The CCS VFE is now Communicarda. What’s changed and why?

A LOT HAS happened since we created the CCS Cards Virtual Facilitation Environment (CCS VFE) during COVID and I am pleased to introduce you to, Communicarda – the definitive digital image card experience.

The world needs to have deep conversations, rich in emotion, lived experience and with a focus on what connects us, not what divides us. We need to make moments that help us to share our experience and create a shared reality. We don’t always have to agree – we can respectfully disagree – but we need to be able to sit together and talk about our common humanness.

Image cards are an amazing way to stimulate these kinds of conversations. My hope is that Communicarda can be one small tool to help make this happen. I hope you will give it a try.

So, let me explain what has changed, and why.

1. A new name: Communicarda

We needed a new name that reflects the power of using cards to elevate communication and to give the resource its own home, independent of CCS Cards. So, the CCS VFE is now Communicarda. With its own home at Communicarda.com. It’s still managed by CCS Corporation, but it has its own green field to grow.

In COVID times, when just about everything went virtual, facilitators asked us for a way to run virtual CCS Cards sessions with their participants – in a similar way to how they were used to doing in the room.

Then, as now, we believe strongly in the communicative advantage of giving every participant their own set of image cards (whether cardboard or digital). As such, any digital image card application we developed had to have this feature as its central tenet.

To this end, we developed the desktop CCS Cards VFE running on a PC or Mac. The application allowed facilitators to create and manage digital CCS Cards sessions that could be accessed by participants on a free mobile app (the CCS VFE Cards app).

At the time of development, all that mattered was getting CCS Cards up and running in virtual settings – so that’s what we called it. We realised early on that the capacity to make a wide variety of carefully curated packs available on the VFE was now possible, and we have done this several times for Australian and UK clients. Our most notable publicly available example of this is, Dr Cathryn Lloyd’s Shift Your Thinking Coaching and Facilitation cards. Cathryn showed pioneering spirit to have us host her cards for her participants on the VFE – despite the distraction of the CCS Cards branding (thank you Cathryn). Shift Your Thinking cards are now on Communicarda.

2. From PC/Mac to web-based

Communicarda is web-based – no PC/Mac installs. Facilitators just sign in with their browser (on their laptop or mobile).

While the desktop application was quite revolutionary at the time, it does create problems when requiring installation – particularly on work machines. This proved to be a friction point for facilitators and it no longer matches the convenience and ease of use of web-based platforms. So, facilitators now create and manage sessions in their web browser – on any machine.

3. A lean and simple interface

Communicarda is lean and simple – it just does the basic things well.

When trying to simulate in-room experiences of full CCS Cards processes, it appears we inadvertently over-complicated the application with too many features. This made it a little daunting for some people to try in live experiences or seemingly too complex for simple spur-of-the-moment uses. As such, for the time-being at least, we have removed some features to focus on the core requirement of connecting and sharing card choices in the moment.

With Communicarda you can:

• Start sessions on either your laptop or mobile.
• Get participants joined quickly, see anybody’s choices easily.
• See the most common choices with one click.

4. No limits on number of participants

With Commuicarda there are no limits to the number of participants you can have in a session – run a session for a single participant or everybody at a conference!

With the VFE we made the development decision to limit the number of participants for any session to 20. This was OK for many online teambuilders and values work, but posed the odd problem or concern at times – requiring facilitators negotiating multiple sessions. Well, not anymore! A Communicarda event session has no cap on the number of participants.

Fun fact: we did one session ourselves with over 250 participants – that’s 13 simultaneous sessions!

5. Selectable session duration up to 30 days

When creating a session with Communicarda, you can set the expiry date for up to 30 days time.    

Our initial 48-hours session duration proved to be too short. We upped it to 7-days, which was better. But this still sometimes posed concerns for facilitators running programs over several weeks. So, when creating a new session in Communicarda, you have the option to set the expiry date for that session to run for between 1 and 30 days. That should give everyone a lot more flexibility for preparation and follow up!

6. The need for a better way for everyone to see other’s choices!

With Communicarda, anyone with the Session ID can view the session in their browser. They can see what cards other participants have selected and read their annotations.

As those who have used the VFE will know, the only way to show your participants what other participants had chosen was to share your VFE screen over Zoom/Teams. Apart from being a little inconvenient at times, this worked very well for basic sessions. However, there were definitely times – did someone say, “BreakOut Rooms!” – when it would have been nice for participants to be able to see all choices being made on their own laptop. This was not possible with the VFE. But it is with Communicarda!

Now, a facilitator can click a switch to allow anyone with the Session ID to locate and click through any other participant’s choices on a web browser. They can see what cards other participants have selected and read their annotations. The List All button shows all participants, and the Search function lets them find specific people.

7. Participants now use the Communicarda mobile app

Participants now download the free Communicarda app. No change to links, same QR codes, just as easy to find.

As I said earlier, the central tenet to our approach to image-card driven communication is that every person has their own set of cards. This allows people to “sit back” and think and sort through in their own time, engaging emotion and memory, without distraction.

It also delivers a very different experience for participants than simply looking at many images at once on their laptop screen, without the opportunity to quietly peruse through. There is something inherently more personal about holding the pack in your own hands as you explore and think about a topic (even if it’s a digital pack on a mobile). And, at present, we feel the best way to do this, quickly and securely, is to let participants download a free and fast app from the App Store or Google Play.

The app has been updated on both stores and should already have automatically updated on people’s devices — look for the new green speech bubble and smiling card icon.

8. What happens to the CCS Cards VFE Application?

If you have a CCS VFE Account, just sign-in over at Communicarda.

If you have a CCS Cards Virtual Facilitation Environment (CCS VFE) Account, you can use your existing details to sign in to Communicarda with your browser. Your previous VFE account included three standard image card packs and they will still be there. Along with any sessions you have previously created, additional card packs you purchased, and your current balance of Participant Passes (PPs).

If you still have the VFE Application installed on your machine, it will work for now. However, it will soon be discontinued and no longer supported. I encourage you to jump onto Communicarda.com and try it out!

9. Need some help? Want to give it a try?

If you have any questions or need some help, please get in touch from our contact form please get in touch, email me directly, or pop on over to Communicarda.com and take a look.

Oh, and if you’ve never used the VFE, I invite you to try Communicarda. It’s absolutely FREE to start. No need for a free trial. Just request an account and we’ll get you started. That’s another thing we’ve made easier!

Your account will come loaded with one digital image card pack (you can add more) and some Participant Passes to get you going (you can add more of these too).

The world needs all of us to find ways to create conversations that tap into our collective humanness and activate the stewardship inside of us. We need to get cracking making the world a better place, one quality conversation at a time. No matter where you are. Maybe Communicarda can help.

Keep on swiping (or shuffling).