FigJam is an online interactive whiteboard from Figma headquartered in San Francisco, presently in beta (2021) but available to the public in a free trial. The vendor states that in 2022, FigJam will have plans for $0, $8, and $15 per editor, per month.
$36
per year per editor
Google Jamboard
Score 6.7 out of 10
N/A
Google Jamboard is a collaborative whiteboard, available as an add-on to Google Workspaces.
FigJam is perfect for the early stages of a project, where every member from cross-functional teams can participate, because it’s intuitive and has a very low entry barrier.
[Google] Jamboard's functionality allows anyone to create a visual representation of information while remaining open to collaboration with others. Students can use the program to solve math problems by writing on their touch screens, while others create timelines of their lives with different shapes, formatting, and text options. Teachers can use it jointly during professional development to brainstorm new ideas and make note of those they would like to implement. The possibilities feel endless.
I don't use it often, because the organization I work in uses a different environment on a commo basis. This is rather used between the designers, who prototype the solutions in Figma - they just have it as a workbook/notebook for their ideas. However, if those need to be shared with stakeholders or other organization members, the designers are expected to use a different environment.
It's a tool that's easily accessible from your Google Suite. For a whiteboarding workspace, it provides a good basic platform. Multiple whiteboards can be created in one workspace, so you can share a session with multiple teams/plants. Compared to more advanced whiteboarding tools, it has limited features. You'll need to have access to the Internet to take full advantage of the collaborative workspace. The amount of storage space required for your session will use up your Google Drive quota.
It is similar, but it provides more usable solutions for brainstorming sessions and presentation purposes. Now empowered with AI and some new cool stuff, it may be the most dangerous competitor to FigJam. However, it will win the race if FigJam is more responsive and gets more attached to Figma, where the prototyping takes place.
Google Jamboard is part of the Google education suite so it's easily accessible and part of our single sign-on authentication. Padlet is another tool that supports active learning web boards, but it is not easily integrated with our LMS and it's yet another tool to support. We've also heard about Mural.co, but that one seems more complicated to use compared to Google Jamboard. It's also more expensive and we try to maximize the resources we have available.
