Interact
You know the scene: you launch a group brainstorming, three people take up all the talking, the rest stay quiet, and you leave with an unreadable flip chart no one will ever reread. The problem is almost never a shortage of ideas. It is a shortage of structure. A good ideation workshop has two clear phases: first you open wide, then you sort and decide. The SnapInteract idea wall gives you exactly that frame, on a projected kanban board the room builds together in real time.
Why brainstormings fail (and how to save them)
Most idea sessions blend two moves that should stay apart: producing and judging. As soon as an idea is criticized while it is being voiced, the flow stops. Conversely, if you never sort, you drown in fifty proposals with no hierarchy. The method has been known for a long time: first divergence, where every idea is welcome and unjudged, then convergence, where you group, refine and prioritize.
The second obstacle is social. In a group, speaking time is never evenly shared: the most confident take up the space, while the others keep to themselves ideas that are sometimes decisive. Letting everyone contribute from their phone rebalances the room instantly. We go deeper on this in getting a silent class to take part.
A successful brainstorming is not measured by the number of ideas produced, but by the quality of the decision it leads to.
The kanban idea wall: diverging on a shared board
In practice, you project a board made of columns you define in advance: those are your categories. Participants scan the QR code on screen, join without installing any app or creating an account, and drop their cards straight into the column that feels right. The wall fills up live, in front of everyone, and each contribution becomes a card you can read, move and group.
This format changes the dynamic compared with the usual round of the table. No one waits their turn, no one hogs the mic, and the shy write as freely as the talkative. You, as facilitator, keep control: you watch the material arrive, you nudge the emptier columns, you ask people to sharpen an idea that stays too vague. It is one of the 14 interactive activities in the app, all designed to combine within a single session.
- Define your columns before you launch: a few clear categories beat one catch-all wall.
- Time-box the divergence: five to seven minutes are often enough to surface the essentials.
- Restate the golden rule: during divergence, no idea is bad, we do not criticize yet.
- Encourage bouncing off: one card can spark another, let the room draw on what is on screen.
- Keep an "aside" column for off-topic but interesting ideas you do not want to lose.
Sorting by category without losing momentum
Once divergence is over, the wall is full and a little messy: that is normal, and even a good sign. The next move is sorting. Some cards look alike, others answer each other, a few duplicates appear. You group them by theme, merge what overlaps, move what landed in the wrong column. This collective sorting is a strong moment: this is where the group realizes what it produced together.
Do this work out loud, with the room. Reading each card, asking "where do you put it?", arbitrating the groupings: this dialogue turns a pile of proposals into a shared mental map. The kanban board makes that movement visible, because an idea changing column is seen, unlike a sticky note quietly peeled off a flip chart.
Converge and prioritize: turning ideas into decisions
Diverging is easy. Converging is where most workshops stop too soon. Once your categories are clean, you have to choose. You can chain into another activity to decide: a poll to settle between two directions, a word cloud to surface priorities, or a self-positioning scale to gauge support for each path. What matters is leaving the session with a hierarchy, not a flat list.
When several ideas are worth the same and you must pick between them, a structured debate is often the best tool: pit two options against each other, hear the arguments, then decide. Our article on organizing a debate in class details this shift from ideation to decision. At this stage, the point is no longer quantity but sorting: which three ideas will you truly work on after the session?
A full wall is not a result. The result is the short list the group commits to following.
Keeping a usable trace of the session
Nothing is more discouraging than a rich workshop that leaves nothing behind the next day. With the idea wall, the content produced stays attached to your session: you find the cards, their final sorting and the prioritization, ready to become a summary or an action plan. And because privacy matters, especially in a company setting, your data stays on your Mac: we keep nothing on our servers once the session is over.
This reassures organizations that hesitate to push internal reflections onto a third-party platform. Your participants contribute from their phone through a simple relay, with no account to create, and the workshop material comes back to you. If you are discovering the tool, the 14 interactive activities page and the ideation page show how the idea wall fits with the rest of a session.
A thirty-minute run-through example
Here is a simple template, replayable as is, for a training group or a consulting workshop. It fits in half an hour and always ends with a decision, not just ideas left hanging.
- Minutes 0 to 3: you pose the question and project the board with its columns; everyone scans the QR code.
- Minutes 3 to 10: divergence phase, everyone drops their cards in silence, no criticism.
- Minutes 10 to 20: sorting out loud, you group, merge and clean the columns with the room.
- Minutes 20 to 27: convergence, a vote or a scale settles the paths you keep.
- Minutes 27 to 30: you state out loud the two or three decisions and who does what next.
This frame works because it gives a beginning, a middle and an end to something that, without structure, often scatters in every direction. The idea wall is not magic: it is the discipline of divergence then convergence that makes the difference. The app simply makes that discipline easy to hold, and lets everyone contribute without raising a hand. Nothing stops you from trying it on your next workshop to see the difference for yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Do participants need to install an app to contribute to the wall?
No. Participants scan the projected QR code and join from their phone browser, with no app to install and no account to create. Only you, as facilitator, use the macOS app.
How many participants can an idea wall handle?
The format suits a small working group as well as a large training room. Beyond twenty or so people, focus above all on framing your columns so the sorting stays readable and fast.
What happens to the ideas after the session?
The content produced stays attached to your session in the app: cards, sorting and prioritization. Your data stays on your Mac, and we keep nothing on our servers once the workshop is over.
Is the idea wall available in the free plan?
Yes. The free plan is very generous: it only applies a monthly cap on interactive activities, with the rest unlimited. The Pro plan (9.99 euros per month or 59.99 euros per year) lifts that cap.
