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Frontend Atlassian · 2025

Pen Tool

Freehand drawing capability - a tablestakes whiteboarding feature.

1460xdata optimisation
79%faster rendering

Problem

Freehand drawing was not available on Confluence whiteboards.

Outcomes

  • Spiked and evaluated different ways of persisting data, proving out an alternative approach that resulted in up to 1460x performance improvement in data processing over the original.
  • Improved the quality of drawings at all scales, with 79% better rendering performance + fixes to visual artifacts.
  • Extended the feature to support shape and stamp creation from rough sketches, which won an innovation award and was subsequently filed as a U.S. patent.