BEYOND THE BOARD
Design delightful collaborative experiences (in MURAL & Miro)
Do you love the idea of working with digital whiteboards but lack the time to leverage the tool for more effective collaboration with your teams and clients?
We get it! With the proliferation of tools, our initial excitement for remote-hybrid collaboration has soured. We’re overwhelmed by the onslaught of new features to learn; and under the pressure to optimize our workflows—do things better, faster, and more collaboratively than ever before. How do we manage it all, while still building functional, and efficient virtual workspaces that engage teams so that we can get the best from our teams?
In this self-guided course, you will move from feeling overwhelmed by a blank workshop canvas to confidently applying simple design principles to create adaptable boards for effective and engaging group collaboration.
By the end of this course you will:
Develop a critical eye and make confident decisions when selecting and setting up your boards
Learn how to establish purpose and outcomes for a session and use them to drive board design
Use low fidelity wireframes and sketches to experiment with unique concepts for your boards and build a concept from idea to polished template with expert guidance
- Learn how to design more accessible and scalable boards that work for everyone
- Test your design for adaptability, accessibility, and delight
Learners will leave with:
-
A planning activity template to think through the experience of a board
- A personalized digital board you can use immediately
-
Access to a growing library of templates created by your class cohort and future course cohorts
Experience Level
Intermediate. No prerequisites. Open to all. While not required, learners who have at least foundational understanding of using MURAL and facilitating workshops will get the most out of this course.
DAY 1
DAY 2
DAY 3
Use design principles to sort through the clutter
- Define “good” elements and benefits of an effective whiteboard
- Design principles in action
Build a foundation for smart design
- Examine the experience for your audience and create more intentional moments
- Level up the functionality and prepare your board for scalability and reusability
Test the prototype and refine
- Functionality, accessibility, and testing
- Create systems and build your library
Make the virtual or hybrid experience more human
- Understanding your audience — a blueprint for discovery
- Leverage constraints and risks in your design
Map the journey forward using concepts and wireframes
- The visual process
- Easy concepts and wireframes
Share completed boards and peer feedback
- Present boards and share live feedback
- Resources for continued learning
This course is for:
This course is for you if...
- You rely on virtual collaboration but are feeling overwhelmed with all the new tools, features, and templates available.
- You’ve used MURAL templates, but struggle to edit and adapt them to your specific needs—sometimes templates are too complicated and you just need a slice of it!
- Your collaborators silently groan—not another post up—and you’d like to spice things up and get more out of the tool’s collaborative features, but you’ve become over-reliant on one type of feature or tool.
- You would like to make the virtual or hybrid experience more human.
- You constantly struggle with the functionality of your boards, no matter how much time you spend on setup.
- You’ve pulled a smorgasbord of things together, it’s mostly functional, but you’re eager to learn how to set things up so that they can be easily reused and scaled up or down for the occasion.
Course Features and Benefits
While the course is fully virtual and will be delivered via Zoom and MURAL, you’ll be able to connect with and learn from fellow participants. The group will be divided into small cohorts, with whom you’ll be working and discussing, in addition to the full-group activities and discussions.
About the Learning Experience
- Learn from expert practitioners
- Asynchronous video content to view at your own pace in your own time (zone)
- One daily hands-on, live-instruction session with your course instructor to learn by doing and get support
- Real-time guidance and feedback to troubleshoot and practice key skills you can immediately apply to your organization
- Benefit from rich discussion, support, and inspiration from other professionals attending the course
- This class is designed to be an open and collaborative environment where you and other learners will be able to see each other’s work. We ask learners to practice discretion.
Ongoing Benefits
- Lifetime access to course portal and materials including MURAL template
- The tools and frameworks for leading the activities in your daily practice
- Access to new tools, bonus content, and course updates as the course evolves
- First look at new course offerings
Your Instructor
Nancy Sewell, Senior Program Manager & Product Manager
Nancy leads XPLANE’s product development branch, creating new products, tools, and learning opportunities. She co-delivers engaging in-person and remote client experiences from immersive installations, to training, and offsites.
Long before remote working became a necessity, Nancy was ramping up XPLANE’s tools and best practices for remote facilitation—she is XPLANE’s go-to resource for translating complex in-person collaboration and games to the digital space.
What Our Learners Say
“The Beyond the Board course has transformed the way I approach creating my MURAL boards from a slow, inefficient, and painful process, to one that is simpler, consistent and enjoyable.”
—James Thomas, Owner, Four Forces Consulting Limited
“This course helped me piece the bigger picture together, and provided tools for me to organize future projects.”
—Kiersten Vaughan, Project Specialist, Public Strategies
“Nancy, you are a game changer! The MURAL Playmaker template you built was an 11-star experience for me, and I can’t wait to continue working with you and the XPLANE team.”
—Nico Valencia, Head of Innovation, Corporate Responsibility, Intuit
FAQ
Q: Why should I trust XPLANE?
A: Long before 2020, XPLANE worked with clients in hybrid and remote environments. During “the great pivot” we assisted clients, partners, and collaborators in making a successful transition to digital collaboration using the MURAL platform and other digital-first tools. Since then, we’ve delivered hundreds of remote collaborative experiences from workshops to 500+ person events and offsites. XPLANE is a trusted expert partner in the MURAL Playmaker Program and delivers templates, tools, and experiences to enterprise customers of the MURAL platform.
Q: I’m super busy. How many hours will I need to invest? What’s the estimated course hours and assignment time?
A: Our course is built to fit your busy schedule. It’s spread out across three weeks, and during the course you will have access to:
- Asynchronous video content to view at your own pace in your own time (zone).
- AND one daily hands-on, live, group-instruction session with your instructor to practice key skills, answer questions, and provide you with additional feedback on activities. This is the equivalent of fitting one extra meeting into your week.
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