Sketchboard Review: Brings You Back to the Original Mind Mapping World
Nowadays many mind mapping software for Windows offers creative enhancements for your daily diagram, or commercial projects according to these historical mind mapping theories. However, today we will focus on an online based one: Sketchboard. The software brings your mind mapping diagram in a sketch style. All of your work will be presented in visual connect mixed with freehand drawings and elements. For the paid version you can access rich preset sketch shapes. Let’s check out more features for Sketchboard together.
Compatibility
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
- Google Chrome on Chromebooks, MacBooks, iPad, iPhone, and iPad Touch
- Safari web browser
Pricing Packages
- 14-days Free trail available once opened an account
- $7 per month for a single user
- $14 per month for the STARTER option
- $36 per month for the TEAM option
- $45 per month for the ORGANIZATION option
- $79 per month for the BUSINESS option
Sketchboard Features Overview
Infinite Drawing Whiteboard
The drawing area of Sketchboard is based on endless space design. Users are free to drag the canvas area to get more space for their mind mapping creation. From the right-hand side panel, you can see a list of options including built-in templates of the Sketchboard User Gallery. The editable shapes in the panel have both directional arrows and single lines. If you wanna quickly replicate a mind map, just go to the Freehand Drawing Tool. The Map View option lets you check the overall structure of your board at a glance.
Remote Communications for Teamwork
One key feature of Sketchboard is designed for colleagues to work from remote locations. You can access a live chat group discussion with workmates and assign admin duties. Simply add yourself to the project team to share your visual ideas, add on-board comments and insert URLs. All team project details can be securely connected to your own Sketchboard account, Google Drive, GitHub, and FlowDock.
Coding Based Design
The design spirit of the software is based on coding and modeling environment, so brings the convenience to more technical projects, such as mobile application development. You can even check logs of mouse movements on the drawing canvas. Overall, the coding feature requires users to have a better knowledge of programming.
Exporting Options
Your final diagram can be printed or exported in different formats, like PDF, PNG, and SVG, for technical files. The saved images from Sketchboard are well fitted to the scale of the diagram that has been worked on.
Any Weak Points or Benefits?
Pros
- Endless space drawing whiteboard
- Remote chart for team projects
- Simple and lightweight design without many restrictions on preset shapes and tools
Cons
- Need more supports and instructions for mind mapping beginners
- Quite limited functions available for free versions
- A bit expensive pricing stratety for non-technical users
- For the app version, the texts and figures on your draft may be automatically deleted when adding lots of items
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, being an online mind mapping software, Sketchboard is lightweight and portable with just a few restraints for editing elements. It brings you back to the very basic of coding in terms of software design. Image that you are modeling just like using a pencil to draw electronically on the Sketchboard whiteboard. Furthermore, the majority of the preset items, such as the shapes, arrow lines, are treated just as their basic definition.
You can potentially do well with the tool especially when you have good skills in coding. However, it seems that Sketchboard team should target a more clear upgrading direction. For some technical enthusiasts, the features and functions may have still not reached the level of those even more professional web developing software. And for mind mapping beginners with limited technical skills, it is not easy to create more factors, like boxes and circles, in the coding environment.
