I am not an artist, but I am a designer. It took me a long time to get over my imposter syndrome -- for far too long, I thought that to truly be a designer, I had to be a better artist, but I was wrong. In the words of economist Herb Simon, “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” Yes. That.
Sometimes, when I am working with other people to create those preferred situations, we are unfortunately separated by distance. That used to be less frequent, but today it is our everyday, as we are forced to work remotely to keep people safe and healthy. Does that mean that our quest to design new solutions to problems should stop? Of course not! What it does mean, is that we need to find new ways to communicate and collaborate meaningfully. That is where MURAL comes in.
First of all, what is MURAL?
MURAL is a virtual whiteboard tool. Just like the big whiteboards in the conference rooms you are no longer using at your office, only digital. Just like in the office, these are great spaces to bring people together to work through problems.
Why MURAL?
MURAL (mural.co) is my favorite of the virtual collaboration tools for a couple of key reasons. The biggest is this: I am a really organized person, and I am also a very physical-world person (hey, I proudly admit to still taking interview notes with pen and paper!), and in the physical world, the conference room whiteboard is a finite space. If I want to start organizing my workspace in the upper left corner and work across and down, I can do that. The boundaries of the virtual workspace give me clarity when it comes to organizing multiple activities in a series and just general wayfinding. The other thing I like is that MURAL offers a 30-day free trial, and during that time, you can invite others to work with you. In fact, the pricing is really reasonable and you can limit costs by only buying seats for your heavy users, and invite other collaborators in for free as needed. Other plusses: built in templates, especially the human-centered design templates from LUMA Institute, that make getting started super-easy, and the ability to “sketch” using built in icons and photos. I could go on … clearly this is my favorite, but there are also other options are worth considering.
What are some alternatives, and how do they compare?]
There are many alternatives, with a range of features, and some of them are actually tools you are probably already using and don’t even realize they can help you.
Miro (formerly RealTimeBoard – Miro.com)
I will admit to being more than a little annoyed at the rebranding that makes it necessary for me to spell M.U.R.A.L. every time I say it to someone to be sure they don’t get it confused with Miro. However, I did have a client recently that was a big fan of Miro, so I had the chance to get to know it a bit better. From a functionality perspective, it is very similar to MURAL – there are ready-made templates, it’s (almost as) easy to add new sticky notes, and, like MURAL, it resizes your text to the size of your sticky, rather than sizing the sticky note to the text. The main difference for me was the fact that it was boundary-less. Remember how I said I was organized, and I like to be able to start a workspace in the upper left corner and work from there? Well you can’t do that in Miro because there is no upper left corner. Miro is like the universe – it goes on forever, and like the concept of a limitless universe, I have a hard time wrapping my brain around its lack of boundaries. Personally, it always caused me to feel slightly lost in space. I recognize that as a totally personal problem, so take it or leave it as an observation of importance. The other difference with Miro is that there is an always-free version (yay!) but it limits you to just 3 boards (boo), so you will likely end up paying with either tool (and pricing is pretty comparable).
Cloud-based office tools (Microsoft word, excel, powerpoint / Google pages, sheets, slides)
If you are already struggling a bit with the transition to working remotely, throwing a new tech tool in the mix might not sound too appealing right now. That doesn’t mean you can’t collaborate real time with your teammates! All the cloud-based office tools allow multiple people to edit, share, etc. and there is definitely a benefit to getting shit done by using tools people are already familiar with. Want to create virtual sticky notes? Just insert a colored square shape and type away! Want to give people separate but adjacent workspaces? Create some columns and let them bring their best inner toddler and “play in parallel”. It may feel clunky, and over time migrating to a proper virtual whiteboard may make more sense, but in a pinch in the short term, these tools can be helpful in their familiarity.
Microsoft Teams Whiteboard
Sorry, but I can’t say much here. I’m not a Teams user, so I haven’t had a chance to try this one personally, but I’ve heard it’s not bad, and if your company has made the jump into using Teams, it may be readily available to you. My understanding is that the functionality is similar to MURAL and Miro. If you are a Team Whiteboard users and want to sing its praises, please add to the comments below.
As a new user (or someone inviting new users), what are some potential gotchas?
Once you get the hang of the whiteboard tools, they become very easy. I think the hardest thing to master as a new user is the zoom functionality. You can zoom out to see the entire workspace, but then you have to zoom in to read the text on the sticky notes. There are settings for using a mouse, trackpad, or touchscreen, but it still took me quite a bit of practice to get good at it. I’ve also heard from some people that when you have lots of collaborators in the same space, having everyone’s cursor visible can be distracting, but, at least in MURAL (not sure about the others), there is an option to hide cursors if they are bothersome.
If you haven’t had a chance to play around with any of the whiteboard tools yet, I encourage you to give them a try. You might find, as I have, that sometimes it’s even a preferred tool to use when I’m working alone, because there is an automatic digital version of the thing that would normally be stuck to my analog office wall.
Would love thoughts, feedback, and comments!
Stay safe and wash your hands,
Elizabeth