In terms of improvement, having layout guides would be nice. 

I would also like to have the ability to paginate, create a frame around some content other than a rectangle.

One thing about the template library is that it does seem too focused on folks who develop SaaS products. There might be an opportunity for a little bit of an expansion for other, virtual, business-meeting-facilitation use cases, for folks who are not in the product development space.

In terms of its user interface and intuitiveness, it took a little bit of time to figure out the difference between the selection tool and the move-around tool. When I was able to figure out a few keyboard shortcuts, that helped a whole lot. Having those keyboard shortcuts a little more apparent or visible, in the early setup, as a new user is getting used to the platform, could help.

The one other significant recommendation is because I do work with folks outside of my organization quite regularly. The user experience of having them all have to set up a free account to join me in a workspace is a bit cumbersome. I really would love it if there was a Visitor link that would allow contributors who don't have free logins to join and participate.

When two people are editing, there should be a way to lock the other person's changes to avoid having a person overwrite someone else's changes. When multiple users access the same document, there should be some way of locking others out, possibly by changing user permissions.

There's a bit of a learning curve.

It's a little bit harder than something like Asana which I have been using for six years. However, overall I'd give it maybe a B-plus. It'll probably take me about another week or so to really get a hang of it.

Due to the fact that you can't force everyone to be in the room to brainstorm, it’s made the process maybe 20% slower. I love remote work, however, remote work is also slower in a couple of ways when you're doing collaborative stuff. You're more productive remote when you're by yourself, and yet, collaboration can be a little slower.

The solution doesn’t make it easier to prioritize ideas. It's more about just getting a bunch of ideas up there quickly, and then we prioritize them in Jira.

There are a few too many sub-menu options under the breakout board and the team tools. While the layout looks good, there are too many options to click through.

There's a little bit of latency with the collaboration bit. Overall it's not quite as fast as Google Docs, however, it's really close. 

One of the things that I struggled with a little bit was navigating around the board. Because it's so big that when you want to find certain sections, it can be a little bit challenging to move the little box in the corner around to find where you are. If there could be more options to move around the board, that might make it easier. It can have a joystick version or something like that so that you could just manually move around, or there should be an option for a picture in the corner on which you click around to locate different items on the board.

The only thing that is a little cumbersome for me is trying to use a mouse as a stylist somehow. I would like it if there was a different way to do that.

This is a feature-rich product and I would like to see more opportunities for teaching new users how to learn and use the breadth of the platform. Ideally, it would be nice if there were a set of guidelines to explain what it is capable of. I know that there are videos online, and I've watched a few. But, I know that when I first started, just playing around, there were things I didn't discover that I could do until much later. This is why I get surprised by certain integrations I learn that they have.

It would have been great to know right from the start, with a guided tutorial on how to use the various options. As it is now, we have invested internally in the educational resources needed to learn how to use it. A tool that can be very self-serving in that way, and enable its users to use it to the breadth of what it is capable of doing, is always a great thing.

Whatever they can do to help make the visual look a little cleaner would be great because it can get a bit messy, or inconsistent. If there were automations to do things like making sure that elements are of the same size and correct alignment, it would help to make the visual more presentable. This is important because, at the end of what you create, it can have a very positive impact on what is ultimately shared with the client.

The tool is very robust. I've got very limited experience, so I haven't noticed any immediate gaps to be dealt with other than, as a new user taking it up, along the lines of the educational training communications.

I did attend a Lucidspark training session, a webinar, and that was incredibly effective in communicating the opportunity to use the tool. On the Lucidchart side, they have a fantastic document-based tutorial and how-to educational module built into the application. I would love to see something like that on the Lucidspark side.

Initially, I was a little confused about how to get to the different projects.

I would like to have a dark mode, but the option is not available.

When I was making some of the charts, some anchors were a bit annoying. I had trouble keeping everything lined up where if I moved a section over to add to a chart, it became a bit more difficult to get everything back into line. I had to go through each element that I'd moved because sometimes it would end off by a few pixels, which really annoyed me.

Depending on how much Lucidspark wants to emulate a true whiteboard experience, there could be other ways to do things. For instance, we have to create the container when we do it. In a typical sort of whiteboard situation, it could be helpful if there were templated containers, like a parking lot, where someone could just click, then it would show up. Most people with a whiteboard process have something like this, but we do it ourselves. However, this is not something that would keep me from choosing the product.

