What we've used it for so far is facilitating a couple of meetings.
We used it in a discovery gathering session with a client and they were all given the link to jump into the board. We gave them the ability to create and edit while we retained the overall power to move things and keep everyone focused. That was good and they enjoyed it. With COVID this year, they said it was a really great, innovative tool to use since everyone was sitting in their individual homes.
Using it with clients has really helped with the facilitation on our end, as the facilitators, but also for the clients who are using the process for the first time. We were able to get people in who are not super-technical to understand how to work it, and why we're using it. That actually went pretty fast and was an easy process.
People seem more engaged during virtual sessions when compared to in-person sessions. When I talked with the product owner of the product we're working on, in the most recent session we did, she said that all of her people really enjoyed it. She's been with her team for 13 years and they're getting ready to make a lot of changes. And even though everyone's apart she's said, "It was actually really nice to bring everyone together." Everyone was talking and having a good time and listening, and they were finding out things that all of them didn't like about their old system. And from my team's perspective, they said, "Oh, this is a fantastic collaboration tool." It allows for people to really feel a sense of "I'm engaged," and a sense that "the client hears me, and I'm listening to the client." It created a two-way street, more so than a lot of the time when you're in the beginning of a collaboration session in-person. In the latter situation, you're very much talking at the client. This cuts out that 10 minutes. Then you just say, "Okay, let's take a tour, and here's how it works."
Also, often, in an in-person session, you would go in with a predetermined amount of whiteboards to put sticky notes on. With this solution, if something else comes up that we didn't even think of, we can throw a quick new space on the board for that. That, alone, is nice on the virtual side.
Lucidspark also enables you to prioritize ideas. We used a couple of different functionalities that allow for that and we did enjoy that as a team. To be able to put things into various boxes or containers that I had created allowed for a much quicker process than trying to move sticky notes in-person. You're not walking across the floor.
It also has features to tag and automatically group ideas to help organize and synthesize ideas after a brainstorming session. Once we close out a session, my team does an assessment of everything. We go over it with the client first, just to make sure that that is what they were saying. Then we go in and clean it up ourselves afterwards. Those features are good as we do a team debrief meeting. We are able to keep things moving and not take a lot of time trying to decipher things. That ability to tag or move things around really helps us.
In terms of patterns and themes, we were only really looking for pain points and wishlist items. We didn't go too deep into that space, but we did use it for that. We were trying to group things into various buckets within our client's current system, to share how their system is currently interacting, and what their issues are. It really did help us to pinpoint those things with better clarity. We could then go back to the product owner and ask her to validate each thing, and each was in a specific box. She could just look at them all and say, "yes" or "no." It did help very much.
The tagging means we're able to take everything from the board, the way we aligned it, and then transpose that immediately into a document for the product owner and all of the stakeholders. They can look at it, review it very quickly and validate, while using snapshots from within the Lucidspark board itself. The ability to automatically group ideas helps save time.
Overall, Lucidspark has brought the productivity of our working and brainstorming sessions up to a new level. All of my team felt confident. They enjoyed it. A lot of them said it was the best session that they've been in, ever. The product owner we were working with, a group that had never used a system like this because their organization is a government entity, was a little scared at first, but once we showed them how easy it is, they were loving it. That helped us and made me feel confident too: "Oh yeah, this is good." People enjoy this and it's something that we're definitely going to continue to use because of its ease, but also because of how it just allowed for everyone to feel, and to know everything was being recorded on the board. Nothing was lost or missed. And in terms of productivity, normally we would be holding about a two-hour meeting. We kept each of these meetings to 90 minutes because of the streamlining of the features.
For me, being able to drop things into the board has been the greatest experience. In the middle of conversation, when I'm facilitating, and especially if I don't have a second facilitator, I'm able to just drop things in and keep moving. That allows us, as the company overseeing the whole process for the innovation that's happening, to stay at a good pace. That's the best part. Those drop-in features have been excellent.
We used to use other products in the past to create similar end goals, but now we are able to automatically add in certain things. One of our biggest hindrances with other programs was Swimlanes. While you're in the middle of the meeting and someone says, "Hey, let's add Swimlanes," you can add them on-the-fly. You just click it and do it. That's been a really wonderful experience. It's not just Swimlanes. There are a lot of things where, while we're in the middle of a meeting with either a client or an internal meeting, we're able to collaborate altogether. That has really been a benefit of the product.
I like the Lucidspark user interface and its intuitiveness. One of the things I definitely enjoy about the interface itself is that I switch between a mouse pad and a trackpad. Just that factor, when you're trying to move things quickly and go to another spot on the board— because you're under a time constraint, especially with meetings today—is really helpful.
The virtual whiteboard is also absolutely fantastic. It has streamlined all of those aspects that we would have done via PowerPoints and other types of on-the-fly screen sharing that were used in the past. Now, everyone can be in the same space. That part of it really helps us to feel confident and allows us to be more engaged with the client and vice-versa, with the client being engaged with us.
In addition, the Collaborator Colors feature is important, especially when you have more than three people on a board, because otherwise you get lost. It allows for us to feel a sense that everyone is there. Everyone is not the same color, whereas with other systems they all have the same color, and that limits your ability as a facilitator. When they're all the same color you're having to go click on the actual tab and see who wrote what. So this is a very good functionality.
One of the things that was mentioned in the training is that they're working on some updates. I hope that one of the updates will be a zoom-in/zoom-out function that's a little different than what they currently have, just to make it flow better when you're trying to move in and out of the board. I know they're working on it and that would be great, once they get that together.
In terms of the engagement factor, we did get a little bit of feedback that it would be helpful to have some type of a training walk-through board from Lucidspark, a template for people who haven't used the solution.
The biggest lesson learned from using Lucidspark, for me, was getting everybody into the board and getting them comfortable. I looked through the templates and there isn't a "Getting To Know Lucidspark" template for people who are not licensed users. I learned that I needed to actually dedicate 15 or 20 minutes just to get people used to everything. Nobody knew how to use it so I had to get everyone up to speed. Once they were up to speed, they were fine and they were able to flow through it. That's something that I can say I need to do: to make sure I give more time for that, whenever I get another new client onboard with the solution.
I've been using Lucidspark for about two months .
The stability is great. It responds well when we have 10 or 15 people in the board at one time. Everyone was able to enter stuff in. It wasn't like there was any lag, and people weren't getting frustrated. That's my gauge. If people start getting frustrated with a system or an interface then you know there are issues. But none of that happened here.
I haven't used customer support for Lucidspark.
I didn't have any issue with the setup. I thought it was great. It was set up right away and it was not difficult. To get everything set up took an hour or so.
My company also uses MURAL. At this point, I think the company is going to keep both because some people like one system and some like the other system. I enjoy both. Both have very similar interfaces and each has its own functionalities.
The zoom-in/out feature I mentioned earlier is something that MURAL has. That is the biggest thing that Lucid can work on, and it sounds like they're doing that.
I also use Lucidchart as a business analyst. I create my business process models in there, as well as other types of modeling for other projects that I'm on. The Lucid suite is great because I can draw Lucidchart right into the Lucidspark board and grow it right there, especially if I'm looking for validation from clients. It allows for a much smoother operation for everybody. I can just say, "Hey, is this correct?" and they can validate the process model right there. It enables that process. And the connectedness between the two different programs that I use is great.
It's been very easy for us to move ideas from the idea stage to execution because we're able to visualize everything right there. From that point, we can just draw out the conclusions that we need and put that right into the development team.