SUDBURY, Ontario — ConceptShare Inc., a new innovator in the design collaboration market, announced today that they are launching their new web application ConceptShare to the public. ConceptShare is a web-based tool that allows for the creation and management of interactive workspaces to present visual designs to others to communicate design intentions and capture visual feedback from team members, managers and customers.
Capturing feedback early in the design process can help to speed up the innovation process and increase the accuracy of designs. The system has been created to eliminate the bottle-neck effect that designers and marketers typically experience when they need to share a design with co-workers, project partners or clients in order to generate feedback. Designers commonly use email or schedule meetings to share their designs with their feedback channel. This creates problems with the way that people respond as designers must go through multiple emails and try to track the feedback that is generated.
ConceptShare enables users to quickly add others into a workspace with their designs and capture their feedback in a fast and interactive way over the web without downloading any software. ConceptShare also makes it easy to bring your customer into the equation. Involving customers and key project members throughout the creative process can save a lot of time and money as well as effectively identifying scope changes.
It is dramatically easier for the average user to draw a circle and an arrow versus trying to convert a visual design change into a text based comment. The resulting feedback is much quicker, and more effective. By streamlining the input process designers can be continually uploading new design iterations as well as creating a feedback loop in the design process that normally wouldn’t be there.
“We designed ConceptShare so that it will work for the freelance designer as well as it will for the large design house or internal marketing group. By bringing everyone together in a truly collaborative space, users can feed off the input of others,” said Scott Brooks, Co-Founder of ConceptShare. “The nature of the visual feedback you get back becomes invaluable as we give users the ability to mark up the drawing in the online environment closely mimicking how people do it now with print-outs and markers.”
ConceptShare is also very different than web conferencing or other collaborative environments in that it was designed to be both synchronous and asynchronous for communication. Comment layers are sequential and the chat area works in real-time but users also have the option of reading the history if they come in later. As new concepts are uploaded, all members of the workspace are continuously updated by email.
“We wanted to ease the pain for visual designers of all types who need the ability to have conversations around visual items,” said Product Manager and ConceptShare Co-founder, Bernie Aho, “The ConceptShare system brings the people and designs together in a system that allows users to manage multiple projects along with multiple groups.”
Coming soon to the ConceptShare platform will be an integrated community of experts and public workspaces. Designers will be able to browse the directory and for example, invite a usability expert to review their design. Another feature would allow companies to post their workspace in the directory to get feedback on designs, new ads or packaging ideas.
Pricing and Availability
The ConceptShare application is available now. A free version is available for users to evaluate the technology and pricing starts at $19US with packages at $49, $99 and $199. Package levels are based on number of active workspaces, account managers and file storage. Customized branding is also included in the $99 and $199 packages. This allows subscribers to use their own logo and colors along with ConceptShare. For more information on pricing, please visit: www.conceptshare.com.
About ConceptShare, Inc.
ConceptShare is quickly becoming recognized worldwide for their innovative design process solutions and for creating web applications that perform like desktop applications. ConceptShare was founded by: Bernie Aho, Scott Brooks and Chris D’Aoust. They are headquartered in Sudbury, ON, Canada.
For more information visit: http://www.conceptshare.com .
[tags]design collaboration tool, web based design tool, ConceptShare platform[/tags]
