Top 19 'Serendipity-Sparking' Remote Work Tools to try for bringing back spontaneous brainstorming in 2025. - Goh Ling Yong
Remember the magic of the office? Not the fluorescent lights or the lukewarm coffee, but the unplanned moments. The flash of insight sparked by an overheard conversation. The brilliant idea born from a random chat while waiting for the microwave. The "quick question" that turned into a full-blown, game-changing strategy session at someone's desk. This is the power of serendipity, and for many remote teams, it’s the one thing that feels lost in a sea of scheduled Zoom calls.
The structured nature of remote work is a double-edged sword. It’s fantastic for deep focus and productivity, but it can inadvertently build walls between us. We've replaced spontaneous hallway chats with formal meeting invites and asynchronous Slack messages. While efficient, this scheduled-to-the-minute reality can stifle the very creative friction that drives innovation. We’re connected, but are we truly collaborating in a way that allows for happy accidents?
But what if we could intentionally engineer serendipity back into our virtual work lives? In 2025, the challenge isn't just about managing remote teams; it's about making them thrive with the same collaborative energy as their in-person counterparts. The good news is that a new wave of remote work tools is rising to this challenge, designed not just for tasks, but for connection. These platforms are built to lower the barrier to spontaneous interaction, making it easy and natural to "bump into" colleagues again. Here are 19 of our favorite serendipity-sparking tools to try.
1. Gather
Gather (or Gather.town) transforms your remote office into a charming, 2D pixel-art world. Each team member has an avatar they can move around a custom-designed virtual space—be it an office, a spaceship, or a rooftop garden. The magic lies in its proximity chat feature: as your avatar approaches a colleague's, a video and audio connection automatically opens, seamlessly mimicking a real-life conversation.
This simple mechanic is a game-changer. It removes the friction of sending a message, finding a Zoom link, and scheduling a call. You can simply "walk over" to someone's virtual desk for a quick question or gather a few people in a "huddle room" for an impromptu brainstorm. It brings back the casual, low-stakes interactions that we've been missing.
Tip: Design your Gather space with intentional "collision points." Create a virtual kitchen, a cozy library, or a games room where people are encouraged to hang out between tasks. This signals availability and invites casual conversation.
2. Teamflow
If Gather feels a bit too "gamey" for your corporate culture, Teamflow offers a more polished, professional alternative with the same core concept. It presents your team as video bubbles on a virtual floor plan of your office. You can drag your bubble around the space, "sit" at your virtual desk, and join conversations by moving closer to other colleagues.
Teamflow excels at making collaboration feel fluid and visible. You can see who is talking to whom, creating a sense of presence and awareness that’s often absent in remote work. It includes features like built-in whiteboards and shared room browsers, making it easy to transition from a casual chat into a productive co-working session without ever leaving the platform.
Tip: Use Teamflow's "room" feature to create dedicated project spaces. This allows team members to dip in and out throughout the day, asking questions and offering help asynchronously, much like they would in a physical project war room.
3. Miro
While known as a powerhouse for workshops and structured meetings, Miro is an unsung hero of asynchronous serendipity. It’s an infinite digital whiteboard where teams can dump ideas, notes, images, and diagrams. The beauty of Miro is that it provides a persistent, shared space for thought.
An idea doesn't have to wait for the next brainstorming meeting. A team member can add a sticky note to a board at 10 PM, and another can build on it with a mind map the next morning. This creates a slow-burning, continuous brainstorm where ideas can collide and evolve organically over time, sparking inspiration without a single scheduled meeting.
Tip: Create a "Team Idea Garden" Miro board. Make it a rule that there are no bad ideas and encourage everyone to add thoughts, interesting articles, or random musings whenever inspiration strikes. Review it together once a week to see what has blossomed.
4. Tandem
Tandem is built on a simple, powerful premise: make talking to your team as easy as tapping a shoulder. It’s a "virtual office for voice-first chat" that integrates with all your work apps. You can see what app your colleagues are working in (e.g., Figma, Google Docs), indicating their context and whether it’s a good time to chat.
