Collaborative Whiteboard Configurations

Importance of Flow When Whiteboarding Technical Explanations or Collaborations

Virtual Whiteboarding is a Remote Work Super Power for Technical Explanation and Collaboration

Doubled down usage for in-person and hybrid meetings as well

All-remote whiteboard setups also work well when leveraged for in-person and hybrid meetings because:

• They eliminate the organizational logistics for the meeting room to have a physical whiteboard and enables whiteboarding when the need was not foreseen.
• When in-person meetings have remote participants, the remote participants can be fully accommodated by the same screen share being used in the meeting room.

Samsung Active Pen Tablet with LiveBoard App

This setup was devised by checking out many Tablet types (e.g. non-active pen ones), Apps and Websites.

The emphasis for selection was prioritized on:

• Fluidity of drawing experience.
• Speed of rendering in co-joined Zoom laptop.
• Avoiding requiring participants to each join the whiteboard site just to view (because a lot of sessions won’t require collaborative contributions). However, also retain the option for other participants to join quickly to contribute when it is desirable - without cost and hopefully without a registration.
• Keeping cost low to make the solution more accessible to more people. (ended up at USD $265 at time of acquisition)

The first three criteria drove a lot of research into many applications + collaborative sites. Notably, options that did not support a native mobile application (used a webpage) lacked drawing fluidity.

Components

• Drawing Surface Option 1: Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.0 with Spen (SM-P200) $235.
  • Large enough, but reasonably portable.
  • Doubles as an ebook reader.
  • Active pen technology is critical to fluidity.
  • Battery life is great.
• Drawing Surface Option 2: Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite 10.4" with Spen (SM-P610NZBAXAR) $300.
  • Larger screen for easier drawing
• The Drawing Implement: Staedtler Digital Pencil $30 - the built in stylus is too small for drawing speed.
• The Collaborative Whiteboard App: LiveBoard.online Apps / Website, Free Forever attributes:

	Liveboard Online	Google Jamboard	Miro
Long Term Usage of Free Tier	Yes	Yes	No
Native Mobile Apps	Yes	Yes	Yes
Native Desktop Apps	No	No	Yes
Web App (For Screen Sharing)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Fluidity Extras			Multiple pens on deck
Pages / Canvas	Pages	Pages	Endless Canvas
Presentation Mode	No	No	Yes
Direct Import From Google Slides	No	Yes	No
Shape Recognition from Hand Drawing	Light Duty	Light Duty	Awesome
Export to PDF	Yes	Yes	No
Reusability of Drawing as Formal Technical Design	No	No	Yes
Viewers Synchronized to Drawing Location	Yes	Yes	Manual
Simple UI for Drawing	Yes	Yes	No

Using This Setup

Liveboard

1. Create two free accounts on https://liveboard.online.
2. On your mobile app, create a “session” and invite the second user.
3. On your zoom laptop, join as the second user. (it is important that the user owning the whiteboard session be logged in on the tablet so that the “new page” control resides there.)
4. Screenshare the whiteboard from the laptop web logon - since in most cases others won’t contribute.
5. Be ready to share a link if others desire to contribute (req $5/mon to have guests which do not have to register to participate).

Android Settings

Android tablets with no physical buttons put a navigation bar on the bottom part of the screen. I found that I was having my palm be picked up by the Home Screen button, which would close the white boarding app. Also, when any of these buttons are activated by the stylus it is equally disruptive to the flow. For the Navigation Bar settings I set “Navigation type” to “Swipe gestures” and I enable “Block gestures with S Pen” (Android 12, Samsung OneUI v4.1)

Questions About This Setup

This setup is the result of Darwin Sanoy thinking about the problem way too much ;)