How do I mute "what's new"?

  • 9 November 2020
  • 38 replies
  • 1514 views

When Miro releases updates, I get these annoying “what’s new” popups all over the screen.  I don’t want to see them - they get in the way of me actually using the board to get work done.

How do I permanently disable these popups?  I don’t see any options in preferences, anywere.


38 replies

> but I wanted to clarify whether you were getting more than a single one? As far as I know, there is usually a single dialog box with the details of the update and once you’ve dismissed it you shouldn’t see that again. 

The other day, I got several popups pointing out functionality on different parts of the screen,.  None of them appeared to be duplicates, but there were multiple popups where I had to click “got it” (or similar - I forget exactly what it was and didn’t take a screenshot) before I could get to work, because they were in the way.

There are still blue dots all over the place, that seem to be trying to draw my attention to features that I’m not interested in using.

 

> How do you learn about Miro product updates?

Right now, I seem to be learning about them by having my work interrupted by popups.

 

> How do you want to learn about them?

I don’t want to learn about them.  I want Miro to Just Work.  I want to log in, do my work, and be done with Miro.  

The only time I should get an interruption to doing my work is if there’s a critical security issue that I have to take action to resolve.

I shouldn’t get emails.  I shouldn’t get popups on the screen.  I should just use Miro to do my job.

In the scenario that I’m interested to learn what functionality might exist, or what changes may have happened, or how to perform a particular task, I want Miro to produce publicly searchable documentation (that will show on a google search). 

I want to be able to pull the information I want.  I never want information forced upon me.

 

> Do you have any references of great products that do user education well from your opinion (informative, yet not disruptive)?

Every on-prem product prior to (about) 2017.  They provide changelists, documentation, etc.  They never interrupted my workflow.

Userlevel 1

Lots of feelings in this thread. 😅 Personally, I’ve never been too bothered by What’s New? popups. And although it probably would be nice with a setting to turn them off, if Miro adhered to all requests to add customizable settings and options the UI would quickly resemble this:

I don’t have visibility into all the things that get requested, but it looks to me like there’s room for another checkbox on the Settings->Notifications page.  If there are other notifications that people can’t stop and are frustrated about and asking for an option to disable them, I think there’s room for a number of additional checkboxes on that page!

… and of course there’s also the possibility of putting the checkbox on the popup itself.

Userlevel 1

Today’s “What’s new” was especially relevant, haha. “Want to minimize distractions”? YES, distracting popup, I would like to!

Please please please - no more pop-ups. Every time I log in to a board (any board) 3-4 pop ups everywhere (“See What’s New”, “How to use Miro”). Enough. I just need to get to work. TURN THEM OFF PLEASE

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@Lena Shenkarenko - Here’s another perspective for you.

How do you learn about Miro product updates?

  1. Changelog Feedback section of the community forum
  2. Changelog page at miro.com → https://miro.com/changelog/
  3. From within my Miro dashboard or a board in Guide → What’s new
  4. Tooltip/toast popups in my Miro dashboard/boards.

However,

  1. these are all out of sync
  2. anyone on the forum can post in the Changelog Feedback section, so “Subscribing” to this section means that I am sometimes sent emails to posts in which I am not interested.

How do you want to learn about them?

 

It would be nice if

  1. there was a SUBSCRIBE TO UPDATES option at miro.com/changelog like there is on the Status page at: https://status.miro.com/
  2. and all new AND changed/removed features were posted there.

 

Userlevel 2

This is a paid productivity app.

It’s pretty insane that you have a pop-up first thing.

It’s unforgivable that it hasn’t been removed in a year.

What in the bejeezus makes you think we want to be educated about the status of your product changes before our workdays? 

Quietly add changes to the UI with a *NEW* badge. MAYBE a click-through demo after a major user-initiated update. Like… is this 2015? 

 

Userlevel 1

A lot of the tone in this thread implies that the “What’s New” popup should be removed entirely, or defaulted off.  While I’m also very frustrated with this feature, I think we should focus on the achievable compromise: Can we please just have a setting to disable these pop-ups?  The setting doesn’t need to default “off”.. the popups can remain the default.  There doesn’t even need to be a button on the popups themselves to “unsubscribe” from them (although I would prefer that there was).. the option can be buried in a user’s settings, so only people who seek it out actually find it.

I’d like to address a couple questions from earlier in the thread:

How do you learn about Miro product updates?

I don’t learn about product updates.  I never read the popups.. not even once.  I dismiss them immediately without reading them because I’m just trying to access a board.  They’re not making me aware of new features.. they’re an obstacle between me and what I’m trying to do.  In my case, and I think may others, the popups are not accomplishing what you want them to.  

How do you want to learn about them?

I don’t want to learn about product updates.  Please understand that Miro is not the type product I seek out and choose.  It’s a product my organization chose and I need to use it to read documents that people within the org create.

I suspect many of your users (possibly even a majority?) are like me: we use the product because our organization uses it and we need to access the documents in order to get work done.  

These users--perhaps we could call them “secondary customers” or something--are less likely to be enthusiastic about new features.  Many of us never create Miro boards ourselves, we simply need to access boards created by others.  We’ll discover new features when the people who create Miro boards use them.  Features we don’t discover are features we don’t need, because this isn’t the kind of tool we seek out.

I don’t use Miro every day.  I probably use it about once a week on average.  Even though I only get this popup once for each update, there are almost always updates since the last time i used it, so the experience feels like I get the popup every single time I use the product.  It’s difficult to express how frustrating these pop-ups are.  They’re irrationally frustrating.  It’s an emotional experience; that’s why you’re seeing anger in other people’s comments.

