We’re taking you behind the canvas to meet the people who actually make Miro. We’ve already taken a look at Tables & Timelines. Next up: Diagramming.
Miro helps teams visualize complex diagrams, processes and systems super fast. It includes over 2,500 diagramming shapes and hundreds of templates to support everything from optimizing cloud costs to mapping your organization.
Same diagramming, different context
Of course, it’s not exactly news that diagramming is one of the most popular uses of Miro. “Diagramming is already as old as software engineering itself, right?” says David Grabner, a Product Manager who leads the Diagramming team at Miro. “And people have always done it on Miro,” he adds, “it just used to be a bit more primitive.”
Before Miro even launched a diagramming format, engineers or product designers would use sticky notes to visualize different parts of the solution they were trying to build. It was an obvious opportunity for Miro – not least because it aligned so well with the company’s mission. “It was very natural for us to come in and start thinking about diagramming use cases,” agrees David. “Based on demand but also based on how adjacent it is to what Miro does best, which is visual collaboration.”
“It was very natural for us to come in and start thinking about diagramming use cases based on how adjacent it is to what Miro does best, which is visual collaboration.”
You might think that building a tool for an established use case like diagramming is pretty straightforward. People know what they want – all you have to do is give them something better. But for Product Designer Carlos de Miguel, that familiarity actually presented a challenge.
“You’re trying to create a new experience but you can’t change the whole system overnight,” he explains. “You want to preserve some of the UI and the architecture so it resembles the tools people already use, but we also want to put it into a new context, which is this collaborative canvas environment. So you’re trying to find the balance between how innovative you can be without breaking people’s mental model. Because they don’t necessarily want to learn more things.”
In that respect, it helped that the team building Miro’s diagramming solutions were already big users of these kinds of tools themselves. As Aleksei Filippov, one of the team’s software engineers, puts it: “We as developers are one of the key demographics that would be using this diagram format. So we’re able to look at it critically and say, ‘This bit is fine, this is working for us.’ Then we just have to make it happen.”
Moving faster with Miro
‘Making it happen’ meant making it on Miro, which was used at every stage of development. “Our first reaction when we start anything is to create a new Miro board,” says Carlos. “It always starts by dragging and dropping sticky notes. That’s the most universal way to collaborate and start thinking about the problem, the value, and the opportunity. It’s very easy to see what everybody is thinking in a very visual way.”
David picks up the thread: “I take my context, like a snapshot of my brain, and put it on the board. Aleksei and the other team members do this, too. This is where Miro really helps us make sense of very complex problems and move faster towards a solution. We can have our design mockups and ideation on the same board, and by the time we’ve connected those dots there’s somebody who’s already saying, ‘Hey, I built this prototype.’ This is when the magic happens – everyone goes away like, ‘Yeah, this is the kind of product we want to build.’ It’s super fast.”
Miro helps us make sense of very complex problems and move faster towards a solution.
That’s not to say there weren’t teething problems. For instance, Aleksei found that using Miro meant taking a more collaborative approach than he was used to. “When I joined Miro, I had to push myself. Like, ‘Okay, I need to stop now and not just write code. I need to put some thoughts on the board first.’” While that was a challenge, it was also worth the effort. “It helped immensely,” he says. “I started putting my ideas on Miro, not just working on my own. Then on top of this I can build something that I can share with the whole team, and this is so natural for me now.”
Disrupting diagramming with AI
Miro’s diagramming capabilities evolved quickly. In the last 12 months, the team have added layers, custom shape packs, and a focus mode that removes non-essential elements from the interface. “People already knew how to do diagramming, but we really wanted to make it 10 times as fast,” explains David. But there’s an even bigger change ahead with AI about to kick off a totally new way to think about diagramming.
“That’s definitely something where we need to disrupt our own product,” agrees David. The vision is to use AI to speed up entire workflows and massively accelerate the time to market for new ideas. “We see people using AI to take a bunch of sticky notes and say, ‘What’s the new user flow that we have in mind? Right, create a flowchart of that.’ Then we can take this flowchart and say, ‘Okay, here’s an example prototype or example UI that we had in mind. Now create a clickable prototype so I can bring it to users.’ Within two days we could test something with users that almost feels real.”
But it doesn’t stop there. “AI will also help us to create diagrams from any sort of small context that people might have,” David continues. “It could be a sticky note or a photo of a flip chart. We’ll be able to digitize it so you can bring it to your team and they can iterate on it.”
“All of us are a little bit dreamers,” admits Aleksei. True, but they’re dreamers with a plan. Even better, they’re dreamers with a Miro board. So watch this space to see those dreams come to life.
