When you become a part of a distributed team how you communicate with teammates changes. Video chat replaces in-person meetings and chat apps replace the watercooler. One frustration few remote teams have a good solution for is whiteboarding.

The Anti-patterns

Video Chat with a physical whiteboard in the background. This is only helpful for the person doing the drawing. It’s impossible to make out what is being drawn. Don’t do this to your teammates. Using drawing software with a mouse or trackpad. Your brain is not wired correctly for this to work. You’ll blame the app’s ui and feel like you “just haven’t found a good one yet”. If you refuse to give up the mouse you’ll never find a tool that works.

The Better-patterns

To successfully whiteboard remotely you must use something with a touch interface. Here’s a few setups to consider.

iPad pro w/ Apple pencil. If you already have one this is a no brainer. You can either login to your favorite collaborative drawing app like https://awwapp.com and share your board with your team. Alternatively you can use Quicktime to mirror your iPad running your favorite drawing app and share your screen with video chat. Invest in a Drawing tablet. The Wacom Intuos Drawing tablet is around $80 and it could change the way you interact with your computer. Just like the iPad suggestion you can use it with any web-based drawing apps. Steal a family member’s tablet. They won’t miss it during work hours anyway. Buy an inexpensive stylist ($8) and you’re good to go.

Conclusion

The physical medium matters a ton when drawing and no amount of software is going to overcome that. Point your manager to this article and explain how much time and money your org could save by supplying the right tools for drawing remotely.

I think the difficulty of whiteboarding remotely causes many teams to fly everyone out for planning sessions. Save your on-sites for trust falls and use good communication tools the rest of the time.