Enhancing Miro's File Management
Miro only has two layers of hierarchy for organizing boards, teams and projects. People are really frustrated that there is currently no way to further organize.
For growing teams especially this is a huge problem. More people creating more boards means more organizational headaches. There is a real threat that companies may look elsewhere for their whiteboarding software needs.
Product Designer (Consulted)
Otter.AI
Adobe Suite
Google Workspace
Competitive Analysis
Heuristic Evaluation
Affinity Map
User Interviews (x5 Users)
Affinity Map
Story Map
Competitive Solution Analysis
Sketches
Wireframes
Usability Tests (x5 Users)
Final UI Screens
High Fidelity Prototype
produced all deliverables.
The 3rd highest feature request on Miro's forums is delivered. Nested folders allow teams to grow.
Looking for a quick win with high impact
With just six weeks to work on this project from start to finish I started out this journey looking for something to work on that was relatively straight forward that wouldn’t require a ton of upfront research and doable within the timeframe.
I found what I was looking for on Miro’s own user forums. There were pages and pages of comments on how users were frustrated with the fact that they can’t add additional folders to their projects. A few people even mentioned they might even leave Miro altogether if this issue wasn't addressed soon! Three years after this thread started, nothing has changed.
The goal of this project was to improve Miro's file management system so that it better scales with users' growing organizational needs and provides a more robust file management experience.
Turns out 60+ boards filed under a single project is not ideal.
3rd highest feature request
On Miro’s own community forum this feature request received nearly 1200 upvotes and has yet to be addressed over a period of 3 years.
Whiteboarding software packages Mural, Whimsical, and Fig jam all have more layers of folder hierarchy than Miro does.
I had some decisions to make about what to do to get enough research info to move forward, while at the same not spending so much effort upfront that I wouldn’t have time for everything else down the line.
I wound up doing a heuristic evaluation, competitive analysis and industry trends analysis. In hindsight industry trends I probably could have done without, but a competitive analysis was especially important because it gave business insight on how primary competitors like Mural and Whimsical were already addressing this problem.
Discovery methods
“I observe that if there are more than 5-7 elements per directory, it becomes less and less usable. Every single initiative we start, creates 2-5 boards. And it's just one initiative in one of our products. Without directories, project view becomes a mess and is completely unusable. For me, it's absolutely essential to maintain a basic structure of our knowledge and a lack of directories is a significant blocker.”
-Adam K. / comment on Miro community forum
Honing in on a guiding statement
Because I didn’t want to automatically assume that folders were the way to go over a tagging system or something else, I left the guiding problem statement without reference specifically to folders. This would leave room for idea exploration later on.
Here's the problem statement "How might we" I came up with.
How might we help Miro users feel more in control of their ability to manage and categorize all of their boards?
Activities & outputs
Remixing the Research Formula: Reading through all 120+ forum comments & taking notes
I decided to skip the usual interview phase. Interviews are really time consuming! By closely studying the comments from the Miro forum on this topic I was able to get roughly the same insights and info I’d need to move forward in a few hours rather than a week!
There were three main takeaways here.
1. I’d need to look more into permissions and how they work.
2. I’d need to do a bit more digging on the pros v. cons of folders and tags
3. What’s the appropriate nested depth to go with folders per project?
Here's what I learned from user forum comments.
More need for hierarchy
As teams and projects grow in complexity there is more of an organizational need for sub-categories within projects.
The sheer number of boards in any single project can quickly become overwhelming and unmanageable to browse through.
More restriction options
When interacting with clients and other outside 3rd parties, there is often a need to restrict access to certain sets of boards. Sub-folders with set permissions is an easy way to do this.
It might get complicated
Tags or labels although useful for custom filtering can get very complicated when it comes to permissions. Across a large organization this can become very messy, very fast.
And here is what users had to say.
“I truly don't understand how this is not a feature yet. It's frustrating to see that such basic functionality is not implemented while you guys pump out updates all the time.
Over one year on this is the 4th most requested item on the wish list. Are there any plans to work on this feature? We're considering moving over from Whimsical. From a board features perspective it's a no-brainer, but not being able to organize our projects is honestly a deal breaker.”
- Marius B. / comment on Miro community forum
Affinity maps
Putting it all together: Folders & permissions & tags (oh my).
Here are some conclusions I came to.
Five total layers of hierarchy is the sweet spot: This would match that of closest competitor MURAL. From a business standpoint this made sense. Each Miro project would now have 3 additional sub-layers, but would keep teams / projects as the top two structural layers.
Tags still might be something worth looking into in the future: For now though it would just complicate things. I was looking for a quick user / business win. Adding sub-folders to projects would accomplish this.
