How to organize your virtual whiteboard in Miro, Mural, Figma, or Klaxoon ?

Jérémy Jodeau

July 21, 2020

Find out the best way to organize your virtual whiteboard space in Miro, Mural, figma or Klaxoon and choose between the horizontal layout, the agenda layout, the central layout, the story layout and much more ...

For the past decade, we’ve mostly worked with PowerPoint-kind-of tools that offer limited space: the very famous slide! When it was necessary to add new elements, there were two solutions: reduce the elements and the font size to fit everything in the slide or simply add a slide.
The information was then very sequential and vertical.

Hopefully, since a few years, lots of whiteboard applications have emerged and the Corona crisis has increased their adoption.

The virtual whiteboard thus became at the same time the presentation space but also the physical space (whiteboard, post it, …) that we all need when running meetings/workshops.

Therefore, it’s important to learn how to manage this new virtual and digital space. Organizing one’s whiteboard is not obvious.

You need to fully understand the ‘space’ and how to place your elements in it. We’ve put up together some layouts that are frequently used and we hope they will help you with your next workshop.

Vertical layout

If you want to stuck to the traditional PowerPoint presentation, the vertical layout remains the simplest way of running your workshop. That’s a good one for beginners.

Horizontal layout

This one is frequently used.

It is very suitable for whiteboard applications as we are used to read from right to left (or left to right)

Here are some examples:

Agenda layout

For more complex workshops and especially for workshops that last several days, it is a good idea to use a layout that takes the form of an agenda.

The users will be able to find information they need depending on the days.

This layout is recommended especially for Design Sprint templates that take 4 or 5 days of workshops.

Here are some examples:

Left to right layout

left to right layout

For more complex workshops, the alternative to the agenda layout is the left-to-right layout.

Here are some examples:

Story layout

In our first article about whiteboard printing, we’ve advised you to tell a story during your workshops.

If you go for this type of whiteboard, the layout of your elements should therefore serve your story.

This type of layout can be useful to initiate participants to move around the whiteboard.

Here are some examples:

Centric layout

Finally, one of our favorites is the centric or central layout.

This type of layout allows you to start working from a central element (and always have it to hand), but also to explore different aspects of this central element.

Here are some examples:

Freestyle layout

Last but not least, you can of course create and customize your own layout!

Conclusion

We’ve listed different layouts you can use for whiteboard applications. But in the end, the layout often depends on the facilitator, his preferences and his workshops.

The most important thing is that the facilitator and the workshop’s participants understand the connexion between the different activities through the layout.

If you use another layout, don’t hesitate to comment this article! We will add it quickly!

Do you want to contribute? 😍

You want to contribute but you don’t know where to start? It’s very easy. You can now :

add and share workshops template you’ve created to help other facilitators to improve themselves.
Share the platform on your LinkedIn to engage others facilitators
Recommend the platform to your colleagues

👏Finally, we would like to thank you a lot for your support!👏

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Feel free to contact us on the webchat on boardle.io or at contact@boardle.io.

We’re always happy to discuss!