Monat: März 2021

Due to the lockdown and the resulting inability to go to school or meet with others in the group to work together, we were forced to do all of our work remotely. This presented a challenge for a group that values collaboration, transparent work, and communication.

“Normally, you would meet with your colleagues and get to know one another. You’d use sticky notes, whiteboards, and all sorts of other collateral to identify user needs and map out solutions,” said Randal Whitmore, Head of Growth and lead Product Manager for the project. Miro is a great collaboration platform that allows individuals and groups to work from home without sacrificing the important tools for collaboration and working together.

Recognizing the problem of lack of collaboration due to lockdown, Miro identified the need for affected groups to connect elsewhere and collaborate efficiently.

Working remotely or from home has brought with it a new set of distractions, which also has to do with technology and adapting to new routines and ways of working. Technical problems, complex systems, and incomprehensibility can prevent some people and groups from getting their work done. This is why it is essential to combine different tools and make them understandable for everyone, so that people can continue to work efficiently. Especially when team members cannot communicate directly with their colleagues, they may feel disconnected, less creative or less productive. Through the use of remote collaborative tools such as online whiteboard, online brainstorming tools, sticky notes, freehand drawing, voting and more, Miro has helped various companies and institutions to quickly adapt to the current circumstances. Thus, we can say with certainty that Miro has contributed a great deal to Social Design today by meeting the needs of a large part of society.

As a student and designer who uses Miro for professional and private purposes, I can affirm that especially when organizing many different types of work, Miro helped me to quickly get used to the new circumstances and to continue working successfully as usual.

By Isidora Ceculovic

When simplicity combines with social design, remarkable things emerge. That is why the concept of Miro is so well like and used by so many nowadays. Miro is a platform where people can communicate and collaborate while remote – a tool where physical location, time zone and meetings spaces have little value and where connectivity means everything. Miro has become a must-have design tool in today’s pandemic world, where physical meetings and in-person brainstorming sessions are not a current reality.

The reason why Miro appears to be so popular among people, it’s because of how it has provided individuals with the feeling of community. When working with Miro, the sense of collaboration one gets when brainstorming with its peers can be achieved by working together and using the whiteboard. Not only that, but the meeting becomes more engaging and simpler to understand by having the visual tools. In my opinion, Miro will be just as relevant in the future, when the pandemic is over, as it is now. As it is an easy-to-use tool, it is convenient, makes for easy collaboration, allows gathered data to be in one place, is aesthetically pleasing, and enables fast mapping. Also, it increases productivity, speed, efficiency and empowers introverts to be more willing to share their ideas.

All in all, I believe it is fair to say that this platform is here to stay and that it will still play a big part in people’s life. Miro’s designers seem to really understand the importance of social design and how to apply it correctly. It is an incredibly helpful tool created with our needs in mind, and that keeps on improving and adapting to our demands, making it a great example of a social design.

Written by Marina Praxedes.

By Ever Bright Chakma

16  March 2021

 

Designers take creativity to the messy organisational context of the problem to larger organisations. Stating this, Miro is a tool that personally for me allows to bring ideas to the table like no other platform. The flexibility one can experience to shift ideas around within the platform of Miro allows a thinker like my to fluidly convey the complexity’s of the problems my studies deal with.

I would like to illustrate a case of Social Design where my team tackled the issue of Gender diversity within an organisation. The problem we were tackling was wide and required many other complex models of inclusion of the facts and data to create a web of a greater understanding. Miro allowed my team to dive further into the problem by creating a vast network of data and studies conducted. The tools provided within Miro helped us map these elements and the map slowly started responding to us with loopholes and intervention points where the root causes of the issue we were tackling lay.

All of this was great because we were tackling a complex issue like this under the COVID-19 constraints and the work space had radically transformed in the Spring of 2020 within a month for all educational and professional workspaces, especially collaborative spaces of professions like design. Where partnership is key. And it was at this moment that Miro became a important tool for our team to lay down our imagination, data and missions onto our digital drawing board. Where we could map, draw, paste, erase, write and above all collaborate!

