I recently saw an image that described discovery phase work as making a miro board until it’s completely incomprehensible and sets fire to your laptop. Whilst this is clearly a joke aimed at the increased use of virtual whiteboards, it did make me reflect on my recent use of Miro as a project whiteboard.
Partly driven by the increase in remote working, Miro has become embedded in our workflows at Lagom. Miro offers an unlimited canvas, which inevitably plays host to findings, insights and recommendations as a project develops.
We get a lot out of using Miro in this way. In particular, it helps us to remotely work in the open with clients who will see the project Miro board being used to facilitate everything from project kick offs to user research feedback sessions.
Despite it’s obvious benefits, there is a challenge to using Miro in this way. Inevitably, there comes a certain point in a project where the board can become overwhelming. It represents an unfiltered view of an entire project split up into multiple frames which may or may not be organised in a particular way.
I think at this point my own work would benefit from treating a Miro board in the same way that people treat physical whiteboards. The big benefit of a physical whiteboard is that it is limited in space.
Limited space forces people to constantly reflect and update the project board, so that there is sufficient room to display newer insights. This results in an iterative process, where project thinking gets distilled into a visual representation of the ‘best thinking’ at any current point in time.
Going forwards I’m aiming to adopt the philosophy of a physical whiteboard and treat Miro as the place for iterative thinking, rather than a reflection of an entire project’s worth of work. Hopefully this will make future boards easier to navigate and explain to others, whilst continuing to show the contemporary thinking on any given project.
