We got tired of tools that had opinions about how we should think.
Whatever shape your thinking takes, the canvas follows.
Every design tool has an implied philosophy. Most won't tell you that upfront.
Figma thinks in frames. Miro thinks in sticky notes and project management formats on an infinite plane. Notion thinks in blocks stacked in a column. Keynote thinks in 16:9 slides, one after the other. The moment you open the app you've signed a quiet agreement to think the way the tool thinks.
For some projects, that's fine. But to be honest I started hating every time I opened a design tool that wasn't in line with my thinking. Miro made me feel like I was working at a cubicle farm. Figma made me feel like I was working at a startup. Adobe products make me feel like a cog in a giant machine somewhere. Not to mention Windows has the worst asset viewers to ever exist (literally how do you create a video viewer that bad). The only time I was proud of my work is when it appeared in a non-biased context like a physical object.
The problem isn't that tools have structure. Structure is useful. The problem is that the structure is usually somebody else's. Somebody who decided, before you ever opened the file, how your ideas were supposed to relate to each other.
Those aren't neutral choices, and the tool made them for you before you showed up.
I tend to think in clusters of references floating at different distances, forming and dissolving, scale standing in for importance. Some think in grids with clean rows, clear hierarchy, every asset in conversation with its neighbors. Some think one way on Monday and the other way on Thursday. Some think one way for the first draft and the other way for the final read.
Masonry when you want order. Infinite freeform when you want room. Pan, zoom, stack, scale. Actual scale, the kind where a detail can be ten times the size of its neighbor because it matters ten times as much, or a tenth of the size because it's context, not content. This tool doesn't fight you for wanting to think that way.
The same board can be a tidy collection in the morning and an exploded constellation by afternoon, because the canvas isn't the idea. The canvas is supposed to hold the idea without changing it.
Opinion is a shortcut, pick a workflow, enforce it, call it a product. Neutrality means building something that can hold whatever a designer shows up with, without interrupting their thinking.
A designer's process is personal.