How Cacoo helps design teams collaborate and communicate better

Design teams face unique challenges when collaborating remotely. With designers spread across offices, locales, and even time zones, seamless communication and efficient feedback loops become difficult. This makes it even more important to be able to effectively present ideas to peers and stakeholders. 

Cacoo, Nulab’s innovative diagramming and collaboration tool, provides a comprehensive solution to these challenges, empowering design teams to work smarter, faster, and more creatively.

In this article, we’ll show you how Cacoo addresses common pain points in remote design work, enhancing team productivity and creativity through its feature-rich platform. 

Whether you’re a UX designer, product manager, or part of a cross-functional team, Cacoo has the tools needed to bring your ideas to life and collaborate effectively in the digital workspace.

Understanding the challenges faced by design teams

When design teams operate in remote or hybrid environments, they often encounter obstacles that can slow down project progress and hinder creativity. These not only make for a frustrating work environment, but they also throw up roadblocks that can halt your business’s progress. 

Here are five of the most common challenges faced by design teams:

Challenge 1: Fragmented communication

In a traditional office setting, design teams thrive on spontaneous interactions. Whether it’s quick chats by the coffee machine or impromptu whiteboard sessions, all of these small sparks add up to fuel your team’s capacity for innovation. Remote work, while it has undeniable benefits, can disrupt this natural flow of communication, and potentially slow down the creative process and decision-making.

For example, a UI designer needing quick input from a UX researcher about user preferences might find it difficult to connect without the right tools to enable instant communication. What could have been a brief in-person conversation now requires scheduling a call or waiting for email responses, which can delay project timelines.

These issues can be even more challenging for distributed teams spread across time zones. Team members on the East Coast might find themselves wasting a morning waiting for a response from their West Coast colleagues, and the challenge is even more pronounced for global organizations with team members on different continents.  

Challenge 2: Visual collaboration hurdles

It’s a pretty obvious statement, but design work is inherently visual. Explaining concepts or demonstrating interactive elements can be challenging in a remote setting if you don’t have an easy way to share designs or mockups or communicate face-to-face.

Designers often rely on gestures, sketches, or quick mockups to convey ideas—methods that are harder to replicate effectively in virtual environments without the right tools.

Challenge 3: Version control complexity

Managing multiple iterations of designs becomes a puzzle when team members are distributed. Questions like “Which mockup version is current?” or “Who suggested this change?” can lead to confusion and unnecessary rework.

Imagine your team is working on a mobile app design, juggling multiple versions of the home screen layout. Without proper version control, you might accidentally work on outdated versions or overwrite each other’s changes, leading to lost work and duplicated efforts.

Challenge 4: Feedback management challenges

In an office environment, designers often get instant feedback during in-person reviews. Remote work complicates this process, with feedback coming through various channels—emails, chat messages, video calls—making it difficult to consolidate and act upon. 

Important suggestions might get lost in lengthy email threads or chat histories, resulting in missed improvements or repeated discussions. Feedback can come in inconsistent flows instead of all at once, making designers feel frustrated that they’re constantly having to update their work in response to new asynchronous feedback from a colleague. 

Challenge 5: Presentation limitations

Virtual presentations can fall short in conveying the full impact of design work. Design teams may struggle to effectively communicate interactive elements or user journeys in a remote setting, which can lead to misunderstandings or additional revision cycles.

When presenting a new website design, for example, designers might find it difficult to convey the flow between different pages or demonstrate how interactive elements would work in practice. Stakeholders may struggle to grasp the full context of the design or how various elements work together in the user journey. This is even more challenging when there’s no live, in-person presentation of your team’s work with an opportunity for feedback and questions from various project stakeholders. 

Impact on project timelines and team productivity

Compromised collaboration, communication, version control, feedback, and presentation all affect project timelines and team efficiency. When design teams face these challenges, they may spend more time coordinating than executing design work. This can result in missed deadlines, increased costs, and ultimately, a less satisfying end product. It’s a frustrating environment for your design and UX team, but it’s also a real challenge for your business, too. 

Imagine a design team working on a rebranding project: the type of project that’s crucial to the future success of a business. Without effective collaboration tools, they might suffer miscommunication about color choices or typography. This could result in multiple rounds of revisions, delaying the project launch and potentially increasing costs due to extended work hours.

