Compared with Kudoboard
A Kudoboard is addressed to somebody. A collection is about something.
Both of us get a group of people to contribute to one place. What they are asked for is completely different, and so is what you are left holding afterwards.
What Kudoboard does
Kudoboard replaces the card that goes round the office. Many people add messages, photos, videos and GIFs to one shared board, which is sent as a link, shown as a slideshow at an event, or printed as a book or poster.
It leans towards the workplace: birthdays, work anniversaries, farewells, retirements, promotions, welcomes, and peer recognition, with team plans and integrations to match. Their own line is "Bring your group together to celebrate."
For the job of getting fifty colleagues to say something nice by Friday, it is good at exactly that, and quick.
Checked against their own site on 13 October 2026. They may have changed things since, and prices in particular move. Check with them before deciding.
What How We Saw It does instead
We do not ask people for well-wishes. We ask them what happened.
You set the sections, and the people who were there write their version of each one. Not "all the best, you'll be missed" but the afternoon the project nearly went under, told by the four people who were in the room, each remembering a different part of it.
Those get woven into one story that reads start to finish, rather than a wall of separate messages.
Side by side.
| Kudoboard | How We Saw It | |
|---|---|---|
| What people are asked for | A message to the recipient | Their account of what happened |
| Typical length | A line or two | A paragraph or several |
| Shape of the result | A board of separate posts | One story in sections, read start to finish |
| Mostly used for | Workplace occasions and recognition | Events a group shared and wants to keep |
| When it is read | At the moment it is handed over | Then, and years later |
| Printed option | Yes, book or poster | Yes, a printed keepsake |
Which one you actually want.
Use Kudoboard instead if
- You need good wishes from a lot of people by a deadline.
- It is a workplace occasion and you want something to show on screen on the day.
- The point is the gesture: that everybody signed it.
- You want GIFs, and you should, sometimes.
Use How We Saw It instead if
- The people contributing were there for something, not just fond of somebody.
- You want what they remember, not what they wish.
- You want it to be worth reading in ten years, not just on the day.
- You would rather have six real accounts than sixty one-liners.
They are not mutually exclusive. A Kudoboard for the send-off itself, and a collection for the thirty years that led up to it.
Questions.
- Can people add photos and video to a collection?
- Yes. The difference is not the media, it is the question being asked. A photograph attached to somebody's account of what happened does more than a photograph on its own.
- Is this for work occasions?
- It works for them, and retirements in particular, but most people use it for things they did together rather than for colleagues marking a date.
- How long does it take people to contribute?
- Longer than signing a card, and that is rather the point. Most people write for five or ten minutes and are surprised by how much comes back.
Wishes are for the day. Accounts are for afterwards.
If what you want to keep is what actually happened, ask the people who saw it.
Start a collection