The best collaboration tool I've ever used
August 10, 2022

The best collaboration tool I've ever used

Lucia Doll | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Miro

Miro is used as a collaboration tool to plan upcoming work across the product portfolio. It allows team members to make changes in real-time and easily follow others when presenting. It has also been used to share design ideas and allow for feedback from internal and external stakeholders, without requiring extensive and complicated licenses to view content. Ad hoc, it is used as a visualisation tool for things like org charts, logging outstanding items for an ongoing discussion and process flow mapping.

Pros

  • Easy to pick up and use by a variety of technical and non-technical team members
  • Great versatility of functions on both web and mobile - across PC/Android and Apple users
  • In-built features that make design collaboration intuitive and accessible, allowing users to provide ongoing commentary in real-time without necessarily disrupting the visual attributes of what is being worked on
  • Easy to spin a new Board up and use impromptu for a meeting so participants can log questions/ideas, see live what other participants are contributing, and then collectively review what has been submitted
  • Great for process mapping as the tool allows you to flexibly connect visual attributes, shift them around, format design shapes, etc.
  • Commentary is easy to track with comments being able to be added directly to particular assets on the board - providing names and time stamps. You can also "resolve" comments, allowing collaborators to review what items might be outstanding based on open comments.

Cons

  • Voting is manually handled and could be implemented for meetings where you want participants to vote on a design idea, a product proposal or questions/feedback team members want to raise.
  • Some templates or layout suggestions would be good
  • Locking items is tricky and manual - often you just want to lock them in place, not necessarily lock all the assets/text, etc inside the item. Maybe a "pin" or "paste" function where you just want to keep the shape where it is?
  • When viewing the Board overall, it initially appears massive, with your content very small. Whilst helpful to indicate how much room there is for your content to grow in the space, a dynamically sized overview map would be easier to use.
  • Completely removes ambiguity between remote-working team members when it comes to progress updates and outstanding items
  • In previous projects, it sped up our UX/UI design process exponentially, resulting in design reviews that took a third of the time to communicate and rarely led to any misunderstandings between design and build (something quite common with other design tools)
  • Miro became the sole tool for Sprint ceremonies - allowing our team to go from working in our office, to seamlessly working remotely during COVID-19 office closures.
I wasn't involved in the initial selection of Miro and implementation across the team in my current role, but have enjoyed seeing the usage of the tool grow and further instances of use is considered ongoing. It's an easy tool to onboard any new user and once familiar with the tool, it becomes one you discover new uses for as you familiarise yourself with more of its features.
Super easy to set up Boards/Spaces, invite new users, set security for each user, etc. Training is barely necessary as the tool is so intuitive and easy to use. The most effort in an implementation is deciding the structure of Boards etc and hygiene of use across teams, but even that is a nice-to-have as the tool doesn't limit your usage in a way that necessitates rules of use.
I currently work 100% from home, with team members internally across Australia and with external team members internationally. Miro provides us with a tool that works across timezones and countries, that is easy to understand and use, and can work dynamically while working together or providing comments/feedback when not all team members are available. It has been vital to being able to work together quickly and easily, without needing to be co-located in an office. It has enough design features to allow for creativity and professional presentations, whilst not being overcomplicated and cluttered. My favorite use is being able to think big picture, plot out long-term plans for product features and goals - but then clearly articulate how we envision the product developing over time. So team members can see the planned end result, but also see what they need to work on here and now.

Do you think Miro delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Miro's feature set?

Yes

Did Miro live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Miro go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Miro again?

Yes

In terms of design presentations/reviews, Miro has proven easier to access and use than both Sketch and Adobe InDesign. It can be used to demonstrate user flows and interactive elements on designs whilst also showing the full design flow, rather than individual screens. For questions and feedback, you can comment directly on areas or design elements rather than the overall design. Allowing feedback to be specific and for the designer to know what item you're providing feedback on. Miro also allows for resolving feedback items, so as a Product Manager, I can easily discern if there is any outstanding updates on designs based on my feedback. Or if there are outstanding questions from our developers. In terms of a meeting tool, Microsoft Teams' Whiteboard tool proved insufficient. Not all versions of Teams had this tool and you couldn't easily tell which team members could or couldn't gain access. There was also a difference between versions in terms of various tools in the product (like voting), so meetings were clunky and team members were left unhappy with the process. Comparatively, similar meetings held with Miro were quick to get started due to how easy the tool is for team members to use and team members could see where others were contributing and collate their similar concepts/questions on the go.
I've recommended Miro, particularly for design reviews. I've worked with designers across many tools and there is often a need to collaborate both in the design process and through the development/build stages. Design-focussed tools/software can be really challenging to use "casually" as a non-designer, can have challenges with cloud versions vs installed versions, and can be really expensive license-wise even just for review usage. I find that Miro allows designers to copy their designs into Miro and have others comment, ask questions specifically directed to particular assets of a design, highlight build items, and note items in/out of scope. It provides a flexible version of the design that can be used as a guide, but not necessarily the detailed spec the fully-fledged design tool provides. This means, that designers aren't needing to tweak, edit and upload their designs constantly based on feedback. It can also be used to show interaction cues and user journeys, by linking designs together with process flow type arrows. Then when presenting, the tool presents well on Zoom and Teams calls, while also being easily shareable so users can directly go to the Board and view at their own pace.

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