Whether it’s for a website, branding, or ad campaign – digital and creative agencies need a place to collaborate their ideas with each other. And the need for doing brainstorming and collaborating online has been growing. More teams are becoming virtual, and even the main office typically needs to share their work with clients online.
Every team is different, but here’s an example of how to use Cardsmith for this process. It’s basically a whiteboard and idea board, with the capability of post-it notes that can become a kanban or scrum board.
Let’s imagine our client has created a travel app to find the best discounts and travel packages. Their app is called “Cheap Travel”. Of course, with such a bland name we’ll need to spice up the copy to inspire people to use the app and purchase their dream getaway.
Create two brainstorming boards (or mood boards) – one for copy and one board for images. This is strictly for rough ideas that we’ll refine later. Of course, we could start with just one board, but I want to focus on one thing at a time right now.
Each card contains a number of images for each theme, which we can reorder to suit our needs. Once I share the board with my team, members can add their own ideas in real-time. This comes in handy during team meetings where everyone can get their hands dirty.
For the “copy” board we can start to make a mess. We can throw ideas out there quickly on cards, and worry about organizing later.
After the team does some market analysis we decide that the tropical theme will be the best place to start. We can now switch to the grid view and pair some of the language with the images. I’ll keep the other themes hidden to possibly be a place to start for any targeting that may come later.
At this point, there are so many different ways to use this tool to come up with variations on your initial ideas. Here’s an example where each team member can work on a column. And if we need to be less constrained, we can easily switch between the grid views and return with everything in its proper place.
Of course, we’re not quite ready to share anything with the client. As we refine and narrow in on the direction, we can easily switch gears without starting from scratch if the client/director/boss isn’t a fan of where we’re going.
Every team has different needs and creative agencies are no different. The great thing about using Cardsmith for online collaboration and brainstorming is the infinite ways you can use it to suit your specific needs.