Whiteboarding for Ideation

Whiteboards are great tools for keeping track of ideas during brainstorming, for encouraging team members to build on each other’s ideas, and to provide an easily-accessible “source of truth” after the brainstorming session is over. While you can use physical dry-erase boards, digital tools like draw.io offer distinct advantages for the modern workplace.

Since the team at draw.io is celebrating all things fantasy, we thought we’d take a look at the most famous brainstorming session in the genre: the Council of Elrond, where representatives from the different peoples of Middle Earth came together to determine the fate of their world, aka what to do with the One Ring. Could a little digital whiteboarding have prevented the breaking of the Fellowship? What tools can help you stay on track when you don’t have a 6000-year old elf-lord facilitating your meeting? Read on to find out!

Why you should use digital whiteboarding for your next meeting

For countless ages whiteboarding has been a powerful tool for brainstorming, but the world is changed, and now is the time of the digital whiteboard – after all, they’re fast to use, easy to share, allow for remote collaboration, and are easier to iterate than old fashioned whiteboards. And unlike physical whiteboards, there’s no space limit, so you are free to jot down as many ideas as you like. By using shapes, anchor points, and arrows instead of dry-erase markers and sticky notes, ideas can be moved around easily, and even linked to other content.

For an effective brainstorming session, it’s important that everyone is free to share their ideas, without worrying about being right or wrong. Just as wizards, elves, dwarves, hobbits, and men, all brought different perspectives and knowledge to the Council, you’ll want to encourage an environment where everyone can put their ideas on the table. With digital whiteboarding, teams can join in from multiple time zones, and draw.io’s live collaboration feature means multiple people can add their ideas at once. Who knows what extra insight the Council could have gotten if Radagast the Brown was able to join in remotely?

Another advantage of a digital whiteboard vs a physical board is that it’s easier to keep your brainstorming session as a central source of truth. Dry-erase boards tend to get erased, and a photo still has to be stored online somewhere. We think Boromir for one, could have used the reminder of why the Ring was not sent to Gondor. Or perhaps Frodo would have had an easier time onboarding Faramir, if he could have shared their original brainstorming session, with comments from Gandalf himself. Digital whiteboards also make it easier to build on your ideas if a follow-up session is needed, or to clean up your brainstorm for presentation.

Tips and Techniques for Digital Whiteboarding

Set a clear goal for your session – Whether you are exploring possible features for a new product, or answering the threat of Mordor, you should have a clear question that you are trying to answer, or a problem that you are trying to solve.

Add structure to your brainstorm – While a brainstorming session should be open to creative ideas, it can help to provide some structure so you’re clear on what kinds of ideas are needed. One advantage of a digital whiteboarding tool like draw.io, is that you can easily add templates to your board, including flowcharts, SWOT diagrams, brainwriting boards and more.

Link to other materials – The Council of Elrond had to draw upon reports from all over Middle Earth in order to make their decision, and you might also want to connect your brainstorming session to other sources of knowledge. With draw.io, you can easily create links in your whiteboard to other Confluence pages.

A Better Council of Elrond

In the film version of the Council of Elrond, the power of the Ring corrupts the hearts of those present, causing the meeting to break down into in-fighting. A digital discussion, where all parties are safe in their kingdoms, could have allowed for less fighting, input from more people, and freer discussion, safe from the negative influence of the Ring. And while the Council never gets that heated up in the novel, perhaps in a digital whiteboarding session some introverted elf would have felt comfortable enough to bring up the idea of flying to Mordor on the back of an eagle. Of course, the idea still would have been rejected, but at least it would have been brought to the table and the question laid to rest once and for all.

So the next time you need to determine the fate of the free peoples of Middle Earth, or just figure out what to do for a corporate event, consider using a digital whiteboard tool like draw.io.

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