I would like an integration where if I am looking at a chart and immediately recognize that there needs to be a meeting to discuss something, then there should be a way to just click something and say, "Under team tools set up a meeting based on this chart," and it puts a link to the charts that I am reviewing. Then, it integrates with Outlook (or whatever mail service) and sends it to the appropriate people. The less clicks, the better; if it takes me one click to do that, then I won't forget. I won't have to write it down someplace. It will just be done.

The tool felt pretty similar to Lucidchart and I wasn't a super avid user of it. A lot of the features were pretty similar. I feel like they were pretty straightforward. I didn't run into any issues. And even in terms of non-issues, like enhancements, I feel like there wasn't anything I could really think of that would be helpful to improve the tool.

Creating the documents was pretty straightforward. Lucidchart has templates. I didn't use the template feature, but that was something that I wanted with Lucidchart that I saw that they had in Lucidspark, but I didn't use.

I found Lucidspark's virtual whiteboard useful, but I still felt there could be more features, like putting up presentations, creating frames, and being able to run it like a presentation. These things would make it better. If they could add more features for presentations and organizing the different sections of the board in a space, which is interlinked to how you can present them efficiently. This would be very helpful.

There are some things which are kind of complicated to know how to use. I would have to get used to them a bit more, or learn how to use them more, because I feel like there are a lot of features and I don't really know about all of them. I would need more tutorials, and that's one of the biggest things. 

It's so nice when you're able to just hop onto a program and intuitively know how to use it. Also, it is so tedious to have to teach new team members how to use the program, especially if they don't collaborate consistently but are hopping on for one meeting. The easier that they could make it for people to learn, like improving the learning curve, the better that Lucidspark could be. 

What drew me to Lucidspark was that I hopped on and it was easy and intuitive. It was very nice to look at and use. That caught me. However, there are advanced features that I would have to learn how to use, and if I want my other team members to use them, then I would have to be able to quickly and easily explain them. So, if they could make pop-up tutorials for new team collaborators, e.g., click here to do this and that as a very brief intro tutorial, then that would be helpful. I don't know if they have that already, but that would be helpful for collaborators.

There are still some things that are a little confusing or too advanced, which is why it's not easy to use and hop on. There could be some other features that could be added, like other templates. What I really liked was how there were templates that gave you examples of how you could use Lucidspark. I feel like that is helpful for people to see.

Adding more variety would be helpful for people. 

The easier it is to use, the faster someone can just pick it up and start using it. I feel like that will improve the platform and get more people to join it. A lot of small organizations need these sorts of tools, but they don't have time to spend learning about what is good about this solution and how it can help them. I would recommend making it as easy as possible, especially for small organizations.

The user interface is not intuitive because I have used other applications previously, and Lucidspark took a little bit more time. Once I figured out how to save shapes, that was super helpful, but it did take probably one or two times to get there. Once I understood it, it made a lot of sense. I did watch a quick tutorial, which was helpful just to get a sense of how to make some changes and update everything. 

It takes me longer to complete the same task on mobile devices than it does on the desktop. It's not as big as a computer screen but it isn't just related to the screen size. It could be the operating system, which is the interface between the program and iOS. The computer I'm using is a PC-based computer, and it is seamless and efficient.

I woke up in the middle of the night a couple of nights ago and I wanted to do something. Using my iPad, it seems clunky and isn't as responsive as my PC. It was between 2 am and 3 am, and I was thinking about something that was noteworthy. I went to Lucid on my iOS device, the iPad, and I tried to put the information in. I couldn't get it in the way I wanted it to, and so I flipped over to another application and wrote the information down and then went back later in the day and got on the PC and put it back into Lucid that way. So, I did get some of the stuff into Lucid on the iPad in the middle of the night, but not a lot. Ultimately, I got frustrated and I thought that it was taking far too long. That is why I switched to the other application.

It would be nice if you could import things into Lucid and then manipulate them from there. For example, when I did work in the middle of the night, it was a text-based application. I had to re-type the stuff in the morning into Lucid. It would have been nice to be able to import it and then use the Lucid functions to manipulate the data.

One thing that might be beneficial to future potential users is for the vendor to extend the trial to like a two-week period instead of a one-week period. I started creating documents immediately because I had an immediate need, but if you don't have an immediate need, you might not be able to use it within that week. So, I would say extend the trial for two weeks to give the user a greater opportunity to test it.