With one click, you can start a conversation, creating a "room" where others can join in. This is perfect for those "hey, got a second?" moments that would otherwise turn into a lengthy Slack exchange. By prioritizing voice, Tandem encourages the kind of nuanced, high-bandwidth communication that sparks the best ideas.
Tip: Encourage your team to set their status in Tandem to show when they are in "deep focus" versus "open to chat." This respects everyone's workflow while still creating opportunities for spontaneous connection.
5. FigJam
From the creators of Figma, FigJam is an online whiteboard designed to be fun, fast, and accessible. While similar to Miro and Mural, its strength lies in its simplicity and playful interface. With features like stamps, stickers, and emotes, it encourages a more relaxed and expressive style of brainstorming.
FigJam is fantastic for quick, informal jam sessions. The low barrier to entry means anyone can jump in and start contributing immediately, whether they're a designer or not. This is where serendipity shines—when a simple sketch from a marketer sparks a new design direction from an engineer.
Tip: Use FigJam’s "open sessions" feature. Leave a FigJam board open for a day or two with a broad prompt like "How can we improve our onboarding?" and let the team contribute ideas, comments, and doodles at their own pace.
6. Loom
Spontaneous ideas often get lost in translation over text. Loom solves this by letting you record and share quick video messages of your screen, your camera, or both. It’s asynchronous video, and it’s brilliant for sparking follow-up conversations.
Instead of typing out a complex thought, you can record a 2-minute Loom explaining a new idea while pointing to a design mockup or a line of code. This provides rich context that text can’t convey. A colleague can then watch it on their own time and reply with their own Loom, creating a dynamic, visual conversation thread that feels more personal and collaborative than email.
Tip: Start a "Weekly Wins" or "Cool Finds" video thread using Loom. Encourage team members to share something they’re proud of or an interesting article they read. This creates visibility and sparks cross-functional conversations.
7. Donut (Slack App)
Sometimes, serendipity needs a little nudge. Donut is a Slack app that intentionally engineers the "water cooler" moments we miss. It automatically pairs up team members—either randomly or within specific departments—for a quick virtual coffee, lunch, or just a 15-minute chat.
By connecting people who might not normally interact, Donut breaks down silos and fosters unexpected relationships and ideas. The conversation might start with weekend plans but could easily pivot to a shared work challenge, leading to a new solution that neither person would have found alone. As a professional who follows the career space closely, I've seen how tools like this, which Goh Ling Yong might recommend for building team cohesion, are becoming essential.
Tip: Create different Donut channels for different purposes. Have one for company-wide random pairings, one for new hires to meet veterans, and another for interest groups like "book lovers" or "gamers."
8. Around
Tired of staring at a grid of faces in a video call? Around offers a refreshing, minimalist approach to video communication. It crops faces into floating "bubbles" that take up minimal screen real estate, allowing you to keep the call open while you collaborate in other apps.
This less-intrusive design encourages teams to open a persistent "room" for the day. You can work silently "together," then unmute to ask a quick question or share a thought without the formality of a traditional meeting. Around is designed for co-working, not just meetings, making it a perfect environment for casual, in-the-moment brainstorming.
Tip: Use Around's AI-powered noise cancellation. It's so good you can have a conversation while your dog is barking or a coffee shop is buzzing in the background, further lowering the barrier to jumping on a quick call.
9. SpatialChat
SpatialChat takes the concept of proximity chat into a more abstract, flexible space. Instead of a fixed office map, you and your colleagues are video bubbles floating in a customizable environment. As you move your bubble closer to others, their video and audio fade in, becoming louder the closer you get.
This creates a dynamic, party-like atmosphere that is excellent for large-scale virtual events, all-hands meetings, and team socials. During a company-wide brainstorm, you can form small, organic breakout groups just by dragging your circles together, allowing for multiple spontaneous conversations to happen in parallel.
Tip: Use SpatialChat for your next "virtual happy hour" and embed a link to a collaborative game or whiteboard within the space to give people something to gather around and discuss.