The Covid-19 Pandemic is a social crisis on a massive scale which has affected lives in possibly every area. Subsequently, education is mounted in the epicentre of the society as it surges in the societal development. In this pandemic, the dynamics education sector has been experiencing are uniquely grave and delicate. To put it succinctly, the classroom learning experience which all are oriented with since aeons, has been eradicated and forced to move on with online-video calling based platforms to attend the lectures and comprehend. The studies that specially require practical efforts and involve intensive team work for a better learning experience are handicapped in this crisis. As a result, being mindful of that, many programming companies are trying to develop software packages, mobile applications, web-based applications, et cetera for aiding the education sector with positive hopes of providing the pupils with re-connection to their peers and allowing them to collaborate and share ideas and insights. From a far vantage point, the aforementioned is a typical scenario where the society has been experiencing difficulties in conducting themselves and moving forward. And there comes some entities putting efforts together to resolve such complications so that the society can re-establish the order as it would be in ideal occasions. Miro, the online visual collaboration platform for teamwork, happens to be a paragon of those entities. The famous feature of Miro is its virtual work-board that enables people to connect and work collaboratively with vesting all necessary writing and paper-work tools in it. The words such as collaboratively, virtual and connect are of huge importance in such scenario of pandemic where people are forced to maintain physical distance. It is a rigour of its kind to assume all the professional conducts of life in such distant fashion. With Miro, not only students but also other professionals can connect, communicate and present their ideas and insights borne in their heads clearly on the screen. Not to mention, the working style over Miro encourages paperless initiatives in terms of reducing usage of Post-it paper patches, tags and A3 chart sheets. These mentioned types of paper products are also resource intensive. Thus, it takes enormous amounts of deforestation and water consumption in the process of producing the paper products. Our current environment demands us to move in the contrary direction I.e. to increase the plant growth and wisely use the water. I personally realise the value the Miro has been providing in terms of team projects and collaborative working in virtual sense in the given pandemic. To conclude, Miro is an epitome of social design that regards the needs emerging out of these extraordinary times and helping society to re-establish their professional conduct in a way.

By: Yash Chauhan

My Personal Experience with Miro

Miro is an online collaborative tool that allows you to work simultaneously with your classmates, teachers, friends, or anyone really. Moreover, Miro has come in very handy during the pandemic especially for me. Before Covid-19 I never heard of such a tool, which is a shame because it such a useful platform, and today I can’t live without it. Furthermore, I used Miro not only for school projects but for my personal projects it helps me to organize myself in such an easy way. With Miro, I feel the freedom of space without having to shuffle through my notes looking for that one page, and another benefit of Miro is the easiness of sharing your work and receiving feedback just with a link. I believe Miro is a tool that applies social design because of the easiness of navigating through the platform. 

Miro & Social Design 

I have been taught about Social Design recently but from my understanding, Social Design consists of a design made specifically for a group of people that have a need for a problem that needs a solution. In which we can go in little depth about how miro applied social design into their platform. 

Last week our class was lucky to have an interview with Andrejy Balaz from Miro in where he took the time to answer some of our questions. From this interview, we learned that Miro does not stop their user research even with pandemic they have found ways to still learn about the depth of motivation of the people. I found it interesting that they do longer studies about their user because they want to always give quality to their experience. Moreover, Miro also asks for email feedback, or when you are using the board you get a pop-up feedback questionnaire to rate the experience, this shows me they are interested in what the people want and need. 

Andrejy Balaz also mentioned that they bring social design to work by applying transformational design, by having a background in politics, and by keeping themselves open and always free with support structures. Miro also allows anyone to use miro by having a free version, various communities, and by having a wishlist that allows the users to write what they wish to see in Miro in the future. 

By doing so, I believe that miro is very invested in giving its best to its users and always looking for improvements. Miro has created a platform that allows me to be creative and have successful collaborative projects and for this, I am very thankful for Miro and its 600 employees working every day for better features.

By: Zirzareth Molina

 

I first tried Miro for a school project when schools closed in March 2020. As students in an interactive and social studies programme, we were faced with the challenge of mastering group projects from home. Miro is an „infinite“ online whiteboard. Teams can use it to work in real time and asynchronously. Meetings and brainstorming sessions work as if everyone were in the same room – and yet everyone is sitting in the home office. The board can be used, for example, to depict agile work processes and visualize strategies. The individual whiteboards or just parts of a large board can also be exported very easily as a pdf or photo. This makes it very easy to capture thoughts and share the document.

