Case Study
Whiteboard AI
Senior Product Designer
2024
The Challenge
Brightidea's Whiteboard tool had AI features but usage was not where it needed to be. The existing implementation let users generate a handful of sticky notes from a text prompt, and that was it. As competitors began shipping richer AI-powered collaboration features, the gap was becoming a liability.
The business goal was clear: make Whiteboard's AI genuinely useful so that customers would see it as a reason to remain on the platform, and not leave for a competing tool.
My Role
As the sole product designer at Brightidea for most of my tenure, I owned the design side of this project end-to-end from initial research through release. I partnered closely with a product manager, customer success, and engineering team throughout.
Underatanding the Problem
Before laying out a single thing, we started researching. The existing AI tools had low engagement, but we didn't know why. Discoverability, trust, relevance, friction? All were on the table.
Working with the PM and customer success team, we ran user interviews and quickly found the real culprit: the experience dead-ended upon their initial prompt. There were no ways to expand ideas, no clustering for organization, and no path to prioritization.
That reframed everything. It was a rethink of how AI should live inside the whiteboard workflow.
Exploring the Solution Space
An audit of Miro, FigJam, Mural, and other emerging zoomable UI AI-native tools revealed a clear pattern: the best implementations felt like a collaborator on the canvas, not a separate tool you had to go find.
I explored two directions. An AI panel accessed from the left nav that utilized our original space for the tool, and a context based menu that responded to whatever was selected on the canvas.
The Solution
The revamped AI system shipped as a two-pronged experience:
AI Panel (Left Navigation)
Upon deeper testing, the original locatio dedicated, always-visible space for generating ideas, expanding thinking, and running AI-assisted sessions. Designed to be discoverable without dominating the canvas.
Contextual AI Menu
When a user selects a sticky, cluster, or group of objects, relevant AI actions surface via a context menu.
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Select five stickies and get the option to synthesize them into themes and other options.
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Select one idea and expand it into numerous, corresponding ideas and related concepts.
The AI reads what you're doing and responds accordingly.
Key capabilities shipped: idea expansion from a single prompt, smart matrix generation from a cluster of stickies, AI-powered grouping and labeling, and image generation for team branding within the hackathon flow.
This design showcased a prompt in the lower left.
This design utilized a prompt that derived from the left toolbar.
PRD styled document on Whiteboard canvas.
This design showcased a prompt in the lower left.
The Solution
The final design used a two-pronged approach: a main panel in the left navigation and a context menu that adapted based on what was selected on the canvas.
Post-launch results were strongly positive. Time spent in the tool increased, ideas generated per session rose measurably, and users described the AI features as "actually useful". It was exactly the bar we'd set out to clear. The project also laid the foundation for how Brightidea would approach AI integration across the rest of the product.
Made to be easily discoverable and to also not distract the users.
From one idea to many in just a click.
A matrix created from an array of stickies based on user-set parameters.
Made to be easily discoverable and to also not distract the users.