Why is team collaboration so important at the concept stage?

Creating products relies on working as a team. Because of this, efficiency and easy-to-use collaboration tools are essential for a strong collaboration workflow. Team collaboration is an integral part of the success of any product. That’s why it is highly important to use an interactive collaboration tool that will help each team member demonstrate their abilities while working together. A visual collaboration tool such as Claritee makes it easy for teams to accomplish more. They can easily delegate roles to one another and be productive at each stage of the process. The benefits of working together early using a collaboration tool in the product development process are explained below! 

Benefits of Visual Collaboration at the Concept Stage

Utilize Everyone’s Skills 

The best part about working as a team is that you can benefit from each person having different skills in any situation. Most of the time, the full team needed to create a digital product  includes many different roles such as:

• UX research
• UX/UI design
• Product/Project managers
• Development
• CEO
• Business Development
• Marketing and more!

While each part of the team has contributions to offer during the process, most team members will not be fluent in design tools. Clients, executives, and the marketing and content team benefit from adding to the project from the beginning and shaping the project going forward. Other wireframing tools are either too simple or complex, making it challenging for all team members to collaborate efficiently. In this case, the UX designer (if there is one on the team) is typically left to create the wireframes, which can take much longer without the ongoing  input of an entire team, and it also creates a bottleneck. When the designer is expected to design the wireframes/UX, decisions are not thought through from all perspectives. The knowledge and input that the full team can contribute become a missed opportunity.   

Claritee is an excellent data-driven wireframing tool. It is easy for everyone to use with a low learning curve and offers in-depth and comprehensive wireframing and a visual requirements solution. 

Improves Communication

When Google docs, Figma, and Invision introduced team collaboration into the product creation process, it was revolutionary to collaborative teams. Now, it has become a necessity. Collaborative tools make it easy to involve all team members and communicate what needs to be done. Claritee is an efficient product planning tool. It enables the entire team to collaborate effortlessly instead of only focusing on design and development collaboration. It also allows for live collaboration, meaning teams can work together in real-time. This is important as it minimizes the need for long meetings and frees up more time to get tasks done. Real-time communication allows team members to give suggestions and have creative discussions from the start.

Claritee also makes communication clear since visual expectations can be clearly laid out. Product requirements are subject to interpretation, and when they are written or spoken, they can easily be misinterpreted. For example, if the instruction is to ‘add two triangles’, each team member could envision the requirement differently (see image). Therefore visually working together from the start is much more productive as all team members are on the same page.

Clearly Defined Goals 

Working collaboratively from the start allows departments to set clear goals and remain product-focused. This reduces the hot potato effect, where a department is not sure about something and hands it over to a different team to look at, and often these issues fall through the cracks. When you start working together from the beginning, each part of the team can encourage one another to stay fully product-focused yet creative. Having clearly defined goals and determination to finish the project prevents the departments from separately deciding what they think is best. Together each achieves more. 

Get Started Early  

With Claritee’s interactive visual requirements, teams do not need to wait for other departments to complete tasks before they start. This allows team members to move away from the out-of-date waterfall working process and enables each department to begin working simultaneously. Content and marketing teams can already start at the wireframing/concept stage. The design team can begin working on designs, and the development team can set up the backend. All departments of creators can be working at the same time! Working simultaneously also makes it easier for mistakes to be caught early. Team members are all involved in the process, preventing long-drawn-out issues. 

No Surprises 

A collaborative tool like Claritee makes it easy for all teams to be part of the process from the beginning of product planning. This eliminates the possibility that someone will claim they are unhappy with the result or the product doesn’t look as expected. It is frustrating to deal with requests for change towards the end of the process and costs a lot more to fix. Using a collaboration tool that documents the requests and requirements throughout the journey, no one can say they are surprised by the finished product. Claritee makes sure everyone is on board with the requirements before design and development, resulting in better products.

More Efficient

One of the main benefits of working as a team is that it is more efficient for each team to tackle their assigned roles. Claritee makes it efficient since the team can create interactive layouts with cross-functional team collaboration for a quicker time to market. The efficiency is also because Claritee is 100% web-based, meaning no code is required! 

Not only is Claritee more efficient for the existing team, but freelancers or new team members can use Claritee’s visual requirement layouts for quick onboarding. This means there is no need for lengthy, time-consuming training. Instead, new members or freelancers can get started right away and see exactly what needs to be accomplished. Using a collaborative tool also means there is less need for meetings. The team can collaborate and iron out issues in Claritee and view the work as it is done in real-time. This reduces the need for meetings with long updates or discussions on how the project should be completed.