All of these challenges demand that teams adopt new solutions that enable them to better collaborate and communicate, regardless of where their team is based and how they work. Tools like Cacoo represent the perfect solution for remote, hybrid, and even in-person design teams, enabling smoother working relationships and improving output. 

How Cacoo addresses design team challenges

Cacoo offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to support remote design teams and help them overcome challenges like the ones described above. By providing a centralized platform for visual collaboration, Cacoo empowers teams to work together seamlessly, regardless of their physical location. 

Let’s explore how Cacoo’s key features address specific design team challenges:

Solution 1: Enhancing real-time collaboration and communication

Cacoo’s real-time collaboration features recreate the dynamic of an in-person design studio in a virtual setting, eliminating fragmented communication and other visual collaboration hurdles. The platform achieves this through several distinct tools. 

Simultaneous editing

Cacoo allows multiple team members to work on the same diagram concurrently. This feature is particularly valuable during brainstorming sessions or when refining complex designs. Users can even view where each of their team members cursors are on the diagram, making it easy to understand exactly what everyone is working on. 

During a UX design sprint, for example, team members can collaboratively create user flows, with each person contributing ideas and refining the structure in real-time. As one team member sketches out a basic flow, another can add annotations, while a third refines the visual hierarchy. This immediate visual feedback accelerates the ideation process and leads to more polished solutions.

The ability to see changes in real-time also helps prevent duplication of efforts and ensures that all team members are literally on the same page. This can significantly reduce the need for follow-up meetings or lengthy email exchanges to align on design decisions.

CINRA Inc., a Japanese web production company, has experienced these benefits firsthand. They use Cacoo for creating site maps and wireframes, reporting improved workflow efficiency due to the tool’s collaboration and version control capabilities. The ability to work together on designs and track changes has facilitated smooth communication between their designers and engineers, streamlining their production process.

Integrated communication tools

Cacoo integrates chat and in-app video calling features directly into the workspace. These tools enable designers to discuss ideas or clarify design decisions without switching between applications, keeping the focus on the design work at hand. Users can share their screens, enter presentation mode, and more, making it easy for teams to debate and discuss designs, no matter where they’re based. 

For instance, a UX designer can quickly clarify a design decision with a product manager via chat, providing context directly within the design environment. If a more in-depth discussion is needed, the team can initiate a video call, allowing for detailed explanations and demonstrations of interactive elements.

These integrated communication tools eliminate the need to switch between multiple applications, helping recreate the immediacy of in-person collaboration. As a result, you can ask quick questions, get instant feedback, and host spontaneous ideation sessions effortlessly.

Follow mode for synchronized viewing

Cacoo’s “Follow mode” feature synchronizes team members’ views during collaborative sessions. 

When activated, participants’ views automatically update to match the presenter’s view. This feature proves particularly useful during design reviews or when explaining intricate diagrams, ensuring all team members focus on the same elements simultaneously.

Real-time collaborator location

To enhance awareness during collaborative sessions, Cacoo displays the real-time location of collaborators on the diagram. 

This feature helps team members understand where others are focusing their attention, reducing conflicting edits and improving overall coordination.

Solution 2: Streamlining feedback and version control

Cacoo’s feedback and version control features work together to simplify the iterative design process, addressing the challenges of managing multiple versions and consolidating feedback in a remote environment.

Commenting and feedback system

Cacoo allows team members to leave comments and sticky notes directly on diagrams, ensuring that feedback is clear, contextual, and easy to act upon. Users can tag their teammates to send them a notification that they’d like their input. 

For example, a project manager can leave a comment directly on a user flow diagram, suggesting a simplification of a particular process. The designer can then respond to this comment, either implementing the change or explaining their rationale, all within the context of the diagram itself.

This feature is particularly valuable for remote stakeholders who may not be able to provide feedback in real-time during a presentation. They can review the design at their convenience and leave detailed, specific feedback tied to the exact elements of the design. All of this feedback is tracked, helping teams embrace transparency in their decision-making processes. 

Japanese tech company Giftee has leveraged this feature to great effect. After adopting Cacoo, they reported improved productivity, particularly in remote work scenarios. The ability to collaboratively edit wireframes and easily share them with stakeholders for feedback has significantly enhanced their design process.

