A whiteboard gives you a canvas.
Not the method.
You can run LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® on Miro with a brick template and a lot of discipline. BrickThink encodes the discipline instead: the five-stage sequence, the timeboxes, the hand-over from individual builds to one shared model.
The difference
On a whiteboard, the facilitator carries the method in their head and enforces it by talking. In BrickThink the method is the software’s job — which frees you to listen to the room.
Side by side
What a dedicated LSP tool changes.
“Miro” below stands for any general whiteboard pressed into LSP duty with a template.
| Dimension | BrickThink | Whiteboard + template |
|---|---|---|
| The five-stage sequence | Encoded. Stages run in order with facilitator-controlled advancement. | A frame layout you rebuild and police by hand, every session. |
| Timeboxing | Per-stage timers with pause and extend, visible to the whole room. | A separate timer widget you start, stop, and narrate yourself. |
| Individual → shared model | Builds carry over and compose into one shared model on the canvas. | Copy-paste clusters of stickers and hope the grouping survives. |
| The bricks | Purpose-built brick tiles you drag, turn, and recolour — made for metaphor. | Clipart or image stamps with no build semantics. |
| Sharing the story | Spotlight a build; narrations are captured and transcribed per person and stage. | Whoever talks, talks. The story lives in the recording, if anyone rewatches it. |
| The record | Stage images, transcripts, and session exports — a deliverable, not a screenshot. | A board URL that decays as people move things after the session. |
| Openness | Open source under Apache 2.0. Free to self-host. | Proprietary, per-seat licensing. |
To be fair
Keep Miro for what Miro is good at.
Miro is an excellent general whiteboard. This is not a takedown — it is a scope statement. BrickThink does one method, properly.
- 01
General-purpose workshops: flowcharts, journey maps, retro grids, planning walls.
- 02
Teams already deep in a whiteboard ecosystem for everyday collaboration.
- 03
Sessions where the method is loose and improvised structure is the point.
Try the method-first tool
Run one session. Compare for yourself.
BrickThink is open source and free to facilitate on. If your next LSP session works better here than on your whiteboard, keep going.