This is the optimal workflow, where the team members plan together in the same space. But what happens if you have to work remotely and your coffee no longer catalyzes your original ideas and creative output? Now, this is the point where brainstorming tools shine. This post will discuss the best brainstorming tools to increase your team’s creativity. You can operate them to enhance communication, foster creativity, and boost outputs. But first, let’s briefly examine online brainstorming tools and why they are popular in the market.
What are Brainstorming Tools?
You can digitize the entire planning process of your organization with the help of brainstorming tools, commonly called mind-mapping tools. It promotes group brainstorming online, making it simpler to tap into collaborative minds to develop strategies. You may forge ideas whenever you need to and wherever you are, and you can instantly share all those ideas with the other team members. It assists in gathering and organizing thoughts. Imagine never having to look for a pen and a piece of paper when your creative juices start flowing. After using a brainstorming tool, your team, especially the introverts who think they aren’t innovative, starts to break through their creative blocks and develop various visionary ideas. Creativity, planning, and production begin to increase within the team. Doesn’t it sound pretty good? In terms of what these tools can accomplish for you, that is merely the tip of the iceberg. The great benefits it provides are what makes them popular in the market.
Benefits of Brainstorming Tools
You must remain dynamic in today’s competitive corporate world. Managers can produce and record ideas using brainstorming tools without holding an in-person team gathering. These specialist tools provide numerous benefits. Let’s review them now.
On-Demand Brainstorming
The fact that brainstorming tools are readily available to you wherever you are, including on your mobile phone, is one of the main benefits of using them. You can create and share them among your team as soon as you or your team design a brilliant idea. Your team members can view these ideas on their smartphones and work together on them.
Boosts Employee Engagement
Brainstorming tools increase employee engagement by encouraging active participation from every team member during a brainstorming session. By holding these sessions frequently, you can foster a collaborative workplace where everyone is given a chance to speak.
Maintains Consistency of Information for a Distributed Team
The fact that they get your teams on the same page makes these brainstorming tools so powerful. Using a single zone for collaboration, the entire group may keep in touch and engage with one another via various channels, including chat, online forums, and so on. Your brainstorming sessions will be more productive if you communicate clearly and use a platform everyone can use.
Help You Think Differently
With the help of brainstorming tools, you may regularly gather like-minded individuals and jump right into idea-sharing without delays. When you brainstorm with others, you become more open to the ideas of others and develop your ability to think creatively and beyond the box.
Aid In Receiving The Praise You Deserve
Using brainstorming tools can help you clarify your ideas to others at all levels of the organization. Your efforts will be recognized, increasing your likelihood of moving up to a senior position in the future.
Features of Brainstorming Tools
What essential qualities should you seek now that we have persuaded you that your team needs a brainstorming tool?
Templates
The best brainstorming tools offer templates for teams and project board views to assist various procedures. You may use the Gantt chart and Kanban view to list the core idea and then develop a web of pertinent thoughts around it to construct a mind map and create a network of linked ideas.
Sharing files
Showing rather than telling is the simplest way to express an idea. You can share files smoothly using dynamic brainstorming programs. You can include photographs, documents, MP4s, and GIFs in any brainstorming tool. A wall of words is undoubtedly less inviting than this.
Conceptualization
Platforms for online brainstorming assist in organizing ideas. For concepts that are “New,” “Under Review,” “Approved,” etc., you can quickly form separate groups.
Integrations
Online tools for brainstorming include integrations with other programs so you may implement your idea. Since you don’t have to continue switching between different apps to share or design your thoughts, integrations make it simpler to brainstorm jointly.
Optimal user experience (UI)
You can’t expect your team to have an original idea on the spot. Creativity happens at random. You may have your best thoughts while standing in line at the grocery store. Waiting until you’re back at your desk at work will prevent you from sharing that thought. That is why brainstorming tools have simple user interfaces, allowing you to input your thoughts and continue working rapidly.