Comprehensive activity logging and version control

Cacoo tracks all changes made to each design, making it easy to attribute changes and follow up. Each action is attributed to a specific user and timestamped, allowing teams to understand how a design has evolved over time.

This level of detail is invaluable for understanding the design process. For instance, if a team is working on a complex user interface design, they can easily track when and why certain elements were added, modified, or removed. This transparency can help resolve disagreements about design decisions and provide context for stakeholders who may not have been involved in every step of the process.

Cacoo also allows users to revert to any saved version, ensuring that no good idea is ever lost and that teams can experiment freely without fear of losing work. So, if you ever need to roll back to a previous version of your work, you can easily do so without losing any data.

This feature is particularly valuable when working on complex projects with multiple stakeholders. For example, if a client requests a major change that later proves unsuitable, the team can easily revert to a previous version rather than spending time undoing multiple changes manually.

Solution 3: Elevating design presentations and stakeholder engagement

Cacoo offers several features that enhance the presentation of designs and facilitate stakeholder engagement, addressing the challenges of conveying design concepts effectively in remote settings.

Interactive presentations

Cacoo’s presentation mode transforms diagrams into interactive presentations. This feature allows designers to create engaging walkthroughs of their work, moving seamlessly between different screens or sections of a design.

For instance, when presenting a new mobile app design, a UX designer can create a presentation that guides stakeholders through the user journey, from the initial landing page to the final checkout process, using the team’s real designs.

This helps stakeholders better understand the flow and functionality of the design, which can be challenging to convey in screenshots on slides. It’s an immersive presentation experience that helps convey the sophistication of your designs and brings your work to life. 

Flexible sharing options

Cacoo provides various options for sharing designs with teammates and stakeholders.

With Cacoo, you can easily invite collaborators to your design and control their level of access: 

• Owner: The primary manager of the file, who has full control over it.
• Editor: A collaborator who is able to view the file and make changes to it.
• Viewer: Somebody who can see and leave comments but cannot make changes.

You can also collaborate with your team through shared folders. This allows you to grant your team access to all the assets related to one project without sharing other designs they don’t need. 

Need to share a design outside of Cacoo? No problem–you can export your file in several different formats: 

• SVG
• PDF
• PS
• PPT

Solution 4: Boosting productivity with templates and integrations

Cacoo offers productivity-enhancing features that streamline workflows for design teams, helping them work more efficiently and maintain consistency across projects.

Extensive template library

Cacoo’s extensive template library equips design teams with pre-formatted, customizable designs for various diagram types. Each template comes with all the design elements needed for that project, helping teams jumpstart their design process and maintain consistency across projects.

Popular templates include:

• User flow diagrams for UX designers
• Mind maps for brainstorming sessions
• Organizational charts for HR teams
• Gantt charts for project managers
• Network diagrams for IT professionals

These templates help teams quickly create diagrams without starting from scratch, allowing designers to focus more on content and collaboration.

Cacoo also offers specialized features like the AWS Importer, which allows teams to automatically generate network diagrams from their AWS architecture. This simplifies the process of creating and maintaining architecture diagrams for teams working with AWS. So, regardless of the design task that your team faces, it’s likely you’ll find a ready-made template that’s the perfect fit for your project. 

Integrations with your favorite tools

Cacoo integrates with other tools such as:

• File-sharing platforms like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Atlassian Confluence
• Visio
• Communication platforms like Slack, Teams, and Google Chat

These integrations allow Cacoo to fit seamlessly into existing workflows, enhancing its utility for design teams.

Getting started with Cacoo

Ready to transform your design team’s collaboration? Here’s a quick guide to getting started with Cacoo:

1. Sign up for a Cacoo account and start your free trial.
2. Create your first diagram using Cacoo’s intuitive interface.
3. Invite your team members to collaborate.
4. Explore Cacoo’s features, from real-time editing to version control.
5. Integrate Cacoo with your existing tools for a seamless workflow.

Cacoo: visual collaboration made easy

By addressing key challenges in collaboration, communication, and presentation, Cacoo empowers teams to work more efficiently and creatively. 
Whether you’re brainstorming ideas, refining designs, or presenting to stakeholders, Cacoo provides the tools you need to bring your vision to life. Experience the difference Cacoo can make for your design team—start your free trial today and unlock your team’s full potential. We can’t wait to see what you create!