Creative teams in Shoreditch and beyond know the pain of scattered feedback—Slack pings, endless email threads, and links everywhere. Enter Will Taylor, founder of Workflow, a beautifully minimalist tool designed to bring clarity to the chaos. Built specifically for designers, it centres around context, focus, and iteration—making the review process not only smoother but smarter. We caught up with Will to chat about the inspiration behind Workflow, how it’s disrupting outdated systems, and what’s coming next.
What problem in the creative review process sparked the idea behind Workflow, and how did you know it needed fixing?
I had my own problem to solve. I was managing a team of creatives across brand, marketing and product design, and our creative discussions were split across multiple platforms – random Slack messages, email threads, Figma comments, dropbox links. I care a lot about the design process – I tend to iterate a lot on early work – wanted a space to orchestrate the team’s work and the feedback process.
Teams are spending enormous amounts of time on coordinating feedback, preparing presentations, and managing handoffs instead of actually creating. When you see talented creatives drowning in administrative tasks rather than doing what they do best, you know there’s a fundamental problem that needs solving.
Workflow is designed around context, focus, and iteration—how did these principles shape the tool’s features?
Great review requires a massive amount of context. What’s the brief? How far through this project are we? Do we have a due date tomorrow, or can we go another round of review? Everything we build centers around one page being the single source of truth, containing the brief, the asset, all previous versions, and all feedback and conversations around it. It’s crucial that none of this gets lost.
Focus is the solution to the problem of “how do you keep your clients attention and engagement”. We sat and watched how the best creatives in the world do this – and what we saw is an obsession with how work-in-progress was presented. These designers weren’t just attaching the work or sending links to websites and Figma files – they prepared PDFs and video demos to present the work well. So we wanted a space that automatically solved this problem without all the prep – that focussed the reviewer on your work.
This shaped our product & brand design – minimalist, simple, monocolour to make the asset the center of attention. We wanted the space to feel calm – like a White Cube gallery – so the creative work can do the speaking.
Iteration is obviously important; more iterations in the same space of time tend to create better work. In workflow, each asset is stored along with the previous versions, making managing versioning easier. This actually created a problem – when do you know when to stop? By popular demand, we ended up adding an “approve” button to give clients a sense of finality that the project is done. And that wasn’t enough – some clients would approve and still send more feedback. We had to add a “pause feedback” button that lets creatives turn the feedback features off.
Many creative teams use cluttered project management tools—how does Workflow simplify that chaos?
Most project management tools weren’t built for creatives – they’re generic task managers trying to handle text-based tasks. They’re power-tools. They’re built for enterprise customers who want all the features in the world (and don’t use them). You probably need a PhD to use all the features in some of these tools.
We’ve taken the opposite approach: we’re purpose-built for creative workflows. Instead of endless feature bloat, we focus on simplicity and what creatives actually need. Think of it as software that gets out of your way rather than demanding you adapt to its structure. Our users often discover the platform progressively, starting with one specific use-case like presenting work beautifully, then naturally expanding to manage their entire creative workflow in the platform as they see the value.
What role does video play in Workflow’s feedback process, and why did you prioritise it over written briefs?
Video is transformational for creative feedback because it captures nuance and context that written comments simply can’t. When someone can screen record their thoughts while navigating through a design, or present work over a call within the platform, the quality of communication jumps dramatically.
We’re big fans of Loom – the only challenge is you can’t install it on your client’s computers. We ended up re-building Loom-style a screen-recorder into the browser, so that when you share a link to your work in Workflow, clients can screen record feedback too.
This visual, conversational approach to feedback reduces revision rounds or the need for zoom calls. It’s really about free-ing up time for creative work.
How have designers and clients responded to the idea of replacing traditional portals with Workflow’s streamlined space?
The response has been overwhelmingly positive, especially because we are purpose-built for the creative process and helping non-tech-savvy clients.
Designers love that they can present their work beautifully without jumping between tools, and clients appreciate being able to leave feedback without creating an account.
We’re seeing agencies use us as their primary client portal because it makes creative collaboration inclusive and accessible to anyone.
What’s been the most surprising use-case you’ve seen for Workflow that you didn’t anticipate?
So… some kids are using Workflow’s “live website review” feature to play in-browser video games at school, circumventing the school firewall / ban-list. Instead of adding a website into Workflow and putting comments on it, the kids add video game websites and just play the games. Actually genius.
We’ve also been picked up by architects as a way of collaborating on blueprints. I’m interested in this idea that the design process can be extended to other forms of knowledge work. As more of the busy-work associated with knowledge work is handled by AI, more people will become designers and curators of their work.
In an age of remote collaboration, how does Workflow bridge the feedback gap between creators and stakeholders?
Remote work has made the fragmentation problem even worse – creative teams need a central space where all stakeholders can engage meaningfully with the work – and that shouldn’t be an email inbox.
Ultimately it’s important that everything lives in one place: the assets, the conversations, the iterations, the approvals. This centralization is crucial for remote teams who can’t just walk over to someone’s desk to discuss a design.
What’s next for Workflow—any upcoming features or directions you’re especially excited about?
What does the “10x creative” look like? We’re exploring AI review; the ability for the AI to collaborate on your design problems.“This copy isn’t working for me”. “I’d like to see a few variations of this”. “How might our audience respond to this?”. I’d like to help creatives move to a higher plane of thinking, help them iterate faster and arrive at great solutions without as many humans in the loop.
Or it might just help them get their work approved in fewer revisions. That would be a nice start.