For teams thinking out loud
Online Whiteboard for Brainstorming
Brainstorming is the part of the work where a group puts every half-formed idea somewhere visible before anybody judges it. Two things break it: a tool that stands between a person and their first idea, and a session that ends in a sprawl nobody can read the next morning.
What you need for brainstorming
Everybody in within about a minute. Ideas arrive in the first five minutes. A sign-up screen, an install, or an invite that has to be approved spends all of them.
Ideas going down as fast as people say them. An idea that takes three clicks to record is an idea somebody stops bothering to record, and the session quietly narrows to whoever is fastest with the tool.
Grouping the mess once the ideas are down. The value of a brainstorm is in the clusters, not the list. That means moving ten scattered things together, then moving them again when the grouping turns out to be wrong.
Pointing at one idea when you are not in the room. Remote, half the conversation is deictic: this one, that one, the one next to it. Without a way to point, people describe positions out loud and get them wrong.
Leaving with an outcome, not a screenshot of chaos. A brainstorm that produces no decision was a conversation. Somebody has to walk the group through what the board now says, while they are all still there.
How Drawdy handles it
Everybody in within about a minute
Share the link and people are on the board: guests join and draw without an account, and each link carries a role, so you pick editor when you want them adding ideas and viewer when you want them watching. Share links are end-to-end encrypted, and the key travels in the URL fragment, which never reaches the server.
Ideas going down as fast as people say them
Write it as text, draw it freehand, or box it: sketch a rough rectangle and hold still for a beat and it comes back clean, without costing you the original stroke. The hand-drawn feel keeps everything on the board looking equally provisional, which is what stops the tidiest idea winning.
Grouping the mess once the ideas are down
Lasso selection catches a whole cluster with a scribbled loop you never have to close, so pulling six related ideas into one corner is one gesture. The canvas is infinite, so a new grouping goes beside the old one instead of replacing it.
Pointing at one idea when you are not in the room
Real-time collaboration shows live cursors, so you can see where everyone is working, and the laser pointer draws a fading trail that the others see live while you talk over it. Cursor traffic is throttled, so the board stays responsive with several people on it.
Leaving with an outcome, not a screenshot of chaos
Presentation mode runs as an extension on the canvas, on the free tier, and walks the clusters one at a time so the group closes on them in order. Version history is on the free tier too, which is how you get back the round before someone reorganized everything. Export to PNG or SVG for the follow-up doc, or send a viewer link.
When Drawdy is the wrong tool
Some of the work around brainstorming belongs in another tool. Here is which parts, and where they go.
You are running a facilitated workshop that needs sticky-note templates, dot voting and a timer on screen. Drawdy has none of those: no sticky-note element, no voting, no timers, and no board templates for a retro or a SWOT grid.
Use Miro.
The brainstorm is async and runs on comment threads, so people add ideas and reply over a week. Drawdy has no comments at all, and Excalidraw keeps them for its paid Plus tier.
Use Miro.
You sketch ideas with an Apple Pencil on an iPad and want the best stylus feel in the category, and everybody in the session is on Apple hardware.
Use Apple Freeform.
FAQ
Questions people ask
Does Drawdy have sticky notes?+
No, there is no dedicated sticky-note element. An idea on a Drawdy board is text, or text inside a shape you drew, and the hand-drawn feel is what keeps a wall of them looking rough enough to argue with. If the sticky note itself is the ritual your team runs on, Miro is built around it.
Can we vote on ideas?+
Not with a built-in tool. There is no dot voting and no timer, so a vote on a Drawdy board is a mark people draw next to the idea they back, and someone counts them. Miro has real facilitation features for this, including voting and timers.
Do participants need an account?+
No. A share link puts someone on the board without signing up and without installing anything, and you choose whether they arrive as an editor who can add ideas or a viewer who can only follow along.
Is Drawdy good for remote brainstorming?+
Yes, for the board part: live cursors show where everyone is, the laser pointer lets you point at one idea while you talk, and a link gets people in with no account. The call is not in it. Drawdy has no built-in voice, video or screensharing, so run Zoom or Google Meet alongside the board.
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