Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Example: Lucidchart



A tagline: summarize the app in one sentence

Lucidchart is a diagramming web application, which allows users to actively collaborate and work together in real-time.

The problem the app solves

Lucidchart is a diagramming web application—meaning, that users can diagram UMLs, flowcharts, and other diagram types. Unlike Microsoft Viso, Lucidchart allows for collaboration in real-time.  So, no more sending a document back and forth trying to complete a diagram—the user, and team members, can log into Lucidchart start chatting on how the diagram should be and start dragging-and-dropping objects to create their diagram.
 
Why you like this app

I like this application because, first, it is easy-to-use.  I have first-hand experience using this application at least a couple times a week at work, and the learning curve wasn’t steep at all.  It is easy to add members of a team to a document to allow them to view or edit the diagram.  Also, it is easily merged into other applications—such as, Confluence, Google Apps, etc.  Also, it has a slick looking interface—better than most diagramming web applications.

Competing apps, and why this app is better

Competitors of Lucidchart are other online diagramming software; such as, Gliffy, Flowchart.com, and Daigramly.  Though, most of these have real-time collaboration, there aesthetics lacks.  Also, Lucidchart has hundreds of shapes, allowing for a diverse platform of diagrams across the board.  The final edge that Lucidchart has, is that this web application can import document from Microsoft Visio—so document conversion to the cloud is simplistic.   

A little bit about how this app works

The user experience of Lucidchart, as stated above, is very simple.  You login to the website, and click on the “Create” button.  A dropdown list is presented with two options: 1) New Document or 2) New Folder.  When selecting the “New Document”, a Visio like screen appears and one is ready to begin creating their diagram.  After, a user has create their document she can share the document with the team—either allowing permissions of only viewing or allow the shared users to edit the document.  After sharing the document, the other members are able to login and beginning working together on the document.

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