As companies, organizations and institutions worldwide shifted to distributed work, remote collaboration and distance learning, much attention—and rightfully so—was devoted to how professionals and peers would simply stay connected. While we’ve gradually acclimated to a new way of working together, many have noted the absence and expressed longing for familiar means of workplace and classroom engagement.

From casual exchanges between coworkers to in-person lectures from educators to students, a spectrum of once-common activities remains substantially impacted. Fortunately, technology is there to not only bridge the gap under current circumstances, but to help us push forward toward the future of work.

Indeed, in acquiring Kaptivo, a leading innovator in visual collaboration technology, Lifesize is not only reaffirming its mission to redefine and simplify communication, but also putting forth a concentrated effort to return and raise the bar for a staple of meetings, trainings, and seminars: the whiteboard.

Whiteboarding Overview

Digitizing and augmenting the conventional experience of standing at a physical whiteboard at the front of the room, the Lifesize native whiteboarding implementation likewise brings meeting participants together for ideation and education.

In its launch iteration for the Lifesize desktop app, web app and guest experience, the digital whiteboard is accessible via the new Collaboration Tools menu option in the app interface and opens with a click in a separate, secure window for using during your meeting.

Once open, you can write, draw, and diagram on the shared canvas using an array of interactive tools with adjustable properties and responsive real-time display. Any and all participants who join the meeting can access and annotate the digital whiteboard simultaneously, with intuitive color-coded labeling to easily distinguish between participants and their individual activity.

When the meeting wraps up, you can download an image of the whiteboard for reference and archive—plus, your whiteboard will be preserved in its state at the end of the session, allowing you to pick back up where you left off next time you meet.

Practical Application

Much like its analog counterpart, the Lifesize digital whiteboard is a blank canvas for collaboration that can serve as anything from a freeform virtual scratch pad for real-time brainstorming to a carefully constructed and curated space for projects and programs. Consider using it for any of the following applications and use cases:

Creative design

There’s no better way to get the creative juices flowing for a project than having a meeting of the minds to work through concepts and ideas. Particularly where visual design, compositing, and aesthetic are concerned, digital whiteboarding can help you put thoughts into practice and run with feedback in real time to move closer to achieving your creative vision.

Customer experience

Whether you offer a product, a service or content, mapping out and fine-tuning the ways a customer interacts with your brand and experience is a critical step to success. Digital whiteboarding can help your team establish a plan of action, iterate to incorporate new data and developments, and architect a customer journey that fits your organization and resonates with your audience.

Product development

With product experts, engineers, marketers, sales leaders and executives all having major influence on the direction of a company’s “next big thing,” having a shared think space for brainstorming and freeform ideation can help everyone find common ground to begin the process. Digital whiteboarding provides a platform to cultivate early-stage ideas before each stakeholder group branches off into using their preferred productivity tools as development progresses.

Flowcharting

Process management is an area where businesses and organizations are constantly evolving to increase efficiency and effectiveness. Integrating digital whiteboarding with process meetings can help visualize the discussion around current and prospective touchpoints to refine workflows and facilitate success.

Event planning

While virtual equivalents have summarily replaced conventions, tradeshows, and networking events in recent months, that’s not to say that they don’t come with their own inventory of moving parts. Digital whiteboarding can help set the stage for event managers and coordinators, from rough floorplan diagrams to ensuring plans are on schedule and responsibilities are defined for staff, vendors and attendees.

Task tracking

Whether you participate in daily standups, team meetings, or group projects, having a digital whiteboard directly attached to your virtual meeting room can help with tracking agendas, tasks, talking points, action items, and more. Everyone can stay focused and on the same page, rather than combing through individual checklists and corresponding application windows.

Teaching and training

Instruction and explanation are among the most common use cases for physical whiteboarding, and that also holds true for digital whiteboarding. Teachers and trainers can easily use a comparable visual communication style to that which they are accustomed to using in person in drawing attention to key themes and illustrating their points.

Conclusion

Building upon the room-based whiteboard sharing enabled by our Lifesize Share integration with the Kaptivo camera system, this new digital whiteboarding application represents another milestone in our mission to enhance collaboration for customers worldwide. Lifesize is excited to officially welcome Kaptivo into the fold and we look forward to announcing new features and functionality in the coming weeks and months to further support the ways you work together.