When it comes to social design, I think Miro has a big impact on people’s collaboration, especially in these times. And this concerns school collaboration, business collaboration as well as private projects. With its impressive ease of use, Miro allows you to create a pleasant working environment without having to meet in person. In combination with a video call application such as ZOOM or Microsoft Teams, Miro succeeds in creating a feeling of togetherness. On behalf of the DMI students, I dare to say that Miro has had a huge impact on the results of the school projects during the pandemic. The Miro web application has already reached a status among us students that the first step in a group assignment is to create a new Miro project.

Brainstorming for a new project or meetings in which ideas, procedures, processes or strategies need to be visualised can be ideally recorded with Miro. It is impressive how we have been able to adapt to these difficult times. We have the developers of Miro to thank for this. After one year of experience with the web application, we can clearly say that it is very user friendly.

By Andri Zindel

Miro, Miro, Miró

Does miro go under the category of social design? Having concluded that all design is social design, it’s a yes from me. But let’s dig deeper into miro and its functions in our lives as design management students.

A year ago, before online school was considered the norm, I had never heard of the website. Back then it was normal to sit together, brainstorm, make mindmaps and collages of ideas. Collaboration and teamwork is a huge part of our studies at DMI, therefore just as quickly as the pandemic hit us, we had to adjust to our new reality which meant working together from a distance. That is when I got introduced to miro. The name initially made me think of two things. Firstly, it has the same name as my local café which, to me, does the best cup of coffee in Zurich. This is the place where I would go to work on my projects and assignments. I loved going there to work and study because of its environment, the people and of course the coffee which all together helped keep me motivated. However, due to the new regulations, I could not visit the café on a daily anymore. Secondly, it made me think of Joan Miro whose pieces are simple but abstract at the same time. Therefore I was immediately intrigued by the name when I heard of the website for the first time. After giving it a try and seeing what miro has to offer, I quickly came to realize that it is a place for collaboration, even from a distance. Upon opening miro one is faced with a blank canvas. This is just like a whiteboard in real life where one can hang post its, draw on it, and therefore gather all one’s ideas. It’s great because it allows everyone to work on the same platform at the same time. You can even see who’s editing what and who’s written which ideas. Having had to adjust rapidly to not meeting up in person anymore this website quickly swooped in with a solution. It has now grown to be one of our most used platforms for our group work meetings. Just like the café and Miro’s works of art, the website miro, stimulates the users to engage in and share their creativity. Miro fosters a sense of togetherness by offering a platform that is free and easy to access for anyone at any time.

So back to the question if miro goes under the category of social design. Yes, in my opinion, it most certainly does because it’s a platform for the community, with the community that fosters a sense of togetherness midst the pandemic.

By Shirin Dörig

During the current global pandemic, people are forced to dodge into alternative ways of working – working from home, with limited equipment. Most of us have been limited to the screen and the screen only. But what opportunities do we have, with only one screen? How can we still perform as good as before in a team, without everyone sitting in the same room?

When it comes to work and education, collaborative online-softwares have become our best friends. In the past year we have been introduced to many different platforms to facilitate working from home – carrying out the same, or sometimes even more, work. But still, collaborative working is required, in order to deliver.
„Human-centric does not necessarily has to do with talking through a computer or any devise but more over also through an application“ – An interesting comment by a master student during the online-talk with Andrej Balaz, a designer at Miro, that remained with me. The application Miro not only allows us to collaborate with our co-workers and co-students on the one and same whiteboard, but more over it is a space for shared understanding. Miro states, that in companies different roles and teams, from different departments speak different languages. Hence Miro provides a platform for understanding and communicating – to plan our work, visualize our thoughts and most importantly to work on it simultaneously, which I clearly connect to social design. Miro makes collaboration easier with many different functions to communicate. Which brings me back to the comment of the master student, that points out the importance of the interface and experience of such a software. Social activities at work, such as brainstorming, mapping and discussing almost fall away during this pandemic, whereas applications like Miro offer us an alternative way. I would almost claim that Miro is a social media platform – a media used for social purposes and interactions. It allows groups to work more socially. Whether it is used by a group of students, small teams in departments or big organizations, Miro facilitates any kind of work, because of their enormous selection of functions. And because of Miro’s broad functions, it unites other online-softwares to one – such as google docs, google sheets, calendars, and google presentations – It can be used for any purposes. It also has a lot of potential in the future, not only during a time such as the pandemic. Not only its interface is easy to use and flexible, moreover it gives the opportunity to just put it aside for a moment and fall back on it at any time – unlike a normal whiteboard, which is limited to its space.

