The Bench Blog

As many of you would be knowing that we're currently in private beta with some select design studios, advertising agencies and video production houses, we're excited to share our progress on the product front. 

If you're a beta user, we're awaiting your feedback on the shiny stuff we've added and if you're not, please drop in a note to [email protected] and we'll process your request as soon as we can.

File Versioning

Automatic file versioning in the cloud. Now all you have to do is drag drop files onto our filebar and we'll let you view the version as if you're flipping the pages of a book!

Extended Media Support

We've extended our file format support to include all media file formats. With the added video file support you can simply upload a mp4 file and have it stream to your remote partners within minutes. We've taken extreme care to be careful not to play with any of your colors or resolution. Give it a spin!

Faster, Stronger yet Lesser

Our dev team has gone into frog mode and is working on making Framebench as stable as possible. We're delighted to say that we've had a 99% uptime the past month! We've also added security layers to protect your communication channels. Yet, we managed to bring down the application footprint by 40kb allowing you to get to Framebench much faster.

As always, you're most welcome to drop in your comments, suggestions. If there's one thing people say we're good at, it's listening intently.

You guys know about DesignYatra? It is a brilliant conference for design community held annually by the Kyoorius team under the leadership of Rajesh Kejriwal.  Kyoorius is a not for profit organization initiated by Transasia Fine Papers, incepted to fuel a design movement in India. This was the 8th edition of the annual meetup of some of the best designers and ideators from the world. We were present there as one of the startups out there trying the change the way designers communicate with/about their design. If you want to get a glimpse of how intriguing and kyoorius the world of design, then you should come over to next year’s Design Yatra. We’ll be there as well and might as well be having a conversation of how this post made you attend the event! (and our beers would be on DesignYatra guys!) 

There have been many posts on the conference; so many creative designers were out there who were doodling their way through the 3 days of brilliant talks and conversations. This post by Anya Rangaswami outlines the 3 days of events in sketches and words. Designers are more creative and vibrant than business and startup guys; it is evident from the number of sketch notes and doodles people have made about the event, have a look at this one by Mrinalini Sardar and this one by Kruttika Susarla. Since, we at Framebench are so bullish on collaboration, so it’s better not to write another write-up on the talks again, we’d suggest you to go open up that link, you’d love them!

Here are a few pics from the event -

Goan roads present a pleasant relief from the Delhi traffic!

one of the many awesome talks 

and yes, the theme of the event was 'The Divide'  - this was the official banner of the event

One thing is for sure, Indian design with the support modern digital technology is going to explode now in the coming years. Till now, not many companies gave design and branding the respect it needed to thrive, but now things are changing and lot more people are getting excited about this change. People are now working from not just different blocks in the same city, but also from different countries, thus collaboration is the way to go. One of the many collaborative projects that caught our eye was the Nokia Pure typeface project being headed by Bruno Maag of the Dalton Maag agency. They are making the typeface for as many scripts as possible and this is how Devanagri, the official Indian script looks like in Nokia Pure Typeface library. 

We have been talking to a lot of designers and everybody agreed on this that reviewing design on internet is not the coolest part of their job. Designers are creators, they like to ideate, doodle, mark, draw, maybe type as well, but definitely not on their mail clients.

Today, designers are supposed to not just do their core job, i.e. design, but also manage that their design is communicated to those who are going to use it further. People are smart these days, everyone asks questions and gives feedback to contribute in the whole design process. This is supposed to make things simpler; afterall clients are contributing in the creation process of something that they are supposed to use in the end. But, things are not as they seem!

The major problem is the lack of effective communication in the design process. It's not the communicator who is faulty, it’s the channel in use that is necking this pipeline of project timelines.  So, yes, coming to the point, emails are not cool, nor is screen sharing. Most of the people using them already agree to this.

Framebench is one web app that removes all the hassle in design reviews. We are offering a SaaS platform that can make your workflow more efficient without dramatically changing it. One thing people fear with any using new tool is that they have get out of their comfort zone and change the way they had been working till now. It’s understandable, not everyone wants to fight the status quo even if it comes at a cost of lowered productivity for the whole team.

We are in the middle of conducting a study of how Framebench would improve the productivity of designer-client review sessions and still not causing major shifts in the current workflow pattern. But, ultimately it also comes down to how passionate is the early adopter community, because it is you guys, the ones reading this blog right now that would be convincing your team mates and your clients (or maybe designers) to use Framebench over standard email threads. We are counting on our early adopters to become the Prophets of the God of Design and would spread this gospel of increased productivity and reduced hassles.

Hi everyone!

At the very outset we’d like to thank all those who tried out the first release of Framebench. We had released a very basic version of our dreams and it just outlined how the actual product would be like. We thank everyone who took out time to hear us out and try out a new product that has the potential to become something awesome!

