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Watch: Visual Activities

Types of Visual Activities

Prioritization activities

With prioritization activities, participants can place or drag items along an axis or matrix.

Prioritization activity layouts include:

• Horizontal axis
• Vertical axis
• Double axis
• Matrix
• Single slider

Categorization activities

With categorization activities, participants can sort items into different categories. See the image below for examples of categorization activities.

Access Visual Activities

To access Visual Activities, follow these steps:

1. Open a Lucid document.
2. Selectthe Visual Activities icon from the Primary Toolbar on the far left-hand side.
3. Browse the template options for Visual Activities. 
4. Click and drag a Visual Activity onto the canvas.

Edit a Visual Activity

You can edit and customize your Visual Activities right after adding it to the canvas. To edit your visual activity later, click Edit activity in the top-right corner. Once you are in editing mode, you can complete the following actions listed below.

Make items draggable

In order for participants to move an item during an activity, the item needs to be marked as draggable. Some templates have a designated area to drop shapes to automatically make them draggable. 

Otherwise, shapes you add to other parts of the activity will show a gray icon in the top-right corner. If you hover over the gray icon it will say “static”. If you click on the icon, it will change to a green icon and transform the shape to “draggable”.

Hide hints

By default, hints for objects you add to your Visual Activities are visible–including the icon indicating whether an object is static or draggable. To hide these hints, click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner of your activity, and toggle off "Show Draggable Hint".

Customize title

To customize the title of a Visual Activity, follow these steps:

1. Click the title in the top-left corner of the activity.
2. Type in the new title.
3. Click Apply or press “Enter” on your keyboard.

Preview an activity

To preview the experience of your Visual Activities, follow these instructions:

1. Click Preview in the top-right corner of your activity.
2. Interact with your activity to ensure it is functioning as anticipated.
   • Keep in mind that this is just a preview; responses you give while interacting with the preview will not be recorded.
3. When you are finished, click Back to editing in the top-left corner of the editor to return to continue editing your activity.

Save an activity

When you are satisfied with your activity, click Save changes in the top-right corner.

Share a Visual Activity

To share an activity, ensure that you have saved any changes and that you are not in editing mode. Then, follow these steps:

1. Click Share in the top-right of the activity.
2. Determine the sharing permissions from the dropdowns options.
3. Select Copy link. 

You will then paste to share the URL to any participants you want to experience the activity. 

Collaborators can complete the activity, and click Submit your response at the bottom of the editor when they are finished.

Make responses anonymous 

If you are on a Team or Enterprise account, you can choose to make the results of your Visual Activity anonymous. To do this:

1. Click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner of the Visual Activity.
2. Toggle on “Anonymous responses”.

When anonymous responses are turned on, user names will appear in the results as numbered participants (Participant 1, Participant 2, etc.).

Start a Visual Activity for active collaborators 

If you are on a Team or Enterprise account, you can start a Visual Activity for all active collaborators currently in your document. To do this:

1. Click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner of the Visual Activity.
2. Select Start activity for everyone.

All users currently collaborating in the document will see a countdown message at the bottom of their screen where they have the option to click Not now. If users don't opt out, they will automatically be taken to the Visual Activity after five seconds.

View and share results

The creator and all participants of a Visual Activity can access the results after responses are submitted by selecting View results on a completed activity. There are two types of results based on the type of Visual Activity. Read on for more details.

View prioritization activity results

Results for prioritization activities can be displayed in two ways: object view or dot view. Single-axis activities also have the option to view results as a relative ranking, which prioritizes objects based on participant rankings rather than their position on the axis.

View results in object view
By default, your results will show the average results for all participants in object view. In object view, the draggable objects will appear on the axis or matrix in their original form. To view individual results for any participant, choose a participant’s name from the list on the left-hand side.

On the right-hand side, you can review a vertically numbered list of each draggable object that was included in the Visual Activity.

View results in dot view
To see a simplified version of the results, click the Dot view icon in the top-right corner of the Visual Activity results page. The numbered dots on your Visual Activity correspond with the numbers in the vertical list of draggable objects found on the far-right of the editor.

View results as a relative ranking
With single-axis prioritization activities, you have the option to view results as a relative ranking. Visual Activity participants can vary in how they prioritize items relative to an axis—some participants use the entire scale while others might use only the top half. By using the relative ranking of each object instead of its location on the axis, each object is prioritized based on its importance compared to other objects. To access, click Relative ranking from the top-left corner of the results page.

View categorization activity results

Results for categorization activities can be displayed in two ways: overview or object view.

View results as an overview
By default, your results will show an overview of all participants based on a majority agreement threshold. The agreement threshold is a way to see how much—or how little—participants agree on a topic. This threshold can be adjusted using the slider in the top-right corner of the results.

To view individual results for any participant, choose a participant’s name from the list on the left-hand side.

View results by object
To see a detailed version of the results by object, click Objects in the top-left corner of the Visual Activity results page. This display shows the specific results for each object including what categories it was placed into the most. Click an object to see a breakdown of which participants sorted an object into each category.

Share results

To share the results of a Visual Activity, click one of the following options from the top-right corner of the results:

• Add results to document to add the results as individual shapes to the canvas of your Lucidchart document.
• Add results to board to add the results as individual shapes to the canvas of your Lucidspark board.
• Export to CSV to export the results as a CSV file.

Reset a Visual Activity

If you want to use an existing Visual Activity again, you have a few options:

• Reset activity: This clears all existing responses from the Visual Activity so that it can be completed again.
• Change your response: This allows you to change your response on a Visual Activity you have already completed without impacting other collaborators’ responses.
• Re-create an activity: This creates a new copy of an existing Visual Activity cleared of participant responses while allowing you to view previous responses in the original activity.

Reset an activity

To reset an existing Visual Activity:

1. Click the Activity settings icon from the top-right corner of the Visual Activity.
2. Select Reset activity.
3. Click on Reset in the panel that appears.

Resetting an activity will clear any existing responses, allowing you and your collaborators to retake the activity. If your account has purchased the Agile Accelerator, you can view previous responses on the insights dashboard.

Change your response

There are two ways to change your response in a Visual Activity:

• If you're still in the Visual Activity, click on the Change your response icon in the top-left corner.
• If you've left the activity and are back on the main canvas, navigate to the Visual Activity and click on Change your response directly on the activity.

Your new response will overwrite your previous response in both the Visual Activity and in the insights dashboard if your Visual Activity has been set up to collect insights.

Re-create an activity

There are two methods to create a new Visual Activity from an existing one:

• From the results page, select Re-create this activity from the bottom of the page. This will create a new Lucidchart document or Lucidspark board that contains just the Visual Activity.
• Select the Visual Activity, copy it, then paste it to a new location.

Both of these options preserve the contents of the Visual Activity, but remove all previous participant data. To share the new Visual Activity, you’ll need to send a new share link.

FAQ

What happens if a participant on a Visual Activity changes their responses?
If a participant changes their responses on a Visual Activity sent to them, the new responses overwrite the previous ones. The new responses appear in the results, and the previous responses are not saved.

Resources

To learn more about this feature, explore the additional resources below. These resources are available in English only.

Course

Visual Activities in the Lucid Suite

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