It's not intuitive. There's the learning curve. That is my barrier to using a tool like this. I come from a background where I have used mind maps extensively, however, even to replicate the usage of a mind map in Lucidspark, I have found it to be quite cumbersome. That's why I believe there is a bit of a learning curve. I'm still trying to figure out which template I should use, whether it was the right one, and things like that.

While I am still exploring, the next thing I would look for is how I could integrate a Lucidspark diagram with Atlassian Confluence. I might also look at integrating Lucidspark with Microsoft Teams. I don't know if it does it already. I haven't looked yet, however, I would want to try those features out, if I continue using it.

Sometimes, editing text can be confusing. Changing different fonts and subtitles and the shapes that you're trying to use can be confusing. There isn't that much that I would improve other than just nitpicky user differences.

Even though Lucidspark is the only one that I have found that allows me to do what I want to do, the program doesn't have enough to actually make it easy for me. For example, I will create a screen in whatever program, e.g., Photoshop, Illustrator, Word, or a text program, where there is a lot of text that I have to work with. When I place all these screens on my real estate in the program, it's great for me to help sort things out. However, unless I rebuild each screen in Lucidspark, I can't edit anything. So, I have to move things around, then I need to go back into my other program, make the edit, and then bring the image back. That is frustrating. 

It would be really nice if I could just click on it, then it would open up whatever program it was created in. Much like a link in Word or Excel, where you click on the actual file, then everything gets updated. That feature doesn't work with this program. For example, if I bring in images when building, I have to bring them in as a screen grab, JPEG, or something like that. Then, it is just really a piece of artwork in the program. It is not editable, and that makes it difficult going from my original wireframe to their mind map to the next stage.

One of the reasons why I moved to Lucidspark from Lucidchart was because of space. If I am going to rebuild all my screens so I can actually edit them in Lucidspark or Lucidchart, I have to make them almost full size. If I am going to make them full size, then I need to be able to pan out so I can see everything, which is probably like a 100x100 inch document. Now, I can get my whole document in and it is editable, but it is huge. Then, when I want to print it, it's very hard for me to give it to somebody. When I give it to my client, they can play around with it on a screen, but sometimes they like to print out the pages, tape them on a wall, and look at them. They can't do that unless I take the whole thing, make it into a PDF, and cut it into pieces. 

It would be great if Lucidspark and Lucidchart were one program. I find that a lot of the templates that you use in Lucidspark are great, but there is not enough for me to create useful artwork. I would like it if there was a way for me to add a style so I don't have to go in and select a color every single time, "Select the text, go into the color palette, and find the color." It would be nice if I could just say this is not a headline, but a certain style, and then I could just click it to something. Then, when I change that style, it changes everywhere in the document. These things might be there and I just don't know.

I have three screens that are literally just a vertical-oriented rectangle because it's going to be a screen for an iPhone. On the first screen, for example, I have it named as 00login screen. My second screen is 01login. The next one is 03join, or whatever it is. But, if I move these around in a document, I have to then go in and update all my numbers. It would be nice, when I move things around, if all the numbers changed again. I spend a lot of time just renumbering diagrams within the page. Because I have a page that is 100x100 inches, it is huge. That is not even at full size. That is about a quarter size. So, I spend a lot of time just changing the names and colors of things to make everything seem correct. This is really only to show a client and that is very difficult because this whole exercise that I am doing is really only to get somebody else to understand what I have created for them, then let me know if there is something missing.

It is helpful for brainstorming and finding missing pieces, but the build of it is extremely time-consuming. I spend more time doing a Lucidspark exercise than a Lucidchart exercise. I don't really build a lot of flow charts, so I don't really need all the different shapes and things like that. I just need the ability to move things around.

It is nice for me to be able to put each page in a document or website visually. However, once I start to go up from a wireframe where I have just a page with its name to a higher level version of it, where I have the data on the page and not just the page name, it starts to become less helpful. Now, I have to actually build the page in Lucidspark instead of bringing my page in and just putting an editable page within the program. I would like it if the program was really just a place for me to put all my stuff. If I could just take my Photoshop pages, bring them in, and then move them all around, that would be so easy and I wouldn't have to rebuild anything in the program. I could just use the program as a place where I keep all my stuff. Then, when clicking on a page, if it brought me back to my original document, I could edit it and then it would update it. That would be the perfect document. That would be wonderful. But if I have to recreate everything in Lucidspark, then that is very frustrating.

