In this chapter, we will review a list of (free) tools that should help you manage projects following the design thinking approach when working remotely.
Use Collaborative and Visual Tools to Brainstorm
In this course, you have seen how to brainstorm ideas as a team, all together in the same room.
But what if you all work remotely?
If you and your team mostly (or entirely) use video conferencing tools to work collaboratively, then this is a good question!
Miro
Miro is an excellent example of this!
Miro allows you to visually map out your ideas as a team.
With Miro, you can either:
Start from scratch (blank page).
Or use one of the many available templates!
In each template, you can:
add text, images, shapes, drawings, etc.
invite people to collaborate live (you can even see where each person is in real time),
leave comments.
Google Drive
The Google Workspace tools, or kDrive (the European equivalent, if you’re not a fan of Big Tech), work very much like Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.
So what’s the difference?
Your documents are hosted online and accessible to others by invitation, so you can work with several people on the same document to:
create a slideshow with Google Slides (like PowerPoint),
write a text document with Google Docs, (like Word),
or fill in a spreadsheet with Google Sheets (like Excel).
The Google suite has a more conventional interface than Miro and is very similar to Microsoft’s. You can use it to create any of the documents that we’ve all worked on in our professional lives: slideshows, text documents, etc. You can collaborate on projects either live or asynchronously.
Use Digital Tools for Graphic Design
For step 4 (the prototype), there are two key tools for any graphic design elements:
Figma
Canva
Figma
For projects that are specifically digital, like websites, apps or interactive platform design, Figma is one of the tools of choice for UX designers!
Canva
For more diverse projects, Canva is a valuable asset.
Canva is not a collaborative tool, but it is worth mentioning for the simplicity with which it allows you to create professional-looking graphic materials. There are a lot of templates that you can use to create, for example:
Résumés
Certificates
Flyers
Event invitations
Social media publications such as Instagram stories, YouTube channel banners, Facebook cover photos, etc.
Menus or programs
Leaflets or posters
Tools to Test Your Prototypes
The following tools are more appropriate for web or mobile mockups.
InVision
InVision allows you to import prototypes made in Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD. You can then send a link to participants to test your prototype online and leave comments.
Maze
Maze, which allows you to perform tests with qualitative and quantitative data, goes further than InVision in online user testing. It allows you to create “missions” made up of multiple tasks. You can then connect Maze to your Figma, Adobe XD, or Sketch file and define a task for the user for each screen that you have designed.
Example:
You want to test your hotel search application, specifically the "add hotel as favorite" feature.
But before adding a hotel as a favorite:
You first have to search for it (1 task).
You might also have to select filters such as “the best-rated”, “near”, price per night, etc. (1 task).
look at photos and the hotel description (1 task).
Add it as a favorite (1 task).
In short, you can see that each action that you want to test brings with it its own set of tasks.
What’s great about Maze is that, after testing is complete, it can provide you with quantitative and qualitative data:
The success rate of a particular task.
The position of clicks in heatmap form.
The time spent on each screen.
In Maze, you can also:
ask open or closed questions,
ask multiple choice questions,
prompt participants to take satisfaction surveys.
Lookback
Lookback is a tool that can host your graphic mockup for usability testing. Participants can:
access it online.
find the test instructions.
follow a sequence of tasks.
Lookback also keeps a video record of all user test sessions so that you can watch them from the point of view of the user: you can see the participant's screen and what they do with their mouse, their reflexes, difficulties, hesitations, etc.
Use Tools to Document Your Projects’ Progress
To document the progress of your project, you can use standard documentation tools and even the Google Drive suite, but there are other tools that are particularly suited to project management and organizing information on multiple simultaneous projects.
Trello
Trello is a practical tool for tracking your projects’ progress: you can drag and drop cards or tasks from board to board in the same way you would move sticky notes on a wall to organize tasks according to their status, like “In Progress” or “Completed”.
That said, if you want to document your work with more of a storytelling approach (for example, research notes or even writing about the genesis of your project and how it evolved). Notion would be a more appropriate tool.
Notion
With Notion, you can formalize the processes you are working on by creating wiki pages, which can then be used as references by your team or even an entire company.
These pages can be linked together just like they would be on Wikipedia, creating a complete record of all the innovation initiatives carried out in your company, just to name one example.
You can also fine-tune who can access the Notion pages you’ve created and who can contribute by adding and editing new pages.
Let’s Recap!
There are digital tools that you can integrate into your design thinking projects that allow you to work collaboratively online, even if you’re working remotely.
Miro and Google Drive can be particularly suitable for stages 1, 2, and 3 of the design process.
Figma and Canva are two key tools that allow you to create graphic projects, even interactive ones. Though Figma was created with design professionals in mind, Canva is very popular with the general public.
Trello and Notion allow you to easily organize information related to a project and track several simultaneous projects.
In the next chapter, we'll look at how to get your professional circle on board with design thinking. Let's get started!
