14 Best Design Collaboration Tools for Remote Work for Entrepreneurs in 2020

What is collaborative design?

Canto puts collaborative design as “a process that brings together different ideas, roles, and team members. Collaborative design is a multi-staged UX (user experience) process that involves planning and strategy developed by user feedback.” This means putting many brains and steps into designing one thing and arriving at the best design possible to impress your customer. To facilitate this process for you, we have compiled a list of the best design collaboration tools below.

Why do you even need design collaboration tools?

Here are just a few reasons why having good quality design collaboration tools is a must in your stack, especially if your team is remote:

1. To facilitate clear and effective communication.
2. They are a superior alternative to emails.
3. Discussions over design iterations (and subsequently, collaboration) are easier. You end up not wasting time in meetings and hassle over-scheduling them.
4. It’s easy to track progress and maintain versions of your designs.
5. Easy to prioritize tasks.
6. The onus of tasks – There’s a clear way to know which task is assigned to whom. This avoids redundant conversations.
7. Increase in productivity – Reduced back and forth communication, keeping the tasks and progress transparent increases your overall productivity.

Some design collaboration tools to consider:

• Mockplus: An all-in-one online design platform that covers everything from prototyping to developer handoff. It turns your ideas into testable & deliverable designs in one place.
• Figma: One of the all-time favorites, Figma shows a better way to design by letting each contributor own their part of the creative process and stay in sync along the way—across any platform.
• InVision: With its product suite consisting of 3 apps – Cloud, DSM, and Studio, InVision facilitates end to end designing.
• Vectorly: Vectorly facilitates in the process of building engaged and productive teams. It lets you develop skills, share knowledge, understand skill gaps, make continuous reviews, and have a full picture of your team skills.

But that’s not all, there are quite a few more tools, too, that will solve all your questions on how to collaborate with other designers.

So without further ado, let’s get to the list of the best design collaboration tools for remote teams.

Figma

A better way to design. Each contributor owns their part of the creative process and stays in sync along the way—across any platform.

InVision

A digital product design platform powering world’s best user experiences, InVision facilitates end to end designing with its product suite consisting of 3 apps – Cloud, DSM, and Studio.

Vectorly

Build engaged and productive teams. Develop skills, share knowledge, understand skill gaps, make continuous review, and have a full picture of your team skills with Vectorly.

Marvel

All-in-one platform bringing ideas to life by powering creation of digital product designs. Facilitates wireframing, prototyping, handoff and collaboration.

Zeplin

A connected space for product teams. Allows automated handoff of designs and style guides uploaded from Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD CC etc. with accuracy.

Avocode

A platform-independent tool helping teams to ship products faster by enabling rapid sharing and inspection of design files sourced from Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD and Figma.

Feedback by Pixelic

Visual design feedback and version control made easy.

Mockplus

Mockplus is a one-stop online design platform that helps you to do everything from prototyping to developer handoff. Turn your ideas into testable & deliverable designs in one place

Pixelic

Give your Figma frames a home where you can sync, organize, and collaborate

Design Cuts

Our Marketplace has a sea of design resources which meet an enormous stretch of customer needs!

Axure

This tool can do math. You can have dynamic content and conditional logic. You can move content between pages and can do animations and transitions almost like everybody else.

Balsamiq

Balsamiq is a rapid wireframing software that enables lean teams to collaborate, make mockups, control versions, and run user tests

Framer

Framer is a prototyping tool that helps designers draw, build layouts, incorporate components, and create interactive designs

Pitch

Pitch is an uncompromisingly good presentation software that enables modern teams to craft and distribute beautiful presentations more effectively