Virtual whiteboarding tool makes team brainstorming fun and easy

FigJam is a whiteboard that provides a space for designers to come up with ideas collaboratively but is also friendly to non-designers who want to participate in brainstorming

Spotted: Five years ago, Figma launched its web-based collaborative design tool as a place for product designers and others to collaborate on design projects and prototyping everything from web design and wire-framing to multiplayer pong. Now, with more people working remotely, Figma has launched FigJam, “a dedicated space for inviting design-led free-form interactions.” 

FigJam is a whiteboard that provides a space for designers to come up with ideas collaboratively but is also friendly to non-designers who want to participate in brainstorming. The tool works in both single and multi-player mode. Built-in functionality includes sticky notes, emojis, shapes, pre-built lines and connectors, stamps and cursor chats, all designed to add fun and a sense of serendipity to the design brainstorming process. 

Designed to be a one-stop shop for easy collaboration, FigJam also includes built-in audio functionality that allows teams to “talk it out”. It also works seamlessly with Figma, allowing teams to keep all their design work—from initial concept to final prototype—in the same place.

Figma founder and CEO Dylan Field explained the thinking behind FigJam, saying “Our point of view here was focusing on how to make FigJam work as the first step in the design process, before you go into actually doing design work. We see people looking for a better, more fluid experience, but we also wanted to make it simple enough to bring other people into the tool.”

With many expected to continue remote working for the foreseeable future, it is imperative that people have ways of connecting, not just for formal work, but for brainstorming and other types of serendipitous interactions that grease the wheels of the creative process. FigJam was created to do this, but we have also seen innovations such as the listening table, which creates a semantic overview of meetings, and a smart whiteboard that syncs notes to devices.

Explore more: Work & Lifestyle Innovations | Computing & Tech Innovations