Users like us don’t necessarily dislike the product.  Aside from the popups every time I use it, I would like the product, but the popups have become the most memorable experience of using it for me; when I think of “Miro”, the #1 thing that comes to mind is “That app that nags me every single time I use it”.  I know this is probably not nice to hear, but keep in mind the type of users we are (from above).

@Robert Johnson I appreciate your polite engagement earlier in this thread, and I know it’s probably difficult when the response is unfriendly or borderline hostile.  I hope you can understand that I laughed out loud at the irony of this:

I also don’t want to replace Miro new update notifications with notifications from this post :wink:

I suspect most of the people who have commented on this thread in frustration are much more interested in notifications about updates on this subject than they are in product updates.

I’m not sure if the person who started commenting repeatedly was just doing it every day, or every time they received a “What’s New” popup, but I can see the reasoning behind commenting for each popup received; replicating the experience in the thread requesting an option to disable the popups.

You were able to unsubscribe from thread notifications.  We can’t unsubscribe from the popups.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

This didn’t work for me. I clicked the Mark all as read button a week or so ago. Today when I opened Miro I saw the What’s New pop up again. It’s really annoying and slows me down.

As a follow-up, in response to some of the questions asked earlier in this thread, I’ve just looked through the most recent entries in the ‘What’s New’ popup. It seems - 

  • around 1/3 are relating to integrations with other 3rd party products and services
  • around 1/3 are about workshops
  • around 1/3 are actual product feature updates

I’ll preface this by saying this will vary for every user, but for me personally - I don’t care about workshops or 3rd party integrations, so 2/3s of the content that’s presented to me is irrelevant. If I wanted to know about these features, I would search them out - either via Google or documentation / support pages.

Of the final 1/3 that are actual product updates - only around ½ of them are features I would actually consider useful and/or worthy of an individual update notification. The others, I would say are either not important enough to be singled out individually, or are basically just bloat that add little to no value to the core product. Again, my opinion will be different to the next Miro user.

It seems this could partially be solved by intelligent product design and making these new features easily and conveniently discoverable for the user naturally as part of their workflow. I’m not a UX expert and know that’s easier said than done.

While I personally don’t want to see these notifications at all, the fire-hose approach of bombarding the user with every new piece of information regardless of their relevance is the worst possible approach. At the very least, some method to filter which new content I’m notified about would at least reduce these notifications, and probably be more valuable to me.

Another app our team uses - ClickUp - suffers from the same problems as Miro (continually adding features to give the impression of value - growth for the sake of growth - instead of just focusing on the core product, improving reliability, removing clutter and bloat). However, the key difference is, their product update notifications are sent via email - not blasted in the app itself. So I can easily ignore them, especially when I am trying to use the app for its intended purpose and get something done. I can always come back to them later when I want to read about it. And most importantly, I have the option to unsubscribe entirely if I choose to. What’s more, several features are grouped together in one email - reducing the frequency of the notifications.

It seems clear from the other responses in this thread, people’s biggest annoyance is being bombarded with messages when they open Miro and are trying to work. It’s adding another (albeit minor) step between them and completing a task. The software is getting in the way, rather than helping them complete what they came here to do.

I agree with all these complaints but it’s 2022 and no company cares what any of us think if it interferes with marketing and sales.

Bump.  Any change?  Any ticket open to stop this annoying, disruptive anti-pattern?

Bumping this thread to see if there’s been any action to get rid of the popups.  Today it was 4.  Changelog, then 3 tooltips to point out new functionality in the UI, which had to be dismissed one at a time.

(also, what’s with the login functionality?  It forced me to create a new account instead of use my existing account)

It’s silly that this isn’t a default-off option.

“Here’s a popup that necessarily interrupts the thing you wanted to do e.g. work on a board which you can’t opt out of because, in our conceit, we believe that every single, individual, perfect new feature you didn’t ask for is better than the existing functionality you were trying to use.”

It’s as bad as Twitter’s “See Less Often.” Just some goof in an LOB somewhere has overridden the product manager, or the product manager is a goof.

Userlevel 2

Day one of responding here until Miro offers a mute for what’s new! Join me!

Userlevel 2

Thanks. Oh, the irony. 

Userlevel 1

I rarely use Miro now because it’s such a bloated mess of notifications and features that I don’t care about. But every single time I need to use it, I’m greeted with this What’s New popup, and it’s so obnoxious!

+1 for this request

Its absolute nonsense that you are distracting me from actual important notifications by your idiotic Whats New updates. This aggressive marketing approach for a paid product is unacceptable and if you are not changing it then I will be looking for other alternatives.

Userlevel 7
Badge +7

Lots of feelings in this thread. 😅 Personally, I’ve never been too bothered by What’s New? popups. And although it probably would be nice with a setting to turn them off, if Miro adhered to all requests to add customizable settings and options the UI would quickly resemble this:

 

Userlevel 2

Day two of responding unto you can mute What’s new!

Userlevel 2

Seven :(

Userlevel 2

Day three of responding until you can mute “What’s New”!

Userlevel 6
Badge +1

@Kiron Bondale, thanks for your response, as always!

And thank you for the feedback @Aaron Katz
Kiron is right, it’s not possible to disable pop-ups in Miro now, and we’re definitely looking into enhancing your experience with our product from this perspective.

If you’re up for it, I have a couple of quick questions for you:

  • How do you learn about Miro product updates? How do you want to learn about them? 
  • Do you have any references of great products that do user education well from your opinion (informative, yet not disruptive)?

 

Yeah, I’d also like to have these popups disablable very much. They’re annoying

Userlevel 6
Badge +1

This is extremely helpful, thank you for sharing @Robert Johnson

Userlevel 2

EIGHT [ANGRY FACE] 

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