Is miro still the tool to use? Miro seems to focus on fancy features instead of solid basic functionality.

  • 6 December 2022
  • 5 replies
  • 431 views
F
Userlevel 1

Hello together,

 

I am an educator and consultant, using miro with arround 75 new people per year and in different companies. I wonder, If miro is still the tool to use. What do you think?

 

Following problems my customers and I struggle regulary with:

 

1. Slow Performance

With every new feature, miro seems to get slower and slower. If I need to reduce my content to a very limited number, I don't see any advantage of having all the features like diagrams, etc. Often the loading of the tools take longer than brining the board content up.

 

2. Feature Overflow

I work with people that are not familiar with technical tools by default. So they are getting really overwhelmed with the tools and possibilities. It would be great if I could present a faster and limited board view for my participants. 

 

3. Odd Navigation and Selection

I get used to the many discussed right-click move arround, to be fair. But there is another problem. I want to select multiple elements drawing a box around with left click. This often happens next to an element, of course. What happens is, that the element is moved arround instead of having a selecting box spanned up. This happens so often, that I move arround instead of selecting. I need to revert and so.

 

4. Unwanted Disturbing Diagram creation

Diagram is a nice thing to do. But often it is just about sticky and text fields. In this case, I often click on one of the boxes near a sticky and a diagram appears. So in this case too, I have to revert and delete the unwanted diagram-creation. Why can't I jus switch diagramming off?

 

5. Unstructured Board Organization

I have different customers and different projects. But even staying in one team, all the boards are in one big list. Yes, there is the way with projects. But I need to open dialog and move the projects manually there. No drag'n'drop. No Subprojects or folder possible. And even if I have assigned a board to a project, it is listed in the root/all boards list. So how can I easily identify not assigned boards and move them?

 

6. Not working video-conferencing.

I tried to use miros video-conferencing for a group work session. It was a big killer and all the people was disappointet. It was not clear, how they could join the session. And even when they knew, it was not always possible. Some joined people are missing and not shown. So they leave the session and I lost them. In addition to that, you cannot do a screen sharing with miro video-conferencing. So this is another example of new features, that you not really need.

 

7. No partner program

As educator and consultant I promote miro to a lot of people and companies. There is currently not partner program that honors that effort.

 

Conclusion:

I think miro is mis-focusing on fancy feature creation and intergration instead of solid basic availabilty. In my feeling this is getting worse and worse.

 

For now I plan to transit to another plattform, until it gets better with miro

 

What is your experience? What do you think?

5 replies

Kiron Bondale
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

@Fabian Marx -

One of the Mironeers should be getting back to you soon with some specific answers.

I’ve been using Miro since early 2020 to support my virtual courses. I usually have fewer than 15 participants and have stuck with mostly basic Miro capabilities (sticky notes, comments, shapes, connecting lines, timer) with the only exception being the Kanban object and the planning poker add-in. 

I haven’t really experienced any slow down in performance on the boards although I wasn’t a fan of the switch to right-mouse button navigation. Yes, Miro can be finicky about navigating around and selections when you are close to an object so tend to zoom in frequently to avoid that.

I would agree that there’s validity in the product team focusing on improving the user experience with the existing capabilities before adding new features and integrations but unfortunately with the competitive nature of this product space, I could see how it might be difficult to prioritize that on an ongoing basis.

Kiron

Kiron D. Bondale, PMP, PMI-ACP, PSM II, ICP-ACC, DASSM, DAC, DAVSC, PMI-RMP
F
Userlevel 1

Thanks for your answer. I am using miro in general with more than 18 participants. I am also using some of the other tools like user journey map, links, images, tables, frames, etc.

Not all boards are big, but I understand it as advantage to have all together in one big working space. If not I could also use my data distributed within e.g. Jira and Confluence.

If the solution is, to use miro just with limited users and limited sizes and limited features it brings a miro that wants to be full featuread to ad absurdum, doesn’t it? 

I am not sure, if the best strategy (especially in a competetive market) is to mainly focusing on new stuff rather keep the basics well and better working. You can extend a tool to it’s death, while other stay constant in the market. But let’s see...

Sophia Chia
Rank
Userlevel 4

Hey @Fabian Marx! 🙂

First of all, thank you so much for your candid and comprehensive feedback. 

We really appreciate this, and many of the issues you have highlighted are topics that we have product teams specifically working on to improve, and we will try our best to provide an update on what we can here. 🙏

 

Improving feature navigation and limited toolset

It is a great point you raised that not everyone is familiar with all the tools on Miro and should not have to feel overwhelmed when they are invited to a board to participate in a session. 

We are working on reducing the number of items in the toolbars to allow users to focus and reduce analysis paralysis; one important initiative related to this is to improve the search experience. We will also soon release an improved presentation mode that reduces tools and distractions while ensuring participants can still have the necessary tools to interact and engage on the board. 

 

Board structure and orientation

We also hear you on the board organization, and we do have plans to invest more in improving the dashboard experience to make it easier to organize folders and boards, and it should be prioritized, among other things. For the usability experiences around diagramming and item selection, we will make sure to include these topics for investigation and finding better design solutions. 

 

Video conferencing

We’re also aware of your concerns around video-conferencing in Miro, and this is actively being looked into as well. We’re currently researching what this functionality should look like and how it can best support our user’s ways of working. While we’re solving this, though, I can recommend using one of the many integrations of Miro in alternative video conferencing tools - including Around by Miro Labs, Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Webex - depending on your preferred solution for you and your team. 

 

Partner program

We really appreciate you helping us promote Miro to other users so far. We do have a Miro Expert program, where Miro experts can be listed in the Experts directory and receive other benefits by being part of the Miro Professional Network. Although the program is currently under construction, we will share more information when it is available again. You can find more details about it in this article. 

 

Let’s connect

Thank you once again for your feedback, and we apologize for any usability issues you have experienced. Please note that your concerns are well noted by our product teams, and we are working hard to address them. 💪

We would also really love to understand your challenges and use cases in Miro. Are you open to meeting with the product team so we can discuss your feedback and needs in more detail?

F
Userlevel 1

@Sophia Chia Thank you very much for your detailed feedback! I really appreciate how you care. Let’s see where the  miro journey flows. I will keep an eye on miro.

At least my selection-problem is solved with a tip from the support team. I didn’t know about the longpress-to-select-option. Somehow an odd implementation, but to be fair, it is working good.

Thanks again and have a nice christmas time.

Robert Johnson
Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@Fabian Marx 

2. Feature Overflow

I work with people that are not familiar with technical tools by default. So they are getting really overwhelmed with the tools and possibilities. It would be great if I could present a faster and limited board view for my participants. 

Miro is currently looking to address this in upcoming features like Smart Meetings and Interactive Presentation Mode (both currently in beta).

For example:

Smart Meetings

 

Interactive Presentation Mode

 

Visual Thinker | Volunteer Community Moderator

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