Paper in my experience can get messy real quick. Example - When drawing a diagram of some process it is common for me to want to tweak and reconfigure things to arrive at a solution. With paper, it requires you either erase, scratch out, or re draw the diagram with your desired changes on another page.
What I love about marker boards is the ability to freely draft and modify on the fly without worry. When I want to commit ideas to "storage", paper works best :)
I've struggled for years to articulate my ideas and express things clearly, 'specially when it comes to challenging technical problems. One day, I randomly bought a tiny 12" x 5" whiteboard while I was at the dollar store, with the intention of using it to keep a physical todo list.
I eventually reached for it while in the heat of a challenging debugging session with some colleagues, and was surprised with how much it helped me solve the problem at hand. It quickly stopped being a todo-list after this incident. Turned out my inability to articulate things effectively was not because I was stupid, but because I am a predominantly visual thinker.
The fact people are working on tools like this excites the hell out of me!
is that the motivator for most, then?