Mural versus Miro: my experience facilitating 10 days of online workshops
If I were to ask you to describe what happens during a typical workshop, most probably, you would verbally paint a picture of people in a physical space sticking post-it notes on walls and windows. Yes, that was before 2020.
Since the pandemic, we can throw this reality out of the window. Nowadays, we can’t physically be together in a room. However, projects are still expected to deliver. The facilitators are ready. Participants are known. But how do you run a workshop online?
Welcome to the era of online collaboration tools. Mural and Miro are dominating the market. Let’s have a closer look at them from the perspective of a UX designer. I facilitated 10 days of online workshops with a total of 100 participants for two international end-to-end online projects using the free versions of Mural and Miro.
Question 1: How easy is it for attendees to access the board before the workshop?
It is typically a good idea to get your attendees to do some pre-work before the workshop. This exercise allows them to get familiar with the tool and enables you, as the facilitator, to ensure participants are registered with the collaboration platform before the workshop.
For my first fully online project, I used Mural. It worked like a charm. The pre-workshop journey was such an easy peasy task, that I started to believe that there is nothing better than online workshops. I sent attendees the link to the workshop board via Mural, they registered, I got a notification. Done.
For my second project, I decided to spice things up and use Miro. Everything started quite promising. I sent all attendees an invite link through Miro. That’s when things went from “okay” to “complicated” pretty quickly. When users clicked the link, I was sent an email asking to “re-approve” access, after having previously set them up as attendees on the board — for each and every user. I had to click 30 times “approved.” This meant users couldn’t start working when they wanted to, but only when I saw and actioned the notification email. What about users in different time zones? What about the participants, who only joined while the workshop was in full swing? It would be a struggle to approve them. From a user experience perspective, it was a rocky start. While Miro has a few ways of adding attendees to your board — for example, by granting day passes — as a free-account user, I didn’t have this option.
Mural 1 point
Miro 0 points
Question 2: What about summoning everyone during the workshop?
It might sound like a trivial question, but trust me, this is crucial for the success of your online workshop. Expect your participants to have various levels of online collaboration experience. Some attendees will need extra help to find everyone else on the board.
Mural tackles this request wonderfully. As the main facilitator, I could summon everyone with one click, or I could choose to summon particular participants whenever it was needed. I could also ask people to “follow me” instead of “summoning,” which means to gently nudge them to look at what I was doing instead of rapidly shifting their screen view to mine.
With Miro, such an option was not available without purchasing additional services. With a free account, I could summon only one person per click. Now, let’s imagine a scenario when the facilitator begins the workshop and attendees struggle to orientate themselves around the board. As a facilitator, it is challenging to summon 30 people while running the workshop.
Mural 2 points
Miro 0 points
Question 3: I am expecting to create many outputs on my board. Will the tool crash due to the amount of information on it?
For an effective workshop, you will likely need to design a multitude of activity boards for each of your workshopping days. It is tempting (or maybe rather convenient) to have these activities on one sizeable board. Quickly, you will realise that it is important for your tool of choice to seamlessly handle the number of digital post-it notes, icons and pictures without crashing.
For both of my projects, I planned similar activities for the workshops. When I used Mural, I noticed that the tool responded much slower and was clunkier on the second day due to the volume of information added to the board on the first day. Participants and I experienced a delay in moving post-it notes around or writing text. I felt like being taken back to the 2000s when the internet connection slowed down every time my sister would also connect to the internet.
Miro was fantastic in this regard. No slowing down, not having any clunkiness, only fun and games during those 5 days. Participants added more and more information to the board every day. It never crashed on us. For me, this is the best selling and value point.
Mural 2 points
Miro 1 point
Verdict
Everything considered I recommend you use… Mural and Miro interchangeably (wait, what?). The reason being is that each tool has its own unique advantages and every project has its own challenges.
Some workshops need more handholding, where you need to summon participants frequently. Use Mural for that. Other collaborations, will produce a lot of good output and, consequently, need a crash-proof system. Use Miro in this case.
Hence, determining the best tool for your unique project is the secret sauce to any successful workshop delivery. After reading this article, you should now have more knowledge to make such a choice.
