Story of a simple heuristic for visual collaboration

The concept of an online whiteboard popped into my mind while I was on the phone with a friend, trying to explain an idea. As someone who always thinks with pen and paper, this was quite a challenge! I wanted a simple online whiteboard that didn’t require anyone to sign up. Since I couldn’t find one, I decided to create my own! What surprised me was how many users began to use it and even started requesting new features from all around the world!

This was the beginning of my journey to build a product. Developing and marketing multi-profile products is one of the most challenging tasks. At that point, the use cases for online whiteboards were unclear to me. I build it with a process of trial and error, or in my words concept and feedback. So I build a minimum feature from a promising concept and enhance it based on user feedback. I didn’t do any marketing; users discovered the whiteboard! Even without optimizing for Google or other search engines! The whiteboard users were those who are already familiar with online whiteboards and know how to use them. But what about those who aren’t yet acquainted? While whiteboards have evolved from the physical and typically used in education into a collaborative tool in the offices, the mindset associated with the classic whiteboard still lingers.

Visual collaboration is a term that is used by whiteboard vendors. However, these words and definitions don’t truly clarify the concept. That’s why I put on my programming hat and approached it like a software designer: by creating a model! By definition, a model is a simplified and abstract representation of reality that highlights only one aspect of it. I needed to develop a model of visual collaboration that captures the essence of it.

Simple reminds me of the number three, three intriguing numbers that always embody simplicity. Three is the minimum needed to form a pattern. Many principles are based on three! For instance, there’s the rule of thirds in photography, the rule of three in storytelling, and the three-click or three-second rule in user experience.
The "Rule of Three" is a pervasive principle across disciplines, leveraging the human brain's affinity for patterns, simplicity, and memorability. It reminds me of the IPO model in computer science and systems thinking.

Input → Processing → Output

Input: raw materials for processing
Processing: The mechanism of conversion
Output: concrete result

A pattern that is rooted in the most collaborations on the whiteboard! Using this model, the processes can be reduced to three stages. For instance a meeting: The input of a meeting is the meeting agenda and the processing is discussions and ideas and the output of the meeting is actions.

These examples come to mind:

• Meeting: Meeting agenda → discussion and ideation → actions
• Planning: Understanding the current situation → imagining the ideal future → conversion plan
• Prioritizing bugs: Open tickets → Evaluation → Allocation
• Kanban: List of tasks → tasks in progress → completed tasks
• Prioritize tasks: Ideation of tasks → impact/effort matrix → road map development
• Brainstorming: Divergence of ideas, organization, convergence of ideas
• Book club: Book title → Concepts extracted → Feedback and questions

Book club! Finding unusual whiteboard ideas always excites me! A reminder of MSExcel, which, in addition to its main use, can be used for a variety of tasks, from shopping lists to rocket science! While each application has a specialized software! From birthday parties, travel planning, sharing cooking ideas to presentations and training workshops to visual communication with customers! All on a whiteboard.

It's probably not a good idea to reduce all the activities into a trilogy, but it's definitely a good start and then we can expand it. By defining three principles, we can have a structured method:

1. Atomic: Each part must be irreducible to one purpose.
2. Expand: Only expand when the pain calls for it.
3. Reusability: Available with one click and customized in three seconds.

No need to find and customize templates, everyone can start its own board from the first principles.

Inspired by the walking skeleton method in the agile world, I named it the skeleton method!

Walking Skeleton is simply an empty project. A software includes various layers such as database, processing and user interface. A good practice to develop a software is to start with an empty project that includes all these layers, rather than starting from just one layer of the project, such as the user interface.

And in the final stage, I have to decide how to add the skeleton method to the whiteboard. Should it be a template or an independent option? To test the skeleton method, an independent window was added in the apps menu with the shortcut key SHIFT+F10!

I have to put on my user experience (UX) hat and analyze the feedback! It may seem that I am branding a simple concept! But simple is hard!