Brainstorming Just Became Easier With Bords
Bords ($4.99) by Soliant Consulting, Inc. provides a sleek environment for brainstorming ideas.
White boards generally serve as the medium for diagraming ideas or jotting things down. Bords works toward the same purpose, but with more options.
Your library shows all of your board projects, which can be viewed as a grid, cover flow, or list. It would be nice if a thumbnail of your project was shown in each board icon, but this is only available when using cover flow.
Board designs include the white board default, as well as: metal board, chalk board, cork board, and graph paper. All of the boards function the same, regardless of which one you choose.
Once inside, you can add notes, text, lines, shapes, drawings, and photographs. All of the elements are modified through the properties menu, though you need to select one of them first, or the menu will just show the board style. The elements all act the way you would expect them to in a touch environment, reducing this app’s learning curve to a bunny slope.
What I really like is if you have elements overlapping each other, touching the one you want on top will bring it forward. This is simpler than Pages, which is sometimes touchy about which shape you're selecting.
The board provides plenty of room to stretch out with your ideas. Double tapping will zoom out to show the entire board, or the “radar” button will show you a micro snapshot of it. Once you’re done, you can export your board as a PDF or a .jpg file.
Having worked with the Inspiration educational software, two features that I expected but didn’t find were auto linking elements together and “rapid fire” for elements. Both of these greatly help with not having the element set up slow down the brainstorming.
This app has the potential to be just about any diagraming tool you need it to be: daily schedules, game level design, circuit diagraming, homework planner, you name it.
All you have to do is provide the ideas.
