
Ask HN: How are teams whiteboarding while working remote? - taylodl
We&#x27;ve all just been thrust into working remotely and one of the challenges our team is facing is how do we do whiteboard collaboration? Our team space features a wall that&#x27;s a whiteboard where we brainstorm architectures and designs. Once we&#x27;ve settled on an approach we capture that result more formally but we use whiteboards to do our brainstorming. How are you doing this while working remotely?
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davismwfl
So there are actual whiteboard type solutions like Vibe (paid product) that
can plug into Slack or Zoom etc, but I have not used them personally.

I have tried a number of different things with my teams over the years. One is
of course just a screen share and use a drawing app or UML etc (Visio was
common). But what I like right now is to use a document share app,
specifically Quip for us, which allows everyone to open the document in real
time and it supports drawing, shapes and text entry etc. Plus when you are
done it is a saved document that everyone has access to so you have the
documentation done now too, and if any changes are needed you have change
tracking built in. It is far from perfect, but for most smaller teams it works
well and doesn't require extra licenses or anything.

I will say none of these solutions are perfect, but I am also the person that
still likes to write my notes and draw on whiteboards to let me think through
problems. And doing that with any digital software just never feels as natural
(or fast) to me. I may just be getting old, but even when I am just doing
architecture drawings myself I write it down first (whiteboard/paper etc),
then document it digitally once I have settled on something more well thought
out.

