Design and research made simple: intuitive collaboration for creative teams

Miro is designed with designers and researchers in mind — you can start creating, testing, and iterating in minutes, whether you're working solo on user flows or collaborating with cross-functional teams on complex research projects. The intuitive interface feels as natural as sketching on paper, but with the power of digital collaboration.

Starting Your First Design or Research Project

Getting started with Miro feels familiar to anyone who's worked with creative tools. Our templates library includes over 6,000 templates that can support design and research workflows:

User journey maps with standard touchpoints and emotion curves ready to customize
Usability testing templates for test plans, observation notes, and findings synthesis
Design system documentation for component libraries and usage guidelines
Affinity mapping for organizing research insights
Wireframing templates to sketch out new features quickly

These templates aren't rigid structures — they're starting points that understand your workflow. Everything is fully customizable, and you can save your own versions as your team develops their unique processes.

Inviting stakeholders, developers, or fellow designers is as simple as clicking the blue Share button. No need to export files or manage versions—just share the link and everyone can see your work evolve.

Real-Time Design Collaboration and Async Feedback

Miro adapts to how creative teams actually work — sometimes you need rapid-fire collaboration, other times you need thoughtful, async feedback.

Real-time collaboration transforms design critique sessions. A designer in Berlin presents wireframes while a researcher in Boston adds insights from recent user testing, and a product manager in San Francisco sketches out business constraints — all on the same canvas, simultaneously. You'll see each other's cursors, watch sticky notes appear with feedback, and iterate together as if you were gathered around the same table.

Async collaboration is crucial for research synthesis and design reviews. After conducting user interviews across different time zones, a researcher can upload recordings, transcribe key quotes onto sticky notes, and start identifying patterns. Team members review the findings on their own schedule, adding observations through comments. By the time you hold your synthesis meeting, everyone has already absorbed the research deeply.

For designers, async feedback prevents "design by committee" meetings. Share your designs on a board, and let stakeholders leave specific, contextual feedback directly on the designs. A developer might comment on technical feasibility near a complex interaction, while a content designer adds microcopy suggestions. You get richer, more thoughtful feedback than in a rushed meeting.

From Research Insights to Design Presentations

Interactive Presentation Mode is perfect for design reviews and research readouts. Organize your work into Frames — perhaps one for research methodology, another for key findings, several for design concepts, and a final frame for next steps. When a stakeholder asks about a specific user pain point, you can zoom to that section. When someone wants to see an alternative design direction, it's right there to navigate to.

Live workshops bring research and design activities to life:

Have participants sketch "Crazy 8s" concepts simultaneously on the board
Vote anonymously on which designs to move forward with
Use timers to keep activities on track
React with emojis to gauge immediate reactions to design concepts

Talktrack is invaluable for design handoffs and research sharing. Record a walkthrough of your design system updates, explaining the rationale behind changes. Developers can watch on their own time and leave questions on specific components. Or share research findings as a video where you guide viewers through personas, journey maps, and recommendations.

AI-Powered Design and Research

Miro's AI capabilities integrate directly into your creative process. The Canvas as Prompt concept is particularly powerful for design and research work. After a user testing session, your board might be covered with observation notes, video clips, participant quotes, and sketched pain points. Miro's AI understands this rich visual context and can:

Generate comprehensive findings reports that synthesize themes
Create presentations for leadership with key insights and supporting quotes
Draft design recommendations based on identified pain points
Help cluster research themes and identify patterns across sessions
Generate information architecture recommendations from card sorting exercises
Create visual sitemaps based on emergent structures

For designers, sketch rough wireframes on the canvas with notes about intended interactions, and AI can help generate more polished versions or alternative approaches. The AI builds on your creative direction rather than starting from scratch — it's augmenting your design thinking, not replacing it.

What makes this powerful for creative teams is that AI works transparently on your shared canvas. When it generates design alternatives based on your sketches, your entire team sees them appear and can immediately provide feedback. When it synthesizes research findings, researchers can verify the interpretation and refine it collaboratively.

Ready to Transform Your Design and Research Process?

Miro's intuitive design makes it the natural home for design and research work — from early sketches and user interviews to polished prototypes and comprehensive findings. Whether you're conducting remote usability tests, collaborating on design systems, or synthesizing research with distributed teammates, everything lives on your canvas.

Sign up to start designing and researching in Miro, and discover what our innovation workspace — now powered by AI — can do for creative teams. From your first user interview to your most complex design system, Miro helps you turn insights into experiences, together.

Author: Miro Team Last update: October 6, 2025