Case study: giftee

Our online diagram tool, Cacoo, recently reached over 1.7 million users worldwide, so we sent our Cacoo Ninja to do a case study interview of one of our users and see how they’re enjoying Cacoo.

Our Cacoo Ninja first visited giftee in Tokyo.

Company Profile

• Company Name: giftee Inc.
• Founded: 2010
• Industry: IT
• Description: giftee provides social gift cards (e-gifts) to their users. These cards are sent by email or messaging apps (e.g., LINE or Facebook).

Interviewee Profile

• Fumitaka Yanase, CTO – Working at giftee for 5 years

• Ami Ishibashi, Director of giftee.co – Working at giftee for less than a year

Ishibashi (right) and Yanase (left) from giftee.

Can you please introduce yourself?

Yanase: I’m the CTO of giftee Inc.  I have been working at this company since it was created back in 2010. Our company develops and provides e-gift cards for customers as well as an IT system (website) for other companies.

Ishibashi: I’m the Director of our giftee website (giftee.co). I help plan ideas and projects to expand our service. I use Cacoo a lot for making wireframes to share with the designers and developers in our team.

Tell me about giftee.co. How does it work?

Yanase: It’s a simple, easy way to show your appreciation for or celebrate with your family and friends. You can choose an e-gift card on our website (e.g., coffee gift card or a spa voucher)to send to your family or friend(s) via email or messaging apps. They receive a URL that directs them to a bar code, which they can simply scan at the specified store.

Which stores/companies use giftee’s e-gift card service?

Yanase: So far, our clientele includes companies like Starbucks, convenience stores, and L’OCCITANE. (Note: these companies and stores are located in Japan).

When and how did your company start using Cacoo?

Yanase: In 2011, we started using Mac computers. They came with Cacoo instead of PowerPoint as a drawing tool. At the beginning, we started using Cacoo just to create system configuration diagrams and business process flowcharts. We were satisfied with Cacoo, so we decided to use Cacoo to create wireframes as well.

Do you usually use Cacoo to create wireframes?

Ishibashi: Yes, I do.

Yanase: For me, I use it to design office layouts. We’re moving to bigger offices almost every year because our company is expanding and we are often hiring more people. Since our staff are interested in what the new layout will be like at the new office, I share the floor plan in Cacoo. It’s very useful, but the only problem is that everyone has a different opinion about the new office layout, so we keep adding more and more Cacoo sheets for each revision [laughs].

Before and after using Cacoo, were there any changes to your business?

Ishibashi: I feel like Caoo is a very useful tool, especially when I have a meeting with our developers, designers and product managers. Before, I used to draw a wireframe by hand, and it was not easy to share with other team members. After I started using Cacoo, we could edit together remotely and share it with anyone who was involved in the project. At my company, every Wednesday is “Remote Day”; we can work anywhere we want, such as at a cafe or at home. Cacoo makes Wednesdays just another work day for us.

Cacoo is also very convenient for seeing in the revision history, so that’s why I like it!

Who would you recommend Cacoo to?

Yanase: I’d recommend it someone who uses PowerPoint but is not satisfied with it. When multiple members were working at the same time, PowerPoint had difficulties. This is one reason why we chose Cacoo.

Ishibashi: Exactly! Also, when I create website content, PowerPoint has a limited screen size. On the other hand, Cacoo is quite easy to use and could eliminate the time and extra work for putting a capture.

What’s your favorite Cacoo feature?

Ishibashi: I really like the Cacoo Ninja feature. It lets you copy any images under a certain size and paste them on Cacoo. Cropping images is also easy, just a simple double-click.

Wow! You know a lot about Cacoo’s features. Seems like only hardcore users know about the Cacoo Ninja tool.

Ishibashi: Oh, really? I didn’t think I was that extreme. [laughs] Maybe because I’ve used Cacoo for a long time from my previous job? And some operations are similar to Adobe’s software (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.), that’s why I can use it so naturally.

Do you have any feedback or requests for Cacoo?

Ishibashi: Mmm… it would be great if I could share by each sheet. For example, even if I share a link for one tab/sheet in a diagram, people can still see the other sheets. Sometimes there are some sheets I shouldn’t show to our intern students, so this would be useful.

Yanase: For me, it would be nice if I could see images through the chat tool. Also, it would be more useful if Cacoo had a paper document creation mode like PowerPoint–like if you scroll down then you can go to see the next page. Oh! I also have a question about saving the diagrams.  I don’t save that much. [laughs] Is it good practice to save diagrams? If so, like in which case?

If you save a diagram, then a snapshot is created that can be seen and compared in the revision history.This is another feature that only hardcore users know about. [laughs] We’ll work hard to improve this features for better usability.

Both: Wow, nice!

Some users like the revision history feature because it is “evidence” of other people’s actions. [laughs]

Both: [laugh]

Thank you so much for your time today!

【Interviewer’s Notes】

Cacoo’s big selling point is the convenience of sharing between users, so I’m so glad that they understand it and are taking advantage of it. About the lesser known operations, they’re definitely useful Cacoo features, so I’d like to introduce them to more users as well!

(By Makoto Hirayama, creator of Cacoo Ninja)