I think we have all come across our fair deal of crappy tools that makes us want to quit technology all together. Despite promises of increased productivity and simpler workdays we end up getting lost in spiderwebs of unnecessary features and feeding the system an endless stream of data to keep it happy.
Building great digital products that satisfies a large number of people (and their weird needs) is not easy, and finding tools that works for you and your growing business can be a hassle. So here you go — my startup going scaleup guide on digital tools you will love to need.
The tool you need for wireframing, sketching, designing and prototyping
Yes, I have tried pretty much all the popular tools for concept sketching and userflow designing and before this tool, the approach I always came back to was to make my concept sketches in PPT. Yes, Microsoft Powerpoint. All the fancy tools — specifically made for the purpose — were just overly complex, slow to work with, limiting or ugly. That’s until I found* Adobe Creative Suite’s lovely new pearl Adobe XD. To this date, I haven’t needed to google a single “How do I…” using XD, and the tool just allows me to super quickly create anything from rough sketches and wireframes to polished designs and shareable prototypes. It’s quick, ridiculously easy to use and I just genuinely enjoy it.
The tool you need for team collaboration and online calls
As a former Microsoftee, I’m naturally thrilled to say that after trying all the fully-featured online call services out there, and almost losing all hope in Microsoft’s engineering ambition after struggling with Skype for Business a bit too long, the tool that rolled out to crush all competition is Microsoft Teams. I’m the first to admit it — not everything that Microsoft has launched over the last decade is something to be proud of, but with Teams they just really nailed it. Even for Mac-users! The video call feature alone is worth getting the product for. Again — I have been around testing them all
hello can you hear me I can hear you
and Teams is the only one where all participants regardless of device, technical savviness and current wind directions have not had any struggles with mic, sound and basic stuff like just entering the call. Sprinkle on some functions like the call recordings automatically becoming available for all meeting participants, video background blurring and shared meeting notes and you have everything you need for a smooth online call. Apart from that, the other team collaboration features they have encapsulated in Teams makes it the perfect tool for collaborating, communicating and planning projects. I know it’s not Slack-cool but trust me, you’ll love the hassle-free-ness of it.
The tool you need for checking in on the team
Going from startup to scaleup means you no longer have the luxury of easily checking in on the team by gathering them around the coffee machine and asking what’s up. After a while it will start to get crowded and not everyone will be as comfortable sharing their thoughts out loud. At the same time, the importance of checking in on the crew members’ energy level, happiness and concerns only increases as the company grows. Sending out a 100-question employee satisfaction survey once a year is one way of getting input, but no one really thinks that is a good idea anymore. We have been using &frankly for some time now and I really like it. Not only is the app created in a way so it’s actually fun to give feedback in the short n’ sweet pulse surveys — it also provides stylish ready-to-present results directly through the admin portal. The tool allows us to both do repeating surveys to check how things are progressing over time, and also quickly send out specific questions to get direct feedback. Easy, breezy, hassel-free-zy.
*To be fair — it was actually the crew at Woila who introduced XD to me — so thanks Wille, Jonas, Ingrid and the rest of the Woila crew for saving me from the PPT-sketching swamp!
Published By
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
