Loom Plugin Review for Designers
Loom is changing the way remote design teams communicate
Loom’s plugin allows seamless video communication for remote teams. Frustrated with my remote team’s inability to schedule a meeting, I tested Loom to go over our sprint deliverables and it has changed the way we work for the better. Less meetings means more time doing and my team is stoked.
What It’s Good At
Loom has improved its design tremendously in the last months. Loom is like Zoom without the meetings. You can record yourself analyzing a site or design and share the link to be viewed by your team. I typically drop my link recordings into my team’s Slack channel, which allows for greater context of what is being discussed. My team doesn’t use Loom’s built in commenting, but reserves their comments within our Slack channel or creating their own Loom’s as responses. Loom also does a wonderful job of capturing documentation of not just websites, but apps like Notion or Slack.
What Needs Work
I think the icons can be a little tricky when recording. I tend to click on the “X” icon when I want to stop the recording, but it cancels the recording altogether. The green check actually stops the recording, but feels like a play button. Maybe using a more familiar recording UI could help with the overall experience.
What I want it to Be
Loom is going places and inserts paywalls where a user would be willing to pay for the extra value. These features include placing calls to actions within your recordings, which I think work well as I use these recordings to list action items for my team. I also think a pen would be useful to circle or highlight images of your recording.
Overall, Loom is a must have in the toolkit for any UX/UI Designer or Researcher.
I hope these thoughts and practices can be used in designing for accessibility and inclusivity for your next design sprints. Let me know how it goes!
David is a Product Designer at City of Wind Design, a design studio that specializes in serving startups through UX design & software development with a bias toward accessibility & sustainability. To learn more about David Pinedo visit: https://www.davidpinedo.com or follow @davidpinedo24 on Twitter.
