How are Miro Marketplace apps benefitting users? A report from the Miro Research Team
Are you interested in learning more about how some of the most popular Miro marketplace apps are being used today? In a recent study, the Miro Research Team explored how users think about the concept of ‘apps’ and dug deeper into how they use specific apps on a regular basis.
This post showcases how apps are creating value for Miro users and highlights opportunities for future app development.
Understanding app value
Apps help users do more in Miro, and do it better
Our research identified a number of ways apps create value for our users. You can see them outlined in the image below (image 1). In short, apps help users do more in Miro, and do it better. They help people take advantage of our superior visual thinking and collaboration capabilities, making it easier to do activities like brainstorming, running workshops or documenting project plans that are a part of our users’ day-to-day.
Let’s dig deeper into these categories of value:
Think freely
Apps bring information into a space that’s well-designed for unstructured work, free-thinking, sketching and drafting in a visual way. We know from other research that supporting free-thinking is one of Miro’s strengths and apps help users work with more content in Miro. Apps that import external content into Miro, such as Jira Cards, Google Drive, Plant UML, Miro Plugin for Figma, Adobe XD and more, help users work with this content in Miro. In this article, you can learn more about how the PlantUML app converts code into diagrams in Miro
Democratize participation
Apps make it easier for non-specialists to engage in visual and creative activities such as diagramming, wireframing and lightweight prototyping. Apps such as the Wireframe Library, Brandfetch, Unsplash and Google Images provide immediate access to useful visual assets, and these assets are easy to combine with native Miro components such as images, shapes, lines and stickies. We have written a guide where you can learn more about how to integrate a digital asset manager in Miro, if you are interested in doing the same.
Case study: Democratizing participation in design activities
Marco is a Senior UX Researcher at a restaurant software company. He was facilitating an ideation workshop in Miro, where he asked his teammates to create basic visual prototypes of ideas they had for an order status widget. The Wireframe Library app made it easier for him to facilitate the sessions. It helped non-designers in his team to participate in this activity because Miro provides all of the components needed to make basic prototypes, without needing to worry about how to create a shape or use a specialist tool.
React quickly
Apps help people to react to relevant activity in Miro in a timely manner. Combined with email updates and the Miro Feed, apps such as the Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations help users to personalize how they receive information about Miro activity. They can choose the communication channel that helps them to best manage their time and keep up-to-date with what’s going on.
Focus in meetings
Apps bring more activities and information into Miro, increasing the efficiency of creation and collaboration for individuals and teams. For example, the Jira Cards, Miro Plugin for Figma, Adobe XD and Amplitude apps minimize the need to swap between applications when presenting or discussing information. Meanwhile, we were inspired by how our users are using the Google Images app to make icebreaker activities run smoother, allowing users to look for and add images on the fly, all without leaving a board.
Centralize information and activities
Apps centralize information and activities in one space, combating the fragmentation of information that slows organizations down. Apps that integrate with cloud storage, such as Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive, make it efficient to import and link to documents stored elsewhere, while apps that integrate with project planning tools, such as Jira and Azure Cards, helps users to discuss plans in a centralized space optimized for high-quality collaboration.
Case study: Centralizing planning activities in Miro
Sarah is a Software Engineer and Scrum Master at a startup. She uses the Jira Cards app to conduct sprint planning in Miro. Even though delivery is managed in Jira, she takes advantage of the visual and collaborative power of Miro to engage the team in planning. Jira cards are imported into Miro and arranged visually by day, using Miro’s stickies to communicate the status of tasks. She likes using Miro because it’s easy to get a visual overview of what’s happening and it supports collaboration, as everyone in the team can interact with the board at the same time, arranging tasks together.
Keep content up-to-date
Apps that keep information up-to-date through two-way syncing are crucial to the creation of reliable single sources of truth within organizations. Miro is a popular choice for conducting planning activities and documenting results. Apps such as Jira Cards, Azure Cards, and Google Drive are used to link to artifacts produced and stored elsewhere, while ensuring that they stay up-to-date. These types of apps automate away the effort of keeping things up-to-date as a document owner and increase trust and reliability in documentation as a reader — a win for everyone. We’ve written a guide about enabling two-way sync between app cards if you’re interested in learning more.
Identifying opportunities for app development
The categories of value discussed in this post are helpful for thinking about what apps to build next. They reflect some of the needs our users have — to focus in meetings, to think freely etc. — and are opportunity areas where apps make a difference. When considering building a Miro app, they are a starting point for asking the right “how might we?” questions:
We encourage you to take these as thought-starters and find new ways of bringing value to Miro users through apps. This list is by no means exhaustive and we aim to share more insights with the developer community in the future, but we hope it is a useful launching off point. If you’re looking for even more inspiration, you can also check out our community wishlist and product board.
Summary
This post highlighted how the value of apps should be understood in relation to the value of Miro. The sum is greater than the parts, where apps help people take advantage of our superior visual thinking and collaboration capabilities to do more in Miro, and do it better.
The value categories discussed here are exciting problem spaces and are at the heart of what it means to be creative and collaborative. They are the types of problems we need to solve — together with our thriving developer community — to help people co-create the next big thing. What will you create next?
* The apps discussed included: Google Image Search, Google Drive, Jira Cards, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Plant UML, Miro Plugin for Figma, Clusterizer, Adobe XD, Slack, and Wireframe Library.
