted in loss of data/design. Compared to other tools it's fast and shows less lag. Collaboration in Figma is very easy as it is cloud based but in XD it's not that smooth working with other designers.
I can say that this tool is unique since its impact on our work team has been one of the best we have ever had since it allows us to exchange ideas in one place through boards, which is more fun with the video call function