I believe an application like Miro made working during a pandemic much easier, not only regarding its function, but more importantly because of the social aspect and the possibilities to communicate and collaborate through the application – human-centric designed in the right scope.

By Alisha-Lou

I put myself in the position of a young graphic designer, which just started working on a rebranding project for a large agency. Due to covid-19 working from home made me nervous if I could bring across my ideas and hard work online. From what I heard from family and friends working in a team online is often frustration and burdensome. You lose focus of the

I got introduced to Miro by my team. They mentioned that they use Miro for every part of the process. It started with introducing the team on a simple whiteboard. It didn’t stay white and plain for long. Everyone chose a post-it colour and added a picture of themselves and their position for the upcoming project. It did feel like a friendly welcoming and even more so I was able to place a face to the skillset. During our zoom calls I was able to identify easily “oh that’s Sandy, she’s going to guide me, she is the project management assistant”. She would look at my brainstorming whiteboard, type in her notes and questions and remind me of my deliverables. Sandy was able to track my process and the rest of our team on Miro and check if we are within our timeline. The timeline we designed was a calendar for every day of the week till hand-in. It was fully packed yet it was very structured and motivating because I was able to see where I was in the process, what I already achieved and what’s next.

Looking back at my first rebranding project in a small team and my very first experience working only remote, I am very pleased that it was a complete success. As a graphic designer I always knew that my strength lay in visuals. I can explain easier in sketches, understand better in colours and forms. Working with Miro felt so uncomplicated and limitless to me and I was surprised that my fellow teammates, even our budget planner, felt the same. It seems like there is a function and a possibility for everyone on the platform. Furthermore we felt connected and supported throughout the whole process. When the project was handed-in we evaluated our work from start to finish on Miro. Afterwards we exported it and keep it in an archive. Opening it again I noticed it doesn’t feel dated because it is so easy to read into again. Which makes you even more proud to hold on to all the hard work. With some easy tweaks I was able to add the project to my recent portfolio which I then upload on my homepage and share my very first successful project with Miro.

-by Lea Hollenstein

In extraordinary times such as the pandemic – where long-distance learning, remote working, and lockdowns are an everyday occurrence – there is a huge need for online communication and collaboration platforms that allow distant teams to work together, and this is where Miro comes into play. Hence, since the 1st of March 2020, Miro has had a 300% growth. Its success lies in its platform’s ability to create connections, visualise ideas, and it is utilised to help solve complex challenges. To learn more about the online whiteboard, founded in 2011, you can find more information here.

Connecting Miro and Social Design

Last week in connection to our Social Design course, we had the opportunity to speak with Andrej Balaz from Miro. Now, Social Design is an approach to tackle social issues. Miro identified the need for a way of connecting and collaborating online. They offer features for brainstorming, mapping and diagramming, creating agile workflows, and propose templates to help you get started. Furthermore, collaboration capabilities such as video, chat, presentation, and sharing make cross-functional teamwork easier.

With that said, Miro has also hugely assisted schools and universities to continue teaching during long-distance learning. It is safe to say that Miro is succeeding in satisfying our needs, especially during the pandemic. Even though, Miro might not have been invented with clear social design goals in mind. With their help and offering the ability for people to connect, it gives Miro a small role in Socia Design. Thus, it helps users reach goals and create an impact regarding Social Design.

As a Design Management student, I can say with confidence that Miro has helped my groups and myself to stay connected, work efficiently and effectively during our projects and school assignments. They offer a free educational version to students and therefore I can see us continuously using this tool post-pandemic. It has become an everyday routine to use this program as soon as we work within a group and it truly is the fairest of them all.

Author: Georgina Mrose