The Sticky Notes are great, but it would be nice if I could take all my Sticky Notes and have them merged into a document.

I don't really want Sticky Notes as much as I want to be able to just write on the background layer of the program. If I build a bunch of screens, I want to write little notes on them. I do that with just text, which is fine. I bring in little screen captures and drop them on the side, but it would be nicer if there was almost a small, very simple word processor where I could just click on an image, then my word processing document pops up and I see all my text. For example, my image one would relate to text one, then image two would relate to text two. Then, I can print that out instead of having to go in and copy and paste all the texts from my stickies or little notes around the page, copying and pasting them all into a document. What I am doing is making a big text block. I just write in it, but it's not meant for doing that. So, I'm kind of using it for the wrong thing.

Layers would be great. They don't have a layer feature. When you have a lot of items in the same place, it is hard to pick them out.

It would be nice if I could add something to the container, so I can make my own. For example, if I had a group of shapes that I use on a regular basis. I could place them into templates and drag from that group. So, if I'm making a screen, I can drag a screen right onto my background, then it would be the way I want it. It would have a text box inside of it and a text box on top of it. It would be very useful for me if I didn't have to do every single thing. Right now, I take a container, which is just an image, and drop a text box on top of it. That is just a very time-consuming way of building. I have a text box on top of the name and a text box that I have to build from the bottom, then I have to copy and paste all the information from each of the boxes into a document later on. It would be nice if one of the images in my document was connected to something else.

I would like to be able to use it through the entire project, but then we're creating a project that does more than most of the user's needs. That makes it not probable that this will be the eventual outcome of the design of the program. However, it would be nice if it did more. It would be nice if I could do more complex designs on top of it.

As a basic program, it's fantastic. It's really great. However, I would like to not have to redraw my entire design or app in another program after I build it. So, I end up building the original program in Illustrator or Photoshop, then I make a new version in Lucidspark. That is very time-consuming because every time I make a change in one I have to go back into the other and make a change. There are a lot of different copies of things. Some things get lost, then you need to have people just checking to make sure that everything is the same in bulk. A lot of editing is really unnecessary. 

The arrows are not very neat. Sometimes, I will spend 20 minutes trying to make all the arrows lineup and go in the direction I want. It would be nicer if they had more tools to make that work. I know they do because there are some of the people that work in my group who don't have any of the problems that I do. However, there are other people who can't make an arrow.

One thing that I actually found difficult to do was to introduce video calls. Managing calls and the whiteboards and being all remote is difficult. Apart from that, it works pretty well.

Sometimes the whiteboard can be distracting if someone is presenting. For example, if one person is building and wants to have the attention of others, it can become a bit hard to focus the sharing only on that specific part, or following that specific part and not having a call at the same time, which is something that actually works in-person. It's easier to focus in-person on a person just talking in front of a whiteboard and presenting whatever he's working on. 

Right now, we're using the web-based version. If there could be a desktop application or a specific OS application that would render faster times with lower lag, under the benefits of having a desktop application, that would probably be in our best interest. A browser is going to have its limitations in terms of how much computing power it can deliver from that standpoint. Therefore, if we could use our own machine to render our schemas, that would probably be an even faster render and offer a smoother interaction between the schema and the user. That would be something that I would like to use. 

At this point, from what we were using in Lucid so far, I don't actually have any suggestions in terms of extra features. I'm really happy with what I have so far, and we're probably going to have to use it a little bit more in order to dream of something better.

They have a nice color palette and the color palette is intuitive. What I mean by intuitive is that the colors chosen work really well with the text. If you put text over an object with color behind it, then the text is very visible. So that's very nice. But we worked with the owner of the company to make presentations and she wanted colors that did not make sense but we went ahead and used those anyway. It might be nice to have just a few more default colors set up even if they were the colors that you would have to reverse the text out. Maybe if they were dark and you'd have to use white text on them.

It would be nice to have some of those because everything that we started out with, the boss said, "All of those are pastel colors. So I don't like those. We need something bolder and brighter." That's what we had to go find. If there were some default colors that were bolder and brighter, even though they don't work with texts so well, then we could reverse out the text and make it whiter or something like that. 

They have a grid system for snapping too, and they've done a lot to try to line things up so that the lines don't squiggle when you draw a line between one item and another. Everything has to be lined up. Everything has to be 90 degrees exact. But a lot of other people on the team just throw something together really quickly and the lines are not straight. And so it would be nice to have some feature that eliminates that problem.

