The modern remote work environment demands more than just video conferencing and shared documents. A visually-rich, interactive workplace can significantly enhance collaboration, brainstorming, and overall team engagement. This problem focuses on designing the core components of such a visual workplace, specifically a shared canvas where multiple remote team members can concurrently create, manipulate, and interact with visual elements. Think of it as a collaborative whiteboard, but with the added complexity of handling real-time updates and potentially rich element types.

Imagine a scenario where team members are brainstorming ideas using sticky notes, drawing diagrams, or annotating images on a shared canvas. The system must maintain a consistent view for all participants, even with concurrent modifications. Furthermore, the architecture should be flexible enough to support new types of visual elements and collaboration features in the future. The main challenge lies in designing a robust and scalable solution that can efficiently manage concurrent access to the shared canvas and ensure data consistency across all clients. The system must guarantee that updates from one client are reliably propagated to all other clients in a timely manner, without introducing conflicts or data corruption. We're particularly concerned about the inherent complexities of handling concurrent modifications to the same element.

Requirements