Collaborating on designs can be a frustrating experience. Teams often end up emailing large image files back and forth, with comments added in the body text of the email. This is inefficient, and means it’s hard to keep track of revisions, as well as to keep comments associated with the drafts. This is where Draftboard comes in. It’s an easy-to-use web app that allows users to upload designs, annotate them and gather comments from their team or client.
After signing up, you’re provided with a custom subdomain where your clients and team can log in (for example, http://gigaom.draftboardapp.com/), then simply uploading your designs. (The app accepts a variety of image file formats.) Users can annotate the designs using the “notes” feature — notes are positioned using a simple drag and drop interface — and also add comments below each design.
The app keeps track of revisions to each design, and revisions can be approved or rejected in the interface. Draftboard also provides the ability to add to-do lists to each design (with each task assignable to a particular user), and users can upload files (images, code, etc.) and “Inspirations” (a list of links) to store with each project.
Unfortunately, the app has a few problems. When I tried uploading a fairly large image (a screenshot of the entire GigaOM front page), the app seemed to choke on it, and kept returning “Page Not Found” errors. I didn’t seem to be able to edit my comments — only delete them — and the “Help” link doesn’t go anywhere. The design of the site requires a very wide browser window, meaning it’s probably not suitable for smaller laptop screens. Draftboard has only just launched, so I’m hopeful that these are just initial teething problems.
Additionally, while I do like the fact that you can collect inspirational links and save them with the project, a simple list of links isn’t very inspiring. I think it would be better if you could add thumbnails and commentary. I’d also like to have the ability to create different classes of users, so you could assign permissions to only allow clients to approve or reject revisions, for example.
Draftboard comes with a range of pricing plans: from Corporate (unlimited projects and users, 80 Gb of storage for $99/month) to Freelancer (unlimited projects, one user, 5 Gb of storage for $12 per month). All plans come with a 30-day free trial. There also a completely free plan that offers one project and 1 Gb of storage.
Tried Draftboard? Let us know what you think of it in the comments.
Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Report: The Real-Time Enterprise



{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2010\/08\/30\/draftboard-a-design-collaboration-app\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_271baeee38bd62c898542c29f6aeaf36","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}