Remote Tools Review: Deekit
I got followed on Twitter by Deekit and decided to give it a whirl.
Deekit is “an online whiteboard for you and your team to draw, write, edit and add other content” — in other words, a platform for collaborative brainstorming and planning.
Here are my thoughts:
Good
Free
Let’s be honest: in the startup environment there isn’t usually any extra cash lying around to be invested in new tools. Most software will only get acquired once it’s been proven to be insanely useful, so the fact that there’s no upfront payment (and apparently, no Premium version) is a point in favor for remote workers on a budget.
Unlimited space
The board is basically a white canvas which you can zoom in and out of to create visuals and graphics, pretty much as large and detailed as you like (within a 10%-200% scale, once you’ve zoomed out to 10% you can’t go further). This allows for as many subcategories, extra Post-It’s, arrows to other fields as you need — similar to a Prezi-style canvas.
User tip: Use the “hand” icon to move around the board (click and drag to navigate, as you would on Google Maps) and also select images and text to relocate. After importing an image, remember to click again on the hand icon to be able to change it’s size or move it around.
Templates
Once you create your free account, you open the canvas-style dashboard, that suggests some ready-to-go templates for different tasks. To mention a few, for Marketing you’ve got Buyer Persona templates, paths for customer discovery process, sales funnels; in Agile, there’s planning whiteboards and lean canvases. Once you select a template to customize, you can also edit the name and description.
Folders (or Spaces)
In Settings (bottom left) you can set up “spaces” that are basically folders for your different projects. Granted, these could be easier to find if they were featured on the initial dashboard (for a while I thought there was no possibility of organizing your boards into larger categories), but after a little fiddling I located it.
Shared Boards
Of course, one of the most useful features for remote workers is the ability to invite your team members and edit your boards simultaneously and in real time.
Adding Notes
If you click on the top right Notes icon, you can access a separate space to keep notes on your work.
Saves automatically
No need to save any work, it gets done automatically. Also, Deekit is built to work on low connectivity, so you can GSD anywhere you are — even while working on 3G mobile connection (at least, that is the company’s promise).
Export as image
Once you’ve finished your board, you can also export as a .jpeg or .png file to use as an image.
Room for Improvement
Tablet app
Deekit can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store in order to have your boards available on all your devices. However, on downloading the app I encountered some issues to sign in properly: once you open the app it takes you directly to the “Scratchpad” (basically a new white board), which is useful if you’re on the go and want to start taking notes of something immediately.
However, the drop-down message that prompts you to sign in to save your work for some reason would not respond. I tapped the reset button successfully, but the sign in would not take me where I needed. Looks like there’s a bug that needs to be taken care of ASAP.
*Sat, May 7 2016. When reached out for comment, Deekit confirmed that the fix is already in the works and should be updated shortly.
Can’t customize text fields and Post-Its’ size
While you can add Post-It’s and insert text fields in your boards, neither of these can be dragged from the corner (as one would intuitively do) to customize their size. Post-It’s include 3 specific sizes, and text fields will adapt to however long the sentence you’re typing is, which can look awkward if it’s a lot of text.
Pan Home feature
Since the canvas is initially a white space where you can zoom in and out of to your heart’s content, you can easily get lost in the unlimited space and lose track of your starting point. Deekit offers a “pan home” feature which will bring you back to the original frame you started working on with just one click.
However, when you click here it will just take you to the original default frame that was assigned when opening the new board. If your sketch ended up starting somewhere else on the board, you can’t set a specific frame as a starting point, which renders the feature useless.
Final tally
I give Deekit a solid 3/5. It’s fairly easy to use, allowing for collaborative work and provides a nice layout for graphic representation. Since it’s a new platform, I suspect over time these smaller UX issue will be improved and it will become a great addition to all of our remote tool boxes.