We really like The On-Purpose Person: Making Your Life Make Sense by Kevin W. McCarthy. It’s a brilliant book and speaks of how to chart out an execution plan for life. The book says there are 3 essential components of a well-thought out plan – purpose, mission and values. What we had been doing till earlier part of this year was - defining our purpose. Till last year, we were incubated and bootstrapped with our own drive and our mentors’ inspiration fuelling us. With a well-defined purpose of making life easier for designers and their clients, we had drawn a vision for this summer and soon started on a mission to accomplish it. Although we don’t keep beaming around our values with posters in offices yet; but yes, slowly and steadily the team is developing a value system as well, it has latently defined our team and work environment.

So, as part of our mission to make the communication between Designers and Clients hassle free, we launched a basic, buggy MVP a few weeks back. It had the minimal UI and file support because we just wanted to be live as soon as we could have! Since then half of the Framebench team has been focusing removing bugs and polishing the product and the other half has been regularly talking to designers, clients and other potential users. It was really exciting that 80% of the people we talked to told us managing user feedback is a major hassle and they wanted an effective solution for it. We also learnt that designers prefer beauty over functionality, after all design is what they live and breathe! So, yes, apart from fixing the bugs, we have made UI polishing as one of the top few priorities.

So, keep watching us for a surprise! We soon would be launching the new UI and we believe you would love it, we do! The updates coming up in next week’s launch are - Video & PDF support, polished UI and file versioning support. We won’t spoil the fun by giving out a screenshot preview, as we know it’s the joy of exploring that brings a true smile, and that is our reward, so yes, you should be the ones telling us about the lil changes you noticed, we’re sure you are an expert in this game!

I landed upon an interesting find today, Wrike, a project management company did a survey on remote collaboration sometime back, and the results were originally published on their blog, check out the post here. 

Speaking of remote collaboration, today I am writing this post not from the Framebench office but from my home! Framebench has deeply integrated remote collaboration in its work culture, just like most of the companies do these days. 

Today’s digital world has endless opportunities to get creative mainly because of the plethora of options available to digitally design a project. Although, this is good for the client getting his work done, but often this leads to delays and extensions for designers as they now have to support their decisions. Thus, a designer’s job is not limited to design; he has to persuade the client as well that what he has designed is the best.

Now imagine a situation where a freelancer who is working for 4-5 projects simultaneously and has to take care of all the threads of conversation happening between him and his clients. Things can get messy when they are remotely done because online communication has a lot of friction, thus, you can imagine how difficult it is for any designer to persuade a client for a particular design over the others. The main reason behind this difficulty is the lack of communication and the ambiguity in feedback. Since people find it difficult to engage in their project completely, so after a while they simply stop putting in their complete effort.

Every time you switch tasks, there’s a switching cost. Since this switching cost is intangible, many of us don’t recognize it – but it’s real nonetheless. Imagine how much time you’d spend in transition between either designing or following up with feedback/updates if you switched back and forth every 20 minutes. Imagine how frustrating it would be if the information you needed for a given task was on a different computer than the one you’re currently using. That time and frustration would present very real switching costs that would be a gaping hole in your workflow.

Productivity and creativity are both important to the success of any design business. Yet the things that aid one seem to impede the other. Productivity likes automating repetitive tasks, and on the other hand, creativity likes taking its time in finding a unique or different solution. Clients want their designers to be as creative as possible and Designers want to be as productive as possible. The solution to this problem would require designers and clients to work more collaboratively and not just follow each other’s updates on the finished/required tasks.

this Dilbert was one of things that came up during the discussion. We know, you love it as well!

A lot of people are asking us the questions which often have similar answers. Thus, we've decided to post a Q/A that will help you understand what we are doing and how we can help you. Have a look...

  So, what's the Idea behind Framebench?

The work of a designer is communication through their art and creativity. Today, when multiple people are involved in the creation of one poster, video, advertisement, website etc. it becomes important for everyone to stay on the same page. But this usually turns into a chain of email threads, video chats and phone calls in between the team members. This whole process is not only inefficient but also very stressful for the participating professionals. We want to make the communication on visuals happen without headaches!

  What workflow issues are presently creating problems?

The major ones..

There is no one place to share and keep all your assets. You may want to set restrictions on file transfers. Why handle all the server management?

Presentation of designs is Costly and still multiple people don't get control. 

Fidelity loss is a big no-no for visual artists. You want to remember the conversation you had but all this happens in the minds of designers right now because the sessions are never documented. 

Text does not convey exact feedback as audio-visuals do. Feedback on different versions of a file will become a mess if everything is documented separately but still everyone should be able to quickly view changes done and comments given. 

So, why is documenting feedback so important?

You need a quick way to go back in time and see what all was suggested, what conversations were had, what decisions were taken. Email logs become unmanageable after a few threads and video chats and phone calls are rarely recorded. As a result of this, half the time of a designer goes waste in mentally referring back the conversation he had with his client(s).  

  What does Framebench do to solve all these issues?

