Opal is a small and simple social ‘brainstorming’ web app that allows a group of people to create a bunch of ideas on some theme, and then to comment on them, ‘like’ them, or to create new ideas based on earlier ones. The social side is well thought out, supporting comment threads on the ideas, and direct messaging for back channel chatting. The tool dimension is small but smart. For example, people can add images to ideas, so drawings or charts could be included easily.

Someone has to start the brainstorm, name it, and invite others. Here, I’ve created one for a hypothetical conference (but not mythical or fictional conference):

When I created the conference I invited my alter ego — Other Boyd — and added an image. I made the brainstorm ‘private’ but they can be public (meaning visible to other users in your Opal membership).

When setting up the brainstorm you can stipulated questions that need to be answered, like ‘Where should we hold the conference?’

I left on the ‘allow crazy, unrelated ideas and insights’ because that’s how I roll. Specific people can be notified of particular questions by the organizer, too, and the questions can be reordered.

Once others join the brainstorm, they can offer ideas as answers to the questions, and comment on those.

At the bottom of that screen you can see the ‘build on this idea’ button. Here’s an example where one user is building on the idea of another: in this case Other Boyd built on Stowe Boyd’s New York City idea, suggesting the 92nd Street Y as a venue. Then Stowe Boyd ‘liked’ that idea, selecting ‘Dead On’ as a motivator. (Note: the motivators are editable by the Admin.) If you look at the bottom right of the New York City idea, you can see the number one next to the three box icon that represents building on, indicating that one other idea has been built on to that idea.

Users are notified when others comment on their ideas, or respond to their comments. Opal also supports direct private messaging, like this:

The final feature of Opal is perhaps the best, which is a way to synthesize ideas into ‘themes’. In the case of my hypothetical conference, I might want to collate ideas that grew out of an earlier conference, like this:

Even better, Opal allows a new brainsorm to be launched based on a synthesis like this. (Well, it does in principle, but I was unable to get it to work for me, so I have a support request in for that.)

The Bottom Line

I found Opal to be intuitive and simple to use, and I think it would be well suited to small teams (<100) brainstorming. The social dimension is well thought out, including features like following/followers and rich profiles, but no general status updates. The brainstorming features are straightforward, and the killer feature for me is the ability to build on other ideas which can create a very rich concept space in a large group, I bet.

I have a few minor quibbles — I’d like to be able to view all the elements of a brainstorm as an outline, for example, and I would like to be able to export a brainstorm — or parts of it — into a text document, or a Powerpoint deck. But on the whole, I think it will become a part of my tool kit for use cases like the hypothetical conference.