Collaboration App - Miro

 Collaborating on projects in the 21st century may mean that you never physically see the people you are working with for a project. This has become increasingly prevalent in a post-COVID world where hybrid and remote jobs are in high demand. It's also great for students in online courses to have a way to collaborate with each other on group projects. The app this blog will review is a whiteboard app called Miro. Miro has a 4.7 star review and over a million downloads on the Google Play Store. I was excited to get into the app after seeing the reviews and looking at the demo photos in the store description. It reminded me of something similar to an app I've used in the past where you collaborate via sticky notes on a virtual corkboard. 

The design of the app is fairly sophisticated. There are some tutorials that you can take when you first log in to learn how to use the app, but the tutorials fell short in my opinion. It shows you how to move around the whiteboard, but not how to actually use it. That is a downside to the app for users who need more instruction when it comes to mobile devices or apps. It did take me a little bit to figure out how to add things to the whiteboard because I didn't close out all of the tutorial options at the beginning. Without closing those out, you can't add anything to the whiteboard which can be confusing for first time learners or those with cognitive difficulties. 

The app itself is pretty cool. There are plenty of functions that people can use on the app to collaborate with each other. These include text, sticky notes, stickies capture, comments, pens, shapes, and uploading photos or documents. These are all great ways for people to be able to collaborate on the same project together. You can also create to-do lists and notes outside of the whiteboard which is a nice way to keep together with the team. I really liked the comment feature, because it allows all users to comment on the same document. It helps not clutter the whiteboard up with each individual having to create a second comment. It's almost like a chat feature. It also has a very easy way to share the whiteboard with others, which makes collaboration easier for users who are setting up their own groups individually.

In terms of UDL, this app does fall pretty short. There is some design flaws that make it not accessible to all users. It is complex to learn at first with no tutorials and no fail-safe measures put in place for the user. It also requires a lot of fine motor skills to be able to zoom in and out to move around the whiteboard to see everything which makes it more difficult for those who have arthritis, carpal tunnel, or users who have fine motor delays or difficulties. There are no built in accessibility features, like voice controls or text to voice options. The design itself, once acclimated, is fairly easy to use, but I feel some users would get discouraged or frustrated and not even attempt to use the app. If it were to be implemented in a learning environment, I think the best course of action for the instructor would be to demonstrate a tutorial for the learners to show them how to use it.