Cacoo blog

A Happy New Year everyone!

During the holidays, Tabata-san and I visited Taipei. One of the main purposes of our visit was to research how Cacoo is used and recognized in Taiwan, as the number of users in Taiwan has been growing rapidly. (Other than that, I wanted to visit my friend in Taipei, be spoiled by yummy foods in Tawain and run away from the cold weather in Japan.)

We scheduled to meet one of our reliable Traditional Chinese translators, Planetoid, and his friends who are famous bloggers/editors in Taipei.

Our meeting was held at Hiiir Space near MRT Zhongxiao Dunhua station. It was kind of hidden café in the area but we really liked the atmosphere.

One of the people we were introduced to was Vista. He told us that he just introduced Cacoo in “雲端服務大閱兵，十大新秀亮相 (10 new good cloud services)” article on Business Next, a very popular magazine in Taipei.

Though he hasn’t used Cacoo much prior to our meeting, he started to use more and soon he became an expert and shown his diagram in his blog post.

Esor came in later after his work. He is an editor at P CuSER and has been using Cacoo for a while. He wrote a blog post a while ago about Cacoo and we were so happy to meet him finally as his post triggered Cacoo to be popular in Taiwan.

It was a very meaningful meeting for us. We now know how Taiwanese people expect Japanese products be. Thank you Vista, Esor and Planetoid!

The next day, we visited Fox‘s office. He owns a company that provides iCook, a Taiwanese cooking site and app. As iCook and Cacoo are both new services, we discussed more about startups in Taiwan and Japan. It was a good opportunity for us as it gave us good ideas how we can improve our service in Taiwan and in the world.

After the meeting with Fox, we had a dinner meeting with Jeremy from TechOrange Global. Being raised by Taiwanese and American parents, his opinion was a bit different from other people we met in Taiwan. He told us, for example, Taiwanese people like cute designs, while American people would prefer more professional-looking sharp designs. We also discussed about how startups in Taiwan are working to grow in and beyond Asia over good Dim Sum. (I really enjoyed the meeting and food and totally forgot about taking a picture with him…)

Through walking around the city of Taipei, I recognized that people in Taiwan are open to services and products from other parts of the world. Also, people are kind to each another and happy to share information and willing to listen other people’s opinion. These might be reasons that Cacoo has been accepted by people in Taiwan.

Now we are planning to hold a CacooUp in Taiwan and are hoping to see more users in Taiwan. More details will be announced soon. Please stay tuned!

We’ve been requesting face-to-face interviews to our users when we go on our World Tour. The purpose of these interviews is to understand what users in the other part of the world are expecting from Cacoo and receive feedback about our future plans.

The last interview movie from our Euro Tour 2011 is Nico in Amsterdam.

He works at a large IT company and uses Cacoo for taking notes at the meetings and negotiations. He draws what others said and make sure that he understood them by sharing the diagram.

He likes Cacoo because he can use it for free, and from time to time he can upgrade to Plus plan to use extra functionalities.

He believes that the business documents should be handed over so that the new people can have access to older projects even after the personnel changes. With Cacoo, everything is saved online and it’s easy to give access to new members when they join the project.

Besides being a power user of Cacoo, Nico has been a very reliable Dutch translator for Cacoo. He pointed that even though Cacoo is intuitive tool, for those who are not comfortable with the available languages, it could be hard to get start using Cacoo. He took away the language barrier for Dutch users, and thanks to him, the number of Cacoo users in the Netherlands had increased after the Dutch version was added.

It was very inspiring for us to hear feedback from him, especially because he uses Cacoo for different purposes in the different fields than most of other users, who use Cacoo for designing.

Dank u wel, Nico!

We’ve been requesting face-to-face interviews to our users when we go on our World Tour. The purpose of these interviews is to understand what users in the other part of the world are expecting from Cacoo and receive feedback about our future plans.

In London, we interviewed Anup who attended our Meetup there. Anup is a developer and he works on cloud computing system and web services.

He uses cloud tools, such as Gmail and Google Docs. He started to look for cloud solution for diagramming tool and he found Cacoo. He spread Cacoo to his team and even their manager started to use Cacoo.

They’ve been using Cacoo for creating flow charts, data flows, designing architectures of their systems, etc.

Anup likes Cacoo because it offers true collaboration. He can create a diagram and can say, “This is what I’ve done. What do you think?” and other team members can add their feedback on the diagram or edit the diagram directly.

