Why remote brainstorms hit different

Working from home changes which parts of collaboration are easy and which are hard. The casual whiteboard session or quick huddle that used to spark ideas in the office doesn't survive the transition to a fully remote team. An open floor plan makes it natural to pull in a few colleagues for a spontaneous problem-solving session; a video call, by contrast, demands structure. Brainstorms, in particular, rely on a kind of energy that's hard to summon when everyone is looking at a grid of faces on a screen.

At Figma, which shifted to a remote-first approach during the pandemic, the team learned that more deliberate preparation and a bit of structure in the session itself make a remote brainstorm productive. The goal isn't to force creativity, but to give it the right conditions.

Prep work: set the frame before the call

The logistics of a brainstorm need more attention when nobody's in the same room. The core steps are clarifying what you actually need, getting your tooling ready, and making sure everyone has had a chance to look at the materials beforehand.

Be explicit about the goal

Before sending a meeting invite, decide what you're hoping to produce. Are you looking for a high volume of raw, new ideas? Or do you need focused feedback on a few existing directions? Where your project is in its cycle should determine which one. Naming that goal for the team ahead of time lets them calibrate how much they need to bring to the table.

Get the toolchain sorted

Once everyone is remote, planning for the tools you'll use becomes just as important as planning for the agenda. A few essentials:

  • Video conferencing: Put a link to a VC call in the meeting invite. Encourage people to turn their cameras on so everyone feels a bit more connected—and so they can have fun with virtual backgrounds.
  • A shared file: Create a dedicated Figma file for the session and give all participants edit access. You can set up as many pages or frames as needed to organize ideas by theme. If you have concepts you want people to react to, flesh those out in the doc in advance. The file becomes the single hub for the conversation.
  • Chat: For an ongoing workstream, spin up a Slack channel. Use it for ad hoc feedback and as a home for meeting notes. Put a link to the working file in the channel's topic field so nobody has to hunt for it.

Sending the file the night before—or even the morning of—makes a difference. Not everyone thinks best on the spot; some people need time to reflect. Encourage the group to drop questions in the file before the meeting starts.

In the session: lean on structure

Freeform sessions can work, but when the team is remote, more structure tends to lead to better outcomes. The exercises you run should account for the fact that lively discussion is harder to spark organically over a video call.

Begin with a quick refresher of the goal, as some attendees may not have had time to review the materials. During the session, expect detours. If the group starts to veer off course, open a "Parking lot" section in the file and invite people to jot ideas there for later, allowing the main thread to continue.

Breaking into small groups of 2-3 people can help in several ways. Quiet participants feel less intimidated in a small group, and it's much easier to troubleshoot technical or communication hiccups in a smaller forum. Here's a practical sequence that worked for a brainstorm run by Figma's Product Marketing team:

  1. Join the VC call and share your screen with the Figma file, or have the team follow along in Observation mode.
  2. Let everyone opt into groups of 2-3 using your VC tool's breakout rooms feature.
  3. Each group designates a lead who will report takeaways back to the full team.
  4. If you want high-volume idea generation, ask everyone to create a post-it note per unique idea. If you want to riff on existing concepts, have them comment directly on the file.
  5. Set a 10-minute timer and remind groups to rejoin the main room.
  6. Have each group present while you take notes on the central file. Let the team plus-one each other's ideas using dot stickers.

Cleanup and follow-through

Capturing everything while you're actively facilitating is a losing battle. Plan to spend roughly 30 minutes after the session ends organizing the notes and consolidating the feedback. If you created a Slack channel, use it as the archive for meeting notes and next steps.

Finally, go easy on yourselves. Creative thinking can be more difficult under the stress of a remote-work transition. Sometimes the right direction takes longer to emerge, and forcing it won't help. A brainstorm doesn't have to be a formal event either; when the energy is there, jumping into a shared file for a lighter, less scheduled session can produce just as much value.