Monster Workshop Template
Get everyone’s creative juices flowing with the Monster Workshop Template. Bring energy and fun to your meetings and workshops.
About the Monster Workshop Template
An illustrator lecturer at The Open Window, Nina Torr, created this template to loosen up her students before teaching her classes. The Monster Workshop Template helps students get active and creative, before interacting with one another. This icebreaker drawing exercise is also a great way to bring that in-person energy to the sessions, where everyone interacts and has fun.
What’s the Monster Workshop Template about?
The Monster Workshop Template helps get people creative without overwhelming them when working on the board. The template is intuitive and easy to use: it contains images representing monsters’ parts and working spaces for each participant to create their own monster. The participants can create their monsters by simply copying and pasting the images which the facilitator previously added.
Benefits of using the Monster Workshop Template
If you are teaching or running creative classes or workshops, getting your students or participants in ‘the flow’ is important. Nina Torr created a video where she explains how before the pandemic this exercise used to be on sketchbooks, but now with online tutoring, Miro is a great solution for getting people to be active, creative, and interacting with each other.
What’s great about the Monster Workshop Template is that it’s creative and simulates the classroom environment. In this virtual space, everyone works simultaneously in the same room, helping students feel less lonely and isolated, especially during the pandemic times.
How to use the Monster Workshop Template
The Monster Workshop Template is a great icebreaker drawing exercise. To start, select the template and invite everyone to work on your board.
1. Monster parts
The Monster Workshop Template contains many images that are monster parts, but if you’d like to add more, you’re welcome to do so. Simply click on the upload icon by the left toolbar. Miro supports many file formats; use the one that it’s easier for you.
2. Creating your monster
Now the fun starts! Ask people to create their monsters by copying and pasting the monster parts onto their designated blank working space. Allow them to be creative, and instruct briefly on how they can customize the images, rotate objects, and select and group them with Miro tools.
3. Collaboration Station
When everyone has finished their masterpieces, ask them to add their monsters to the collaboration station. At this moment, they can collaborate with each other by placing monsters in curious positions next to one another, and adding even more objects to everyone’s creations!
4. End on a positive note
Finalize this collaborative drawing game by thanking everyone, highlighting some of the monsters, and, if you have time, asking them to comment on their creations.
Pro tips when running this collaborative drawing game:
Duplicate monster parts in case participants forget to copy and paste the images.
Don’t forget to lock the board elements, so people can only move monster elements.
And, if people are feeling inspired, ask them to create scenes together in the collaboration station space.
Are you looking for other collaborative drawing games?
There are many collaborative drawing games, including other drawing icebreakers in Miroverse. Check out the Drawing Together icebreaker where you get everyone to draw together, fostering collaboration, or the Draw Your Character exercise, perfect to turn your introductions into a more dynamic and fun moment.
What are some good drawing topics for an icebreaker?
Drawing icebreakers are a great way to get people active, engaged, and familiar with your Miro board. The topics for collaborative drawings can vary, depending on how you want people to interact. If you are looking to bring some energy at the beginning of your meeting, ask people to draw answers to proposed questions and to draw themselves as a way to replace the traditional introductory round. Suppose you are already familiar with your team or your audience, in that case, collaborative drawings are a great way to make reflections, and one famous exercise is to ask people to create a masterpiece together.
Get started with this template right now.
4 L's Retrospective Template
Works best for:
Retrospectives, Decision Making
So you just completed a sprint. Teams busted their humps and emotions ran high. Now take a clear-eyed look back and grade the sprint honestly—what worked, what didn’t, and what can be improved. This approach (4Ls stand for liked, learned, lacked, and longed for) is an invaluable way to remove the emotion and look at the process critically. That’s how you can build trust, improve morale, and increase engagement—as well as make adjustments to be more productive and successful in the future.
Soccer Retrospective
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Retrospectives, Meetings
The Soccer Retrospective template offers a sports-themed approach to retrospectives, using the game of soccer as a metaphor for teamwork and strategy. It provides elements for reflecting on past performances, analyzing strengths and weaknesses, and setting goals for improvement. This template fosters a competitive yet collaborative spirit, encouraging team members to work together towards common objectives. By leveraging the metaphor of soccer, the Soccer Retrospective empowers teams to refine their tactics, enhance communication, and achieve their goals effectively.
Parking Lot Matrix Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Ideation, Meetings
When the creative energy is flowing, a workshop or meeting will yield a lot of new ideas — but not all are on-topic or currently feasible. Roll them right onto a parking lot matrix, a simple, effective tool for separating the best ideas from those that are promising but could use more research or discussion. This template will let you easily make your own parking lot matrix, which will come in especially handy during long meetings (and when you have teammates who tend to go off-topic).
OKR Planning Template
Works best for:
Strategic Planning, Meetings, Workshops
The OKR Planning template helps you turn exhaustive OKR sessions into dynamic and productive meetings. Use this template to make OKR planning more interactive, guiding your team through the session with creative Ice Breakers and Brainstorms, so you can co-create your OKRs and define the key results and action plans to achieve them.
Random Words Template
Works best for:
Ideation, Brainstorming, Mind Mapping
Random word brainstorming is a simple, creative technique using random words to generate new ideas and creative solutions to your problems. Using random word prompts allows you to step beyond traditional boundaries and address challenges from a different direction. Random word brainstorming allows your team to unlock their creativity to solve business problems, create new inventions, improve existing ideas, or just think about problems in a new way.
All-in-one PI Planning
Works best for:
Agile
The All-in-one PI Planning template streamlines the SAFe Program Increment (PI) Planning process by providing a comprehensive framework for teams to collaboratively plan and align on objectives and dependencies. It integrates essential elements such as PI Objectives, Team Breakouts, and Program Board, enabling teams to visualize, prioritize, and coordinate work effectively. This template empowers Agile Release Trains to deliver value predictably and efficiently, driving alignment and synchronization across the organization.