His recommendation of Cacoo: “It’s very intuitive and easy to use. Just start using it.”

We believe that users can make the best use of the Cacoo’s collaborative and sharing features when it’s used at work. Cacoo has a variety of stencils for non-designers, too. Team members can create and share project plans, system designs, website designs, etc. on Cacoo.

If you haven’t introduced to your colleagues, why don’t you start collaborating with them? When they also become Cacoo fans, you can apply for the Team plan with them and get a better deal!

Thanks, Anup!

We’ve been requesting face-to-face interviews to our users when we go on our World Tour. The purpose of these interviews is to understand what users in the other part of the world are expecting from Cacoo and receive feedback about our future plans.

The next user in Paris who kindly replied to our interview request is Philippe. He is a freelance web designer. In addition to websites, he also designs business cards and brochures.

He found Cacoo when he was looking for a tool to share his designs. He thinks Cacoo is very easy and fast. Now he sends the URLs of his designs on Cacoo to his clients and colleagues to share and work together on the diagrams.

He also attended our Meetup in Paris. He enjoyed being a part of Cacoo development through sharing his feedback and discussing with other French users at the Meetup.

There are many Cacoo users in France and, in fact, France has the third highest number of Cacoo users. Similar to other users in other countries, diagrams were being shared between freelance designers and clients in different locations!

We are looking forward to seeing users in France again. Please come to our meetups and interviews when we visit France next time! A bientôt!

Merci beaucoup, Philippe!

We’ve been requesting face-to-face interviews to our users when we go on our World Tour. The purpose of these interviews is to understand what users in the other part of the world are expecting from Cacoo and receive feedback about our future plans.

We’ve interviewed Ben at a hotel after meetup in London. He is a student at Bournemouth University studying Computing. Further his placement was with a leading digital web design agency as a web developer and maintains and writes his new technology blog TechRant.

He found Cacoo on a blog with other drawing tools. He tried other tools and liked Cacoo the best.

He uses Cacoo for drawing out his ideas and visualizing his thoughts to share with others. He likes Cacoo because it’s not complicated and allows him to work with other people on projects.

He recommends Cacoo as it’s very easy to pick up and users can hide panels for larger work space. It’s easy to use and it’s easy to manipulate things, he thinks, from his programmer perspective.

We are happy to hear Ben choose Cacoo among other drawing tools. Cacoo is recommended to even those who are not familiar with designing applications, such as Illustrator and Fireworks. On Cacoo, users can easily exchange visualized information and ideas with designers and other professionals in different industries.

Thanks, Ben!

We’ve been requesting face-to-face interviews to our users when we go on our World Tour. The purpose of these interviews is to understand what users in the other part of the world are expecting from Cacoo and receive feedback about our future plans.

One of the French users we met was Olivier.

He’s a researcher in Mathematics and Linguistics and also he sometimes does computer consulting. He needs to draw diagrams to clarify the relationship between the computer systems.

He was not so satisfied with Cacoo at the first time. One month later, he tried Cacoo and he was surprised to see the performance and usability was greatly improved and lots of stencils have been added.

He likes to use Cacoo with his clients so that both sides can modify the proposal if necessary.

Even though he didn’t know Cacoo was developed by a Japanese company, he thought it was not so American or European. According to him, stencils are “too cute” for French people as French people like things to be more precise with fine lines. Yet, after he found that Cacoo is actually developed by a Japanese company, he supports Cacoo’s rounder stencils as he’s interested in Japanese culture and its craftsmanship.

From him we received request to add chemistry stencils, such as cells, elements of cells, molecules, fires, waters, etc so that people working in medical or other science fields can draw diagrams on Cacoo.

We were delighted to hear that Olivier was interested in our country and he thought highly on Japan’s software quality. As he was surprised, Cacoo is continuously improving and adding new features to become a more useful tool for everyone. Please come back once in a while to check what’s new on Cacoo. Also, many of the new functionalities come from users requests so if you have any requests, please let us know from here!

Cacoo is being used for a variety of purposes, not just for something related to web development and designs. As we want Cacoo to be used in more fields, we recently added customized stencil feature. You’ll be able to access more stencils soon. Don’t miss it!

Merci beaucoup, Olivier!

We’ve been requesting face-to-face interviews to our users when we go on our World Tour. The purpose of these interviews is to understand what users in the other part of the world are expecting from Cacoo and receive feedback about our future plans.