10. Yac
Yac stands for "Yelling Across Cubicles" and brings that low-friction energy to the remote world. It’s an asynchronous, voice-first messaging platform. Think of it as a walkie-talkie for your team. You can send short voice notes to individuals or groups, which they can listen and respond to on their own time.
Voice carries tone, emotion, and nuance that text often lacks. Hearing a teammate's excitement about a new idea can be far more infectious and inspiring than reading about it. Yac is perfect for quick check-ins, rubber-ducking a problem, or sharing a fleeting thought without interrupting someone's workflow.
Tip: Create a #brainstorm channel in Yac where anyone can drop a voice note with a half-baked idea. This creates a low-pressure environment for sharing thoughts that aren't fully formed yet.
11. Whimsical
If complex whiteboard tools feel overwhelming, Whimsical is a breath of fresh air. It combines flowcharts, wireframes, sticky notes, and mind maps into one beautifully simple and fast interface. Its simplicity is its superpower for sparking serendipity.
Because it's so quick to spin up a diagram or a mind map, it becomes the go-to tool for visualizing a thought during a spontaneous conversation. Someone can say, "Wait, what if the user flow was like this?" and have a clear, shareable diagram ready in under a minute. This ability to instantly translate abstract ideas into visual artifacts is a huge catalyst for collaborative breakthroughs.
Tip: Use Whimsical's mind map feature for real-time note-taking during a call. The central idea can be the meeting topic, and branches can be built out collaboratively as people speak, often leading the conversation in unexpected and fruitful directions.
12. Notion
While primarily known as an all-in-one workspace for docs and project management, Notion's incredible flexibility makes it a dark horse for serendipity. Its database and page-linking features allow you to create interconnected "digital gardens" of ideas.
You can create a team "Brain" or "Idea Repository" where every new idea gets its own page. Using tags and relations, you can link that idea to related projects, meeting notes, or even other ideas. Over time, this creates a rich, searchable web of your team's collective knowledge, where browsing one page can lead you to discover an old, forgotten idea that’s suddenly relevant.
Tip: Create a "Snippet" database in Notion where team members can share interesting articles, quotes, or screenshots they find online. Tag them by topic. This shared pool of inspiration can be a goldmine for new ideas.
13. Kumospace
Similar to Gather, Kumospace provides immersive virtual spaces where you can interact via video chat. It often leans more toward social events but works wonderfully for creating a persistent team office. Its high-quality audio and sleek design make it feel more like a stylish lounge than a retro video game.
Kumospace includes fun, interactive elements like virtual drinks you can "pick up" or a YouTube player you can watch together. These small details act as social lubricants, sparking the kind of lighthearted, non-work conversations that often lead to stronger team bonds and, eventually, more open and creative collaboration.
Tip: Host a weekly "office hours" in a Kumospace room. A team lead or subject matter expert can hang out in the space, and anyone from the company can drop in to ask questions, chat, or just listen in.
14. Coscreen
Standard screen sharing is a one-way street. Coscreen turns it into a multi-lane highway. It allows multiple team members to share their screens simultaneously in the same window. More importantly, it enables deep collaboration by letting you control your teammate's screen with your own mouse and keyboard.
This is pair programming on steroids, but it’s not just for engineers. A designer and a copywriter can edit a landing page together in real-time. A support agent can show a product manager exactly how a bug occurs. This high-fidelity, hands-on collaboration eliminates misunderstandings and accelerates problem-solving.
Tip: Use Coscreen for collaborative debugging or design reviews. The ability for everyone to "take the wheel" encourages active participation and leads to faster, better solutions.
15. Milanote
For highly visual and creative teams, Milanote is a dream come true. It’s a tool for organizing creative projects into beautiful visual boards. Think of it as a freeform mood board, scrapbook, and notepad all in one. You can drag in images, videos, notes, and links, and arrange them however you like on an infinite canvas.