Project management
Don’t just keep your thoughts in a drawer. Put them into practice with the best brainstorming tools, including excellent project management features. Your team can modify concepts into tangible projects with the help of various project planning, task management, budget monitoring, and reporting tools. Knowing how valuable these programs can be to your team and company, let’s explore our list of the best brainstorming tools to boost your team’s creativity and set you on the right track to success.
Miro
With the help of Miro, you can hold workshops and meetings, do user experience research and design, make mind maps and diagrams, and conduct strategic planning, all within the same app. You may also distribute it to your coworkers, allowing them to edit the maps and work together in real-time. Agile workflows, mind maps, and whiteboarding are a few elements that Miro provides. Main Features:
Broad Integration: The tool integrates with Google Suite, Dropbox, Slack, and other instant messaging services.
Zoomable canvas and whiteboard: With Miro’s infinitely zoomable canvas and web whiteboard, you can display your creativity, design projects, and establish central information hubs that keep everyone informed.
Miro offers an enjoyable and in-person collaboration experience with various alternatives for real-time teamwork on an online whiteboard, regardless of whether your teams are centralized or far dispersed.
Mural
Mural is one of the best brainstorming tools with all the components you need to use your imagination. With so many adaptable features, this digital workplace makes it simple to generate new ideas and visualize them in various ways. You can utilize the variety of pre-made templates to do everything from brainstorming to designing agile workflows. Main Features:
Workshops and sessions: Use this feature to organize and carry out practical workshops and sessions. You can regulate the flow with a timer, content locks, and permissions.
Digital sticky notes: You can also use this feature to create diagrams, making it easier to plan maximum creativity.
Project: Use project planning, task delegation, scheduling, reporting, analytics, and presentation tools to manage projects effectively.
Mural is much more than just a website for ideas. Thanks to all the visual elements and lets all participants vote on ideas. It also helps you stay focused by timing tasks and ensures that everyone gives their best effort.
LucidSpark
LucidSpark is incredible if you want to connect it to other programs like Jira, G Suite, Dropbox, Confluence, and many others. It is wise for individuals, small teams, and huge organizations. This tool stands out from other tools since it is effortless to use and intuitive. Additionally, because it is cloud-based, it removes the burden of installing and facilitates team collaboration online. Main features:
Simple shape styling: Before dragging any shapes into the canvas, LucidSpark allows you to select the font, size, color, and line style.
Share and get input: Share your diagram with others and solicit feedback without leaving the platform. Using the commenting feature, your team can comment on specific shapes or the entire page.
Unlimited canvas: Every team member can contribute and create freely on an endless canvas without being constrained or distracted. And since the history contains all the stickies, comments, and votes, no data is ever lost.
Furthermore, it comes with excellent pre-built components and can be viewed from any device using any operating system and supported browsers.
Weje
With Weje, the complete online brainstorming tool for work, you can start a paradigm change in planning and organizing. This tool is fantastic for marketers and anyone interested in data management. You can make cards out of any text or image, and those cards will instantly sync throughout your devices so that you may share them with others.
Collaboration: It will be possible for you to see who is currently working on a given board. Assign roles to users and manage access using administration tools.
Kanban board: You may make To-Do lists and flexible cards in a matter of seconds, or you can think quickly and design a Kanban board that organizes your tasks in order of priority.
You may gather, arrange, and share anything you want using Weje. It is appropriate for both private and professional use.
Canva
You have the best place to generate enormous ideas with Canva’s brainstorming tool. This innovative application provides a collaborative environment where you can turn ideas into reality and is jam-packed with fantastic features. This brand-new, cost-free tool includes tracking progress, viewing updates with vibrant cursors, and keeping track of queries and remarks. Using stickers or emojis to express your response is also an option! Main Features:
Whiteboards: This feature you can use to mindmap your next project. It has incredible templates, a complete content library, unique shapes, and even a timer for those group meetings.