Another person we interviewed in London was Wes. He is the principal architect for a company called tquila. which is going to be the biggest cloud computing consultancy and software creator in the UK in a couple years, according to him.

He loved the bright screen when he first visited Cacoo site. He’s happy about Cacoo because there are many stencils and palettes and Cacoo allows users to work together in real time.

He had no problem using Cacoo from the beginning as he had used other diagramming tools. Other people are impressed when he shows Cacoo and he tells them how easy it is to use.

His message to people who never used Cacoo yet: “You should start using Cacoo because you just need to start using it to figure out why it’s so good.”

We are very happy to hear that Wes defined Cacoo as a tool that is easy to use and allows to collaborate in real time because it’s exactly what we are aiming for. Cacoo lets you to draw, share and get feedback quickly. When you just need to share general image, please choose Cacoo instead of Photoshop or Illustrator.

We are going to prepare instruction manual also. Please wait for a bit!

Thank you very much, Wes!

We’ve been requesting face-to-face interviews to our users when we go on our World Tour. The purpose of these interviews is to understand what users in the other part of the world are expecting from Cacoo and receive feedback about our future plans.

Our first interviewee from Berlin is Alex. He’s the product marketing manager at Searchmetrics. Besides, he is the co-founder of wine site, Vigno.

He uses Cacoo for creating wireframes, work flows and other diagrams, instead of using Power Points. He checks usability and elements on the websites and sends instant feedback to the diagrams on Cacoo.

Cacoo is very handy for busy people like him who travels frequently. With Cacoo, team members do not need to be in the same room to exchange ideas.

He’s been recommending Cacoo as people who saw wireframes he’s drawn are curious to know what application he uses.

We are glad to hear that Alex is happy about real time collaboration feature. Cacoo is perfect tool for users who are working from different offices or for busy people who travel around.
Cacoo is useful not only for designers but for those who participate in management because Cacoo connects people and makes it easy to plan and operate projects. All you need is the Internet connection. We recommend Cacoo for founders like Alex.

Thank you for your time, Alex!

We’ve been requesting face-to-face interviews to our users when we go on our World Tour. The purpose of these interviews is to understand what users in the other part of the world are expecting from Cacoo and receive feedback about our future plans.

Our next interviewee in London was Tal. He is a consultant for software projects.

He was looking for a tool that replaces Visio. Besides, he wanted to share his diagrams with his customers and suppliers over the network. Cacoo is sufficient for his needs and, moreover, he’s happy with Cacoo’s good graphic and it can be used in many system environments.

As a software consultant, he works in between developers and project managers. He’s been feeling difficulties since these people don’t speak the same language and are not willing to understand each other and. Now with Cacoo, he can explain what people on the other side are saying better.

He believes that most projects fail due to the lack of communications. As it’s hard to describe images in words, he recommends using graphical tools, such as Cacoo, for any projects.

Putting thoughts into words is very difficult. Communicating with diagrams will be one of solution, instead of just depending on words. Tal’s comment really tells about it.
When you feel it’s difficult to explain something in words, please think about using Cacoo!

Thanks for your time, Tal!

We’ve been requesting face-to-face interviews to our users when we go on our World Tour. The purpose of these interviews is to understand what users in the other part of the world are expecting from Cacoo and receive feedback about our future plans.

The next guest for our interview is Johannes. He has been volunteering for translating Cacoo to German and he helped us to organize meetup in Berlin.

He works for utility company as a developer and a project manager, and also he develops website in his spare time. He was looking for a graphic application that works on Linux and Microsoft and something he can use it at home and at work. He found Cacoo satisfies his needs.
He applied for translation volunteer because he thought “Cacoo is open-minded and powerful service.” And he “wanted to work with Cacoo and help to make Cacoo better.”

He recommends Cacoo because “it’s amazingly easy and you can create great looking graphic design in a very few minutes and it makes fun to try it out”.

Johannes was one of the first volunteer who joined Cacoo translation team, and since then he’s been continuously helping us to provide a better service. Adding German to the supported language list triggered to increase the number of users in Germany, and even more, Cacoo was reviewed on German magazine.

We are really appreciate words in his comment, “easy”, “great looking graphic design” and”in a very few minutes” as that’s Cacoo specializes about.
We are going to improve Cacoo even better for attractive diagrams. Please look forward to it!

Thanks Johannes!