I write software, so I know that's probably a very complex issue and they look like they spent a lot of time working on it that still doesn't quite work. That's the only thing that I can think of that might make it better.

One thing I wish it had is, if I draw a square or a rectangle freehand, that it would actually just draw a nice rectangle; or similarly with a circle. Some sort of automatic shape recognition and formatting would be helpful.

I also wish I had a pen and tablet so I could draw better. I have a hard time drawing freehand with my mouse.

The copying and pasting features need to be improved as they gave me trouble when I tried to copy and paste from one end to the other. This proved especially problematic for students who are working on disparate projects. 

It would be really helpful if more features and templates would be added to the product. This would also result in a decrease of manual effort. 

It doesn't respond instantly and the traces that we make are not that accurate. We have to use it in a slower way. We can't do a quick drawing because it doesn't respond accurately.

The tracing is inaccurate and we have to do the drawing ourselves.

One of the things that I had trouble with, and it may be due to the fact that we're a Microsoft Teams environment, and it may be that I just have not been able to get the permissions to integrate my versions of the apps with Lucidspark because of the security measures, but I have not been as successful in integrating my desktop apps with Lucidspark and Lucidchart, which is something I would like to be able to do better.

There is an emphasis on Google as a set of cloud apps and cloud storage but I don't use Google so that doesn't really help. We're a Microsoft shop so we've got a lot of OneDrive. We have been using Box, which I don't like and which we're moving away from, but my legacy storage asset was Dropbox. Some flexibility there would be worthwhile.

I was looking at the Kanban Board template and it's great. You bring it in, the grid is set up, and then you can add sticky notes. I would like to be able to lock the structure in place so that I could just move sticky notes. Maybe that's just something that I haven't figured out yet, but that would be amazing.

There is room for improvement with the user interface. It almost feels "uncooked." It sometimes feels like a prototype rather than the real thing.

One of the things that was mentioned in the training is that they're working on some updates. I hope that one of the updates will be a zoom-in/zoom-out function that's a little different than what they currently have, just to make it flow better when you're trying to move in and out of the board. I know they're working on it and that would be great, once they get that together.

In terms of the engagement factor, we did get a little bit of feedback that it would be helpful to have some type of a training walk-through board from Lucidspark, a template for people who haven't used the solution.

The biggest lesson learned from using Lucidspark, for me, was getting everybody into the board and getting them comfortable. I looked through the templates and there isn't a "Getting To Know Lucidspark" template for people who are not licensed users. I learned that I needed to actually dedicate 15 or 20 minutes just to get people used to everything. Nobody knew how to use it so I had to get everyone up to speed. Once they were up to speed, they were fine and they were able to flow through it. That's something that I can say I need to do: to make sure I give more time for that, whenever I get another new client onboard with the solution.

There should be a feature for changing the color of the background, borders, etc. Such a feature will make the flowcharts more attractive.

One thing that I noticed, when I was creating a document or something else, is a lot of empty space. If I am creating from a particular position, there is a lot of empty space above it. I am not sure why this happens. If there is a solution for this, then it would help.

One challenge we ran into while collaborating on Lucidspark was tracking time. We would, for example, set aside 90 minutes for a particular task but end up spending a lot more time on it. It would be great to see if Lucidspark could also help us keep track of time. That feedback would be beneficial.  

Some parts where the arrows flow tend to flow in a strange direction where you want to drag it to, and it requires a lot of adjusting here and there. It's just the flow of the arrow sometimes gets a little tricky, and then when you move something else, it gets wonky, and then you have to go back and fix it up. That's the only thing that needs improvement.

There might be a way to do this in Lucidspark, but if there were a way to leave comments for internal collaborators, that would be good. Let's say we were brainstorming something. It would be helpful to have comments that we could see, but if we were to share a view with someone else, they wouldn't see those behind-the-scenes comments.

Also, it would be nice if they had something that I could share with co-workers, maybe a quick five-minute or something that shows, "Hey, this is the utility. You guys can do this."

I would like for the whiteboard to have the ability to be expanded. It doesn't have the ability to be a continuous page so that you don't have to erase things.

This would help when I'm teaching concepts and move on to something else if I want to go back to what I had shown earlier. It would help me to have a way to reach that.