This is a big problem for many development teams. Sometimes you just want to open a blank whiteboard and scribble some boxes and brainstorm or troubleshoot some things. The whiteboard is an inseparable part of nearly every meeting.
And no, remote "canvas" whiteboards don't work. They end up looking like this: https://cdn.drawception.com/images/panels/2015/3-3/jLndYAfNf.... Is there anything good that really solves this problem?
In fact, whiteboards, imo, are not particular good for this as they require everyone to be present in one place at one time to participate, you can add links, you can't capture side comments, there is no edit history, etc...
We use Google Docs heavily to capture rough ideas, blast them out, get comments and input, and iterate. If we decided that we would benefit from the input of someone that we did not anticipate, it's trivial to send them a link and ask them to comment when they have a chance. Those docs often get thrown away after they served their purpose, in the same way that a whiteboard gets erased.
A less sophisticated variant that works well for a lot of cases is draw.io (personal preference; other diagramming tools might work just as well). It doesn't give you real-time collaboration of the same board and also no freeform drawing, but a lot of the things you want to articulate in meetings are diagrams anyway. Whenever you want to articulate an idea, you just open the page, and screenshare that.
We absolutely are. I think I spent over a decade hoping for an extremely-low-latency pen-based note taking solution to show up to replace my use of pen and hardcover notebooks. If anything, I was romanticizing the notion of replacing a simple, inexpensive tool with expensive technology.
We're pretty close to that now with the iPad Pros, but since I've been remote for several years now, I've given up on that idea of a stylus based tablet solution altogether. These days, my preference is to use a live-conversion Markdown editor. If I was still in the Apple ecosystem, I guess I'd pay for a Bear subscription, but I'm on Windows, so I've made do with Dropbox Paper (I didn't expect to like it, but it's been surprisingly good for my use case).
That said, I usually take typed notes (and maybe shoot a few photos with my phone). I can type faster and more legibly than I write and it's easier to turn these notes into a report/article/etc. (Of course, I can always record the whole thing too if I want.)
Bear looks interesting. I haven't looked at my options for a while.
Cintiqs, iPads, and other tablets don't require this adaptation, though. I've also been kind of amazed how well people can write using mice when forced to (from watching MOOC classes).
I bought a Huion drawing tablet (H610) which was relatively cheap and works well enough for most cases. No screen on the tablet itself, but you quickly get used to drawing while looking at the screen (there is a sort of halo surrounding where the pointer should be, so you're not using it blind). I can see it working quite nicely for whiteboarding.
Rather go try the code that I have ideas for, instead of talking back and forth. Most things I can be verbally told what they want and then I just go attempt it.
Not everyone thinks visually. I'm also baffled when people ask for network layout diagrams or want to show me them. I just don't care about seeing that stuff in a diagram - it very seldom gives me information I feel I'm not getting somewhere else.
I've trained myself to do the whiteboard talk now because it seems to help some people. So if I'm communicating a design idea or whatever I'll often draw a diagram while I'm explaining it.
I market it to teachers for use as a remote classroom, so it's nice to be able to help out a bit. Though I'm a bit conflicted about marketing it too much right at the moment. The last thing I want to do is profit from the current situation.
Real-time collaboration with text is so essential that this weekend I worked on a proof of concept with a friend to bring it to Gitlab issues https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/21473#note_301...
What problem is the whiteboard solving?
Drawing freely with a mouse is something that can be done but also you have tools like draw.io if you need to draw something.
I'm honestly more surprised that this isn't a universally known concept on HN. Scribbling on scraps of paper is something most people in western countries have done since pre-school.
My point was more why does it need to be a physical thing. Like a whiteboard.
we, for example, use hackmd.io and draw.io/figma for quickly drawing. It is also easier with this to archive this and change or copy later.
The larger the organization, the less one person can hold the entirety of the solution in their head.
Even now that I’m not remote all we use the whiteboard for is bulleted lists which easily can be done with notion or google docs
Yes, you could probably accomplish the same thing by writing up a proposal spec document (which you'll need to do eventually) but the downside of doing that during the drafting stage is that it lengthens the feedback loop and not everyone will read such a document thoroughly and leave a thorough review. In-person whiteboarding is usually much faster and everyone in the room is almost always on the same page.
Both people thought their whiteboarding was indispensible. Neither person's actually were, even the guy who was quite effective at drawing his ideas.
I think it depends on the communication skills of the team.
Anyone who plays some form of "Win, Lose or Draw" or "Pictionary" will quickly realize that most people aren't as good at visual communication as they think they are.
Myself, I've been in too many whiteboarding sessions where the whiteboarder either spent too much time trying to "live bake" their idea on the whiteboard or simply produced an incoherent mess.
If you just want to capture a list of ideas, google docs will let people collaboratively edit a document or you could just have one person share their screen and capture verbal ideas.
If you want to diagram things, pen and paper + a camera can be just as effective if not more effective than a whiteboard. Often it's better to have the whole team do a sketching exercise and share their results which isn't really effective on a single whiteboard.
More importantly, whiteboards are never going to be effective for remote organizations for the same reason hallway conversations / voice chat aren't effective. It builds knowledge silos as only the people who were there understand the context of the whiteboard even if you photograph it.
https://gsuite.google.com/intl/en/products/jamboard/
I can access it under drive.google.com > New > More, on my gsuite account
I believe it's built into Teams now too.
It's a canvas solution, but if you have a stylus with a table then you can get pretty good outcome: https://s1.whiteboardfox.com/s/27e946824d29abc2.png
You can also 'replay' your whiteboard session: https://whiteboardfox.com/1428618-3583-6927?replay&speed=4.0
I've often pushed for having a personal white board just do dump out my own ideas for both personal and group settings. For lectures, we've just pointed a camera at the whiteboard. This is problematic because many whiteboards are shiny and you have to get most web cameras pretty far away to frame the whole thing. I've seen some experimental software that will detect markers and composite it over the image (for when people stand in front of the whiteboard--another common issue) or just increase the contrast of the writing.
I think it's a mix of new tools and new software instead of just new software using the same mouse+keyboard+Internet.
Hackerrank (I work here) has included this in the remote/pair programming service. You can run it by going to https://www.hackerrank.com/products/codepair and clicking "Start session", and sharing with the ther user.
With 15 years of career in web development, I've never really seen or thought about using a whiteboard in a meeting. I don't know if it would help but I've managed to get by this far without it.
You need a stylus so it doesn’t look like trash.