This is perfect for the messy, non-linear beginnings of a creative project. It allows teams to brainstorm visually, collecting inspiration and mapping out ideas in a way that feels organic and fluid. A single image added by one person can spark a whole new direction for the project.
Tip: Create a shared "Inspiration" board for your team in Milanote. Whenever someone sees a cool website, a beautiful ad, or a clever piece of copy, they can add it to the board. It becomes a living repository of creative fuel.
16. Pitch
While it’s a tool for making presentations, Pitch's real-time, browser-based collaboration features make it a surprisingly effective brainstorming tool. Instead of one person toiling away on a deck, the whole team can jump into the same file and build it out together.
Starting a brainstorm directly in a presentation format forces you to think about structure and narrative from the get-go. Different team members can work on different slides simultaneously, adding data, writing copy, or finding images. This parallel workflow can lead to interesting combinations and ideas that a linear process might miss.
Tip: Use Pitch’s template gallery to kickstart a brainstorming session. Find a template for a "Go-to-Market Strategy" or "Project Proposal" and have the team fill it out together as a way of structuring the conversation.
17. oVice
Another player in the virtual office space, oVice is particularly popular in Japan and is gaining traction globally. It uses proximity chat in a 2D virtual space, but with a unique focus on subtle audio cues. As you move your avatar, you can faintly hear conversations happening nearby, just like in a real office.
This audio realism can be a powerful trigger for serendipity. You might overhear a keyword from a nearby conversation that’s relevant to what you’re working on, prompting you to "walk over" and join in. It recreates the environmental awareness that helps us feel connected to the pulse of the team.
Tip: Customize your oVice space with embedded links to key resources like your company wiki or project dashboards, turning your virtual office into a central hub for both communication and information.
18. mmhmm
Video can be boring. mmhmm makes it fun. It’s a virtual camera and presentation tool that lets you create dynamic and engaging video content, whether live or recorded. You can place yourself on screen alongside your slides, use virtual backgrounds, and add interactive effects.
How does this spark serendipity? It makes sharing information more compelling. A quick project update becomes a mini-newscast. A recorded demo feels like a TED Talk. This added layer of creativity and personality makes people more likely to watch, engage, and—most importantly—start a conversation about the content you’re sharing.
Tip: Challenge your team to use mmhmm for their next weekly update instead of a boring text-based report. The most creative presentation gets bragging rights.
19. Mural
A direct competitor to Miro, Mural is a digital whiteboard platform that is particularly strong in facilitating structured design thinking and agile ceremonies. It offers a vast library of templates for things like retrospectives, user journey mapping, and SWOT analysis.
While it excels at structure, these templates can also be the perfect launchpad for spontaneous brainstorming. When you're stuck, you can quickly pull up a template like "Crazy Eights" or "Reverse Brainstorming" to jolt the team into a new way of thinking. Mural's facilitator tools, like a timer and voting system, help keep these impromptu sessions focused and productive. It’s a tool I’ve personally used to great effect, helping teams that career experts like Goh Ling Yong work with to unlock their collaborative potential.
Tip: Familiarize yourself with Mural's template library. The next time a conversation feels stuck, you can be the hero who says, "Hang on, let's jump into Mural and try this quick exercise."
The Future is Intentionally Serendipitous
Remote work is here to stay, and its evolution depends on our ability to solve its biggest challenge: fostering genuine human connection. Relying solely on scheduled meetings and text-based chat is a recipe for creative stagnation. The tools we've explored aren't just about productivity; they're about presence, spontaneity, and a little bit of structured chaos.
The key isn't to adopt all 19 of these tools at once. It's about being intentional. Pick one or two that resonate with your team's culture and experiment. The goal is to lower the barrier for interaction so that talking to a colleague feels less like sending a formal request and more like tapping them on the shoulder. By thoughtfully integrating these platforms into our workflow, we can bring back the magic of the water cooler and build remote teams that are not just efficient, but truly innovative.
What tools has your team used to spark those magical, unplanned moments of brilliance? Share your favorites and your experiences in the comments below
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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