Miro for designers: a board for research and flows

Step 1

Sign up and set up your space

Create an account at miro.com. On the Free plan you can create and share unlimited boards, but only the three most recent stay editable. Paid plans lift that limit and add things like a timer and voting for workshops; check Miro's pricing page for current terms. Worth knowing at the start:

• •students and educators can apply for free education plans; the Student plan gives unlimited boards for two years;
• •Miro works in the browser and has apps for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows;
• •keep one board per project and split it into frames by stage: “Research”, “Flows”, “Structure”, “Feedback”;
• •name frames clearly: they make it easy to navigate and to show the board to others.

💡 With three editable boards on Free, don't create boards “just to test”. One board with frames per project keeps both order and the limit under control.

Step 2

Build a moodboard and collect references

The first scenario is visual research. Drag competitor screenshots, interface examples, photos, colors and fonts onto the board. Miro has ready-made moodboard templates, but an empty frame is enough. To make the moodboard work rather than just look nice:

• •group references by theme: navigation, onboarding, empty states, typography;
• •put a sticky note by each group: what exactly works here and why;
• •collect “anti-examples” separately: solutions you want to avoid;
• •note the source of every screenshot so you can find the original later.

Step 3

Synthesize research into an affinity diagram

This is where Miro beats a mockup editor. After interviews or a survey, move your notes onto sticky notes: one thought per note, ideally marked with who said it (P1, P2…). Then:

• •move the notes around until groups of similar thoughts emerge;
• •name each group as a finding, not a topic: not “Payment” but “People don't trust payment without reviews”;
• •mark the groups that several people confirmed: they're candidate problems worth solving;
• •write the findings as a separate list next to the board: you'll take it to flows and mockups.

💡 Don't invent notes “on behalf of users”. Even three real conversations with people give you more than twenty assumptions on sticky notes.

Step 4

Draw a user flow, a journey map and a sitemap

Before drawing screens, describe the logic. Miro has templates for each of these artifacts, but simple shapes and arrows work too:

• •user flow: the steps a person takes towards a goal, such as “find a course, sign up, pay”, with branches and errors;
• •customer journey map (CJM): stages, actions, thoughts, emotions and pain points, from “heard about the product” to “use it regularly”;
• •sitemap: which pages exist and how they connect;
• •mark in red the places where a person might get stuck: those are what you'll test on the prototype.

💡 Once the flow is ready, move to Figma and prototype exactly that scenario: see Figma prototype.

Step 5

Run a feedback session and show your process

A board is easy to open to others: a colleague, a mentor or the community. Add a “Feedback” frame with screenshots of your mockups and ask people to leave comments or sticky notes next to specific spots. To keep the discussion useful:

• •write at the top what exactly you want to check: flow clarity, priorities, step names;
• •sort responses into “clear, fixing it”, “needs clarifying” and “disagree, let's discuss”;
• •after the discussion, run a retro: what worked, what didn't, what you'll change next time;
• •for your portfolio, export not the whole board but 2–3 key fragments with short findings.

💡 Miro or FigJam? Both are online whiteboards. FigJam is part of the Figma ecosystem, so it's handy if your mockups are already there. Miro is a standalone service with 7,000+ templates, many of them for research and workshops. Either works for learning; what matters is what you do on the board.