I'm not sure when the 'innovation workspace' Miro first entered my professional life, but as for most people it's something that really began to feature heavily during the pandemic when we were all suddenly working remotely. At the time it seemed good for some things, less good for others, but we were all having to make the best of it and we largely did. Life has long since returned to normal but Miro has stuck around and its use has grown and grown. Unfortunately I've grown to detest it and were I asked in an interview to name my least favourite product, Miro would be the easy choice. Here's why:
Miro is not a whiteboard. I love whiteboards. I think better when I can draw. If you're talking about a reasonably complex problem then drawing serves as shared visual memory to help store your understanding. Everyone can contribute to the same picture, everyone can see the collective view of things. You can't draw in Miro. If you can't express the concepts in sticky notes then you are reduced to everyone using words, with no way to validate that they paint the same picture in everyone's mind.
Miro is not collaborative. Despite being marketed as a 'collaboration tool', Miro really isn't good for many forms of collaboration. With a physical whiteboard you start with a blank space. Everyone can hold a pen, ideas are outlined in fat markers and modified or removed with a swish of the finger. You can't do these things in Miro and people can turn up at workshops or discussions with premade, highly detailed ideas that they are already heavily invested in.. This doesn't enable free discussion or the rapid collective evolution of ideas.
Miro can't present a narrative. When someone does want to present ideas or information, then Miro is a terrible choice of format. It's easy to eyeroll at Powerpoint style slides and we've all suffered through poorly written or presented examples, but when done properly they work because they have a flow. They tell a story with a narrative structure. I've seen people try to present using Miro with a screen zooming around seemingly at random and everyone in the meeting gradually losing the thread and possibly their sense of balance.
Miro doesn't work asynchronously. The other advantage of a traditional slide or document format is that it works asynchronously. If you weren't at the meeting or did not see the presentation, a well-written presentation can be read and understood in your own time. Good luck being sent a link to a Miro board and try to work out what was said. Where does it start? Where does it end? In a distributed working environment it's vital that tools work well asynchronously.
Miro doesn't help you think. 'Writing is thinking', as many people have said. Traditional document formats force the author to organise their thoughts. The constraints of a slide format force you to hone your arguments and express information in a concise way. Miro's limitless, directionless space has no constraints and encourages a chaotic brain-dump of information, rather than organized thought.
Miro ends up being used for everything. As the feature set has grown I've seen people try to use Miro for things way beyond the original concept of a virtual whiteboard. I've even seen examples of trying to use it for prototyping or user testing, for which it is hopelessly unsuitable and for which a vast array of excellent products and tools exist.
If the activity you want to do is something you'd do physically with sticky notes then it's fine for that. Retrospectives for example. But it is not a whiteboard, or a presentation tool, or any of the other things it is used as. To be clear this isn't an argument against remote or distributed working. In my opinion the benefits of that outweigh the costs and in most organisations it is here to stay. But to get the best from it we need the right tools and in most cases, Miro isn't it.
Top comments (1)
The best critique of Miro. I'd go further and say it isn't even good for retros. There are far better alternatives for that like EasyRetro.
It drives me mad seeing people use Miro for retros, going off into corners to write their own sticky notes and then laboriously dragging them back to a poorly organised space (queue lots of zooming in and out to read any note with more than 5 words on it), then "group" them by dragging them together all overlapping each other so you can't read them.
There may be other tools, but EasyRetro is an example of an improvement on sticky notes and whiteboard, even if you are in the same room! It does one simple thing really well.