Collaborating virtually on the 4th Global Virtual Design Sprint!

So much of the way we work is suddenly remote. Time to roll up my sleeves and start learning how this can work for online seminars and coaching.

 I’m participating in Robert Skrobe’s Global Virtual Design Sprint and doing a deep dive into using virtual whiteboards tools in a Design Sprint with a remote team. This is not only a virtual Sprint exercise to practice digital applications in an imaginary challenge. No - founder and creator Robert put cross-functional teams together to help us generate outcomes that can potentially continue after the Sprint and be developed into real business models.

Day 1. Meet the team. Wow! Over 100 experts from all over the globe

A lot of coordination! Here's how we communicate. There are 12 people on my “turtle mine” Team and we’re using Slack for general communication, Basecamp for team exchange, Mural to visualize and organize our workflow and WhatsApp for emergencies ??

But the main digital tool is the visual whiteboard Mural. Previously I’d tried out both Mural and Miro for online seminars and I was not really sure which I liked better and what the real differences were. The vote for me is still out, which is better Mural or Miro?

Robert Skrobe shed some light on this comparison and provided the context in a recent Linkedin article. He compares users’ perspectives, highlights features, and describes pros and cons. Here a few excerpts from that useful post:

Given that both platforms are constantly updating and improving their platforms for their audiences, how do prospective users choose the right one for them?

What makes sense to go with?

First up, Mural!

Mural Pros:

·       Mural’s UI is easy to navigate and makes sense

·       Ability to have free guests

·       User management is much easier than Miro

  There is a new search feature, the outline navigation, which adds the ability to give instructions and all the built in facilitation features without extra integration needed.

A recent update by Mural, allows facilitators to send all Murals in a room to a touchscreen display running Windows 10 instead of individually sending each mural one at a time.

Mural Cons:

·       Performance issues

·       You can’t wireframe components and put a UI together quickly.

·       A lot of tiny chinks still need to be ironed out before aiming for performance lag - better zooming, handling multiple objects/post-its, selection and export of regions.

“It can be frustrating after building a beautiful mural and end up having lots of lags because 30 people joined.”

Now what about Miro?

Miro Pros:

·       Speed/performance seems better.

·       Open source feel of having 3rd party plug-ins via Zapier Integration

·       Easy to create flows in Miro. Arrows work well and lots of options to customize.

·       Create multiple working areas on one "canvas" and print/pdf those sections individually.

·       You can wireframe components and put together a UI quickly.

·       Capacity to host massive audiences without lagging.

In Miro, they’ve introduced “Stickies Capture”, which allows users to take a photo of hand written stickies and upload them in the same orientation into a Miro canvas. One participant commented:

"The learning curve is much friendlier for customers who are not very technological."

Miro Cons:

·       Many of the icons are unclear, even when using them several times.

·       Can't track across the screen easily.

·       Resizing elements is sometimes confusing if UI shows unexpected arrows/lines when attempting to manipulate an object.

·       Starred boards should not appear when navigating to another team's area.

"The UI design is quite overwhelming at the moment. Every corner is a toolbar."

This comparison here has helped me work through some of my own thoughts and to get prepared for the first week of our GVDS. Do you have any ideas to share? You can do it here or join the conversation at the bottom of Roberts Pulse article here.

So back to the GVSD. My team challenge is to “design better and more engaging products and services for remote and blending learning" for training? Or general education or schools? We haven't explored or refined our challenge yet. We’ll start with this tomorrow in a virtual problem framing session with Robert on pretotyping. Curious how we can “pretotype” (Alberto Savoia) so early on the game…

Lots more to come. Looking forward to it! 

https://www.virtualdesignsprint.com/

https://designchange.de/blog/