Collaboration-The key to Success!

Alone we can do so little, and Together, we can do so much. - Hellen Keller

Collaboration is an essential skill for today's world. As we become more interconnected and dependent on each other, the value of collaboration has never been higher. To survive and succeed in this new age, it's time for us to learn how to collaborate with others to have a better life both at professional and personal levels.

Before moving forward, let us first understand what collaboration is? Collaboration is when a group of people come together and contribute their expertise to benefit a shared objective, project, or mission. It makes it easier to brainstorm ideas to solve an existing problem and deliver the required work on and sometimes ahead of time.

In the digital age, design and development are not done in isolation. Collaboration is required between designers and developers at every stage of the journey to work together and create unique products. Collaboration becomes even more significant when we make user-centered products, which applies to any discipline. Irrespective of where you are working, you need efficient and practical tools to share ideas, maintain designs, and deliver a good product.

We at MockFlow are constantly trying to make this experience hassle-free and efficient. We bring you the collaborative features to make your work faster and in real-time. In an era where collaboration is paramount, we understand the pain of constantly taking feedback and sharing the revised files; we bring collaboration in real-time to keep everyone on the same page.

The more people you have working on a project, the better it will be in the end. But it also means too many files exchanged and multiple feedbacks given to other designers. All this can lead to long email chains and sometimes frustration between teammates if they don't understand what others want from them or why they need changes made to their work. MockFlow solves these problems by bringing real-time collaboration into the picture.

This article will discuss MockFlow's collaborative features and how bringing them into your Product Design Journey will make you more efficient.

1. Sharing and Roles

MockFlow's Design Space is the new-age way to design Products. It got tools for every Product Design need, to streamline your Product Design Process. Once you dedicate a space to your idea on your MockFlow account, the next thing is to bring your team on board.

Everyone working on a project plays a significant role depending on their expertise; hence it becomes crucial for all the team members to have defined roles, and MockFlow lets you do that. Admin, Editor, and Reviewer, these are the three critical roles dedicated to our design space. You can bring multiple editors (designers) on board who can simultaneously work towards the same goal, but on separate pages, Admin (product owner) to have complete control of the project, and reviewers (managers/clients) to give feedback and suggest changes.

With everyone bringing their expertise to the table with defined roles, they are bound to deliver incredible work.

2. Virtual Design Meetings

Covid-19 has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies faster than any other factor has ever before. Remote working was never taken as seriously since the onset of the Pandemic. In times like these, we cannot leave any chances of bringing discrepancies to our work by having any communication gaps, and hence it becomes imperative to always stay close-knit with your team.

How many tools will let you ideate, collaborate and design all in one place? Well, MockFlow is one of those rare tools that enable you to do all of it and more in the most simplified manner. There are multiple ways to collaborate with your team to brainstorm your ideas, share UI designs, make changes in real-time, produce reiterations, seek feedback, and so much more. You could do all of these via :

• Video Calls: Make a virtual design meeting room with face-to-face HD video with all team members.

• Audio Only: Conduct audio-only calls, and cut-off video when not required for better bandwidth.

• Text Chat: Discuss in real-time with annotating text chat. Save chat messages as comments.

• Presentation mode: With presentation mode, get on board with your team, exchange ideas, provide feedback, make real-time changes and never worry about a communication gap ever again. Record these sessions with Loom integrated inside your WireFrame Pro, and we assure you, that you will never miss any minutes of the session.

Working from home has been a game-changer for everyone; choose the way you want to communicate with your team members, the one which suits everyone's preference and availability.

3. Centralizing design assets

UX/UI designers, Product Designers, and graphic designers all work closely to make sure the look and feel of the final product is a treat to the eyes and user-friendly. Even though the roles are so dependable on one another, there is no concrete channel for them to work on. Never-ending emails exchange sometimes results in confusion and the team missing out on updates, affecting their productivity.

MockFlow helps you bring all these people and your design assets on one common platform. You can seek approvals with exact statuses and feedback and have different versions of one design to compare and review which one looks better.

To make it even more enthralling, we recently launched in-image discussions. You can now add live in-image feedback and discuss with threads right on the top of the image. All this is in real-time, mimicking an in-person meeting and proving excellent for remote collaboration.

4. Live embed for UI drawings

Working on multiple applications is a way of life for designers. The number of apps we work on is endless, and it is essential to bring them all in sync to bring more efficiency to your work.

We concluded 2021 with this big feature release - Live embed for UI drawings. This feature lets you embed your UI drawings in other online applications with preview links. It is called live because these embed updates in real-time when changes are being made to the project; this ensures everyone is on the same page all the time!

5. Publicly accessible link

Sharing the files and getting feedback from Multiple stakeholders remains one of the biggest challenges. It is an issue we all face on day to day basis.

Public URLs are the future of feedback. This idea saves time and creates convenience for users by removing the need to register for an account on another website to see or give feedback because we know how painstaking it could be! MockFlow allows you to generate a Public URL, which means that your project will now have an easy-to-remember address with all its data embedded. No more fumbling around looking for it on Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud.

While we understand the convenience that comes with Public URLs, so do the security-related issues. And to fix the same, we have a pass key to secure your wireframe project links. You can enable "protect with key" while creating the link, and this will make sure your project is always viewed by the right people!

6. Collaborate inside Popular Apps

There is a comfort working with the apps we are familiar with, and we wouldn't want you to change that. MockFlow acknowledges this and brings you integrations with popular apps so that we don't affect your productivity in any way. Share your UI designs in apps like Slack, Trello, MS teams, and many more, and you will no longer need to switch between different platforms and workflows to collaborate on something with your team.

Collaboration helps individuals think outside the box and communicate with others while working around a common purpose. MockFlow has meticulously designed all these features to simplify the process and be as efficient as possible.

Sign up on MockFlow and never worry about your Product Design Process, sharing files, taking feedback, organizing meetings, and bringing everyone on the same board ever again.