Drag and Drop Editor: Mind mapping is entertaining, thanks to Canva’s drag-and-drop editor. By dragging and dropping items like a note, image, link, or to-do onto your workspace, you may add content to it.
With these features, you and your team have a place to come up with fresh ideas, design them, and put concepts into practice.
FigJam by Figma
FigJam from Figma is arguably the best brainstorming tool for design teams. It has never been more vital to have access to cloud-based collaboration tools, given the advancement in remote work among design teams. FigJam is crucial for effective cross-team communication between creators and project leaders. Main Features:
Feedback: This feature fills in the gaps in your project process if you need help giving and getting helpful feedback on design projects.
Design Libraries: Team members can use the design libraries in FigJam when working together on a project. Teams can produce artifacts that are consistent and true to the brand thanks to this tool.
This tool is undoubtedly causing a stir in the design world. After all, it can aid in the growth of an efficient workflow. You can tell from the finished product that this tool is committed to upending the market for online brainstorming tools.
Milanote
You will adore Milanote if you’re seeking a tool to help you record and organize your thoughts and creative endeavors. Milanote offers a distinctive blend of simplicity, strength, and versatility that truly sets it apart in the rapidly expanding field of note-taking and visual thinking tools. Main Features:
Link cards: This feature gives you both a link and an embedded preview of the URL you’ve stored. You may use it to link audio files, Google maps, and even Airtable spreadsheets.
Nesting boards: Making a board within a board using Milanote is one of the more practical uses of the platform.
If all of this wasn’t good enough, Milanote enables you to share boards with your team and work together in real time. You can talk with coworkers, add @ mentions to their names inside a note, and comment on their notes.
MindMeister
You can manage anything from processes to project planning and ideas using MindMeister, which takes online brainstorming to a new level. This is among the best brainstorming tools used in educational institutions, where it helps students visualize challenging problems, take notes, and exchange answers. Businesses also utilize it. Main Features:
Mind map editor: Create, share, and present your content with this new feature. Because it is cloud-based, you can develop whatever ideas you like without downloading any additional software.
Live chats: You can employ a live chat to keep in touch with other team members in real-time, give ideas, and discuss any changes.
By letting you synchronize between mind maps and the agile project board, Mindmeister also assists in project management. Last but not least, if you’re new to mind mapping, you’ll be glad to learn that this brainstorming tool contains a Mind Map training session.
IdeaBoardz
You can create a virtual board and invite collaborators using the web tool IdeaBoardz. It promotes itself as a tool to aid collaboration, brainstorming, and reflection and is free to use. It is presented straightforwardly on a digital whiteboard with post-it notes so that users can respond to the concepts. Main Features:
Vote Function: Participants can vote for the stickies they support by marking them with a thumbs up.
Custom Stickies: It provides a variety of “stickies,” or templates, to assist you in creating your board. You can browse the choices, alter them, or make your custom stickies.
You produce an idea board and share the URL with your coworkers. This choice can assist a business owner in developing their concept.
Bubbl.us
Mind mapping is made simple with the help of Bubbl.us. It will support your power to collaborate, plan, and share your creation with others. Anyone who wants to generate pictures of connected learning should use this application, from students and teachers to creatives and company owners. Main Features:
Tree Chart: You can build a tree chart on Bubbl.us with a central topic and add new ideas at the same level or sub-level. Additionally, it enables you to alter these trees to suit your choices.
Full-screen presentation: You can access the entire screen with just one click. It prints your work on one or more pages and exports it as a JPG, PNG, and text file.
Bubbl.us is the best option if you’re a novice seeking a straightforward and essential brainstorming tool! It makes mind mapping easier and aids in idea organization, task creation, collaboration, and sharing with others.
Final Words
Finding the perfect tool for your team is a difficult decision. By giving you a greater understanding of the benefits and features of the best brainstorming tools in the market, you’ll be able to decide which factors to prioritize when selecting a brainstorming application. You may also be interested in understanding concept maps.