Framebench provides a single central workspace for your team, assets, discussions and everything else. All your files here become interactive so that people can in real time or asynchronously leave comments and suggest changes on these visuals.

  I can also do this by sharing my screen, so, how is Framebench better than any video sharing service?

A lot of features of Framebench are custom made for design reviews, so Framebench is a specialist whereas video sharing platforms such as Skype are generalists. Here are some of the major advantages - 

More control with permissions, more power to everyone in the discussion.

The discussion notes are automatically made so no need of penning it down or large sized screen recordings.

No fidelity loss as the people are seeing the assets on their own screens through a secure connection.

Allows for people to come in at different times and review the assets too (with permissions set by the administrator

   This sounds good, so, who all should be coming to framebench.com for a sign-up?

Well, if you are a web designer or a client who had to get a project done from a web designer, then we empathize with you. We understand that this special relationship has its own romance, love, fights, hate and what not!

In this globally connected world, things have progressed brilliantly technology-wise. There are design houses, freelancers in every part of the world, but this has also led to another problem, the communication gap. Nowadays, clients sitting in USA are ordering designs made in Japan, coded in India for European markets! Communication has become such an important part of the whole process. 

Let's look at things that happen when designers and clients are not on the same page, and this can be with respect to the design sense, business sense, tech know-how, anything and everything!

Let’s first look at one of the epic clients from hell moment; this one is my personal favourite! 

After sending two invoices for payment, I sent another and called the client when the receipt that they had received it came back. 

CLIENT: Why are you calling me? 

ME: You haven’t paid and this is the third invoice I’ve sent. 

CLIENT: It’s even more than the last one!

ME: Yes. The contract you signed stated that I would add a late fee for payment. 

CLIENT: You mean I have to actually pay you? I thought you were joking!

ME: What on earth made you think that? 

CLIENT: You’re a freelancer!

ME: And…

CLIENT: Well, you work for free! If you were supposed to be paid, you’d be called a paidlancer or something!

I know designers are having a laugh right now! also check out the oatmeal comic on a designer working for a client, it seems, everyone loves to joke around on this thing. 

But you have to see the story from POV of clients as well, check out some the venting at designers from hell and this post on a designer’s blog; he understands the problem pretty well. The picture is a bit skewed as it’s easy for the designers to vent out their frustration on Internet, afterall it’s their playground, but clients aren’t so tech-friendly, that's why they hire the designers in the first place!

Designers have a really challenging life. Although, they work on awesome projects that have beautiful end results, but the picture isn’t so rosy. There are many problems that arise out of the nature of the job and some creep up because this profession depends on communication so much. Clients don’t know much about designs, what’s good and what’s not, so it is upto the designers to understand the need of the client and design something for him that would make him feel good. There are hardly any parameters to judge a design. Thus, designer-client communication plays an important role in this whole process. Some of the factors which contribute to it are -

Time Constraints:

Time constraints weigh heavily on graphic designers. In many industries making use of graphic design work, such as the publishing industry, deadlines often run tight. Producing quality work takes time and rushing a project means that the project will likely be returned for corrections. Many graphic designers also have multiple projects going at once, making deadlines seem even more ominous.

Designer-Client Communication: 

Designers have to deal with so many kinds of people on a daily basis. There is no single way that the designers can win over their clients. Sometimes they approve things very fast, sometimes they just spend weeks on the color scheme. This problem is even bigger for the freelancers. Freelancers have to repeat this convincing/negotiating process every time they are working with a new client. Designer blogs are just full of posts on the client issues they have faced in the past. Check out this one! 

Ambiguous Review Sessions:

All this happens because of the ambiguity in the feedback process. Most of the times, designers and clients are discussing projects from different locations, and they don’t understand each other fully as they would have if they would have been at the same location, talking over the same screen. Clients often ask Designers if they can update them daily, bi-daily, or other time frames that suits their craving, while sometimes designers keep having creative iterations to their already approved designs and are not able to communicate how the new design is better than the previous one. Reverse of this can also happen which is equally time-consuming, sometimes designers are not at their creative best or sometimes clients disapprove a project at nearing its completion. 

Designers struggle with email threads, file transfers and Skype calls to get their designs right, and we hate this.

Did I tell you about iAccelerator? Its a program at CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad where we're going through the process of 'mentoring on steroids' as the CIIEians(umm..) call it. So it was a Sunday a month back when we decided to really burn our bridges and come here to focus and do something with the great idea of <codename> Protean that we'd been building on for quite sometime now.

  Took us about 10 days to finally get it all setup and running. A proper beta. Yay!! It sure looks super cool when we throw in the socket jazz and achieve (near) real time zoom, pan and seek on videos with multiple people viewing it(Show you a screen capture?). And then we figured that the true awesome part in this app was not the ton of code that went synchronizing all the data to our servers, not the intelligent way we handled video seeking to accurate frames in flex and neither all the data compression algorithms to send significantly lesser data across the network. All it took was to get people to see all of this happening in our views.