Activities & outputs
Google Drive & Dropbox as reference: Learning from the best in the biz
The driving activity for this stage in the process was looking at how competitors as well as Google Drive and Dropbox solve problems around folder hierarchy and moving lots of files around. A lot of the UI and interaction patterns that ended up in the final design were adapted directly from Drive and Dropbox helping to ensure users would be familiar with the interaction patterns.
One big realization I came to here was that multi-selecting boards / files would need to be a key piece of this feature set. Imagine having to move 60 boards from one folder to another one at a time. Not including this would have been a disaster!
Story map: A holistic view
Competitive solution analysis: Multi-select has entered the chat
Sketches: Making sure I hit all touchpoints
Activities & outputs
Learning from mistakes & some unexpected test results
One of the downsides of working fast is to being prone to letting some details slip. This was an issue I ran into while writing the first draft of my user test tasks.
In a few task prompts I had accidentally telegraphed the area of the site that I wanted the user to look in to move forward in each task. Luckily I had sent the questions over to a mentor beforehand to take a look at before I used them. He set me straight and reminded me that I needed to be careful not to lead the user too much with how I worded my questions. Lesson learned with minimal damage done!
Please use the search bar to find a board you think maybe has the word “Tagline” in it. You want to narrow down your inquiry to only Project: Site Update and Folder: Alpha.
How would you find a board you think maybe has the word “Tagline” in it? You want to narrow down your inquiry to only Project: Site Update and Folder: Alpha
I conducted user tests with x5 Miro users remotely with Zoom over the timeframe of a week. Two things really surprised me about the results, users overwhelming preferring drag and drop to move boards and using the search bar as their first option to find a board.
User test insights
80% of participants mentioned that their first instinct when trying to batch move files would be to multi-select then drag and drop.
60% of participants mentioned that using the search bar is a part of their workflow when looking for files. Often its where users start.
40% of participants had trouble understanding the relationship between the projects and nested folders when looking at the page heading area. This needed to be made more obvious and less confusing.
Activities & outputs
Hitting the deadline & fixing Miro’s design system along the way
With just two weeks left to go I was almost there! Before moving into final designs though there were a few usability issues to address that I had come across during a heuristics evaluation all the way at the beginning of the project.
Fixing these issues to Miro’s design system would be important because now with the added complexity of the addition of folders to project navigation, it was more important than ever that areas like the search bar and the project navigation bar be crystal clear and easy to use. It wasn’t a huge deal when there was one level of project hierarchy at a time to contend with, but now each project had potentially three extra folders!
Usability issues I found
x3 layers of sub-folders in projects
Multi-select interaction bar
When multi-selecting, you now have the option to move, copy, delete, or archive.
Drag & drop to move folders & boards
Multi-select also has the option to drag and drop boards and folders, as per user request!
Search bar improvements
The overall search bar functionality has been improved along with needed upgrades to work with additional folder layers.
Updated starred / recents sections
Starred and Recents have been updated as well. The new layout works more seamlessly with the addition of folders.
Activities & outputs
Scaling with customer needs & retaining clients
Beyond the fact that boards are now easier to manage and keep track of is the reality that Miro users have been listened to and now have a feature that they have been urgently asking for for the last three years.
Users now have much more flexibility in how they structure their board filing systems. A major limitation and loudly voiced user pain with business impact is addressed.
It was loud and clear in the Miro forum comments. If something wasn't done about this. Users would consider leaving for a competitor that had addressed this issue. Problem solved!
(and higher revenue generating) clients.
The biggest gripes were coming from clients as they grew in size. With this feature set now addressed Miro is in a much better position to retain and go after larger, higher revenue clients.
This project was about adaptation and time management
The biggest challenges I faced during the course of this project were a limited time frame to get a complete feature set done and having to figure out some alternative research methods to shorten the discovery process. The tricky part though, was it still needed to be quality research! The most impactful way I was able to do that was by using forum comments instead of lengthy and time consuming interviews during research.
As of November 2023 this feature is in development. Looks like it was an important problem to solve!
Lessons learned & areas for improvement
I learned that UX methods are like mix and match Legos: By that I mean you can mix and match and mold them to fit to the needs of a project. A method that’s appropriate for one project may not be for the next one.
When creating usability tests I should use writing that makes the product feel as real as possible: Test users should feel like they are in a real scenario as much as possible. My usability test was lacking in this area this time around.
Future roadmap
These are some things I’d look to continue to iterate on in the future with this feature.
The biggest issue I found with using tags and labels for an application like this is the mess it could potentially cause with many people tagging boards in their own ways for their own purposes.
However, tags are useful for being able to filter boards outside of the folder structure. If done right this would be worth looking into in the future.
Feel free to email blutjens@gmail.com or connect on Linkedin.
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