“BASAAP stands for “Be As Smart As A Puppy” – something I originally wrote on a (physical) post it note back when I worked at Nokia in 2005 or 2006. For the past 20 years I’ve been exploring metaphors and experiences that might arise from the technology we call ‘AI’ – and while a lot of us now talk to LLMs every day – they still might not… B… ASAAP…”
I joined Miro a year ago this week, back in November 2024.
In my first few weeks I wrote down and shared with the team a few assumptions / goals / thoughts / biases / priors as a kind of pseudo-manifesto for how I thought we might proceed with AI in Miro, and I thought I’d dust them off.
About a month ago we released a bunch of AI features that the team did some amazing work on, and will continue to improve and iterate upon.
If I squint I can maybe see some of this in there, but of course a) it takes a village and b) a lot changed in both the world of AI and Miro in the course of 2025.
Anyway – FWIW I thought it would still be fun to post what I thought I year ago, as there might be something useful still there, accompanied by some slightly-odd Sub-Gondry stylings from Veo3…
Multiplayer / Multispecies
When we are building AI for Miro always bear in mind the human-centred team nature of innovation and making complex project work. Multiplayer scenarios are always the start of how we consider AI processes, and the special sauce of how we are different to other AI tools.
Minds on the Map
The canvas is a distinct advantage for creating an innovation workspace – the visibility and context than can be given to human team members should extend to the AI processes that can be brought to bear on it. They should use all the information created by human team members on the canvas in their work.
Help both Backstage & On-Stage
Work moves fluidly from unstructured and structured modes, asynchronous and synchronous, solo and team work – and there are aspects of preparation and performance to all of these. AI processes should work fluidly across all of them.
AI is always Non-Destructive
All AI processes aim to preserve and prioritise work done by human teams.
AI gets a Pencil, Humans get a Pen
Anything created by an AI process (initially) has a distinct visual/experiential identity so that human team members can identify it quickly.
No Teleporting
Don’t teleport users to a conclusion.
Where possible, expose the ‘chain of thought’ that the AI process so that users can understand how it arrived at the output, and edit/iterate on it.
AIs leave visible (actionable) evidence
Where possible, expose the AI processes’ ‘chain of thought’ on the board so that users can understand how it arrived at the output, and edit/iterate on it. Give hooks into this for integrations, and make context is well logged in versions/histories.
eBikes for the Mind
Humans always steer and control – but AI processes can accelerate and compress the distances travelled. They are mostly ‘pedal-assistance’ rather than self-driving.
Help do the work of the work
What are the AI processes that can accelerate or automate the work around the work e.g. taking notes, scheduling, follows ups, organising, coordinating: so that the human team mates can get on with the things they do best.
Using Miro to use Miro
Eventually, AI processes in Miro extend in competence to instigate and initiate work in teams in Miro. This could have its roots in composable workflows and intelligent templates, but extend to assembling/convening/facilitating significant amounts of multiplayer/multispecies work on an indvidual’s behalf.
My Miro AI
What memory / context can I count on to bring to my work, that my agents or my team can use. How can I count on my agents not to start from scratch each time? Can I have projects I am working on with my agents over time? Are my agents ‘mine’? Can I bring my own AI, visualise and control other AI tools in Miro or export the work of Miro agents to other tools, or take it with me when I move teams/jobs (within reason). Do my agents have resumes?
Figma feels (to me) like one of those product design empathy experiences where you’re made to wear welding gloves to use household appliances.
I appreciate its very good for rapidly constructing utilitarian interfaces with extremely systemic approaches.
I just sometimes find myself staring at it (and/or swearing at it) when I mistakenly think of it as a tool for expression.
Currently I find myself in a role where I work mostly with people who are extremely good and fast at creating in Figma.
I am really not.
However, I have found that I can slowly tinker my way into translating my thoughts into Figma.
I just can’t think in or with Figma.
Currently there’s discussion of ‘vibe coding’ – that is, using LLMs to create code by iterating with prompts, quickly producing workable prototypes, then finessing them toward an end.
I’ve found myself ‘vibe designing’ in the last few months – thinking and outlining with pencil, pen and paper or (mostly physical) whiteboard as has been my habit for about 30 years, but with interludes of working with Claude (mainly) to create vignettes of interface, motion and interaction that I can pin onto the larger picture akin to a material sample on a mood board.
Where in the past 30 years I might have had to cajole a more technically adept colleague into making something through sketches, gesticulating and making sound effects – I open up a Claude window and start what-iffing.
It’s fast, cheap and my more technically-adept colleagues can get on with something important while I go down a (perhaps fruitless) rabbit hole of trying to make a micro-interaction feel like something from a triple-AAA game.
The “vibe” part of the equation often defaults to the mean, which is not a surprise when you think about what you’re asking to help is a staggeringly-massive machine for producing generally-unsurprising satisfactory answers quickly. So, you look at the output as a basis for the next sketch, and the next sketch and quickly, together, you move to something more novel as a result.
Inevitably (or for now, if you believe the AI design thought-leadering that tools like replit, lovable, V0 etc will kill it) I hit the translate-into-Figma brick wall at some point, but in general I have a better boundary object to talk with other designers, product folk and engineers if my Figma skills don’t cut it to describe what I’m trying to describe.
Of course, being of a certain vintage, I can’t help but wonder that sometimes the colleague-cajoling was the design process, and I’m missing out on the human what-iffing until later in the process.
I miss that, much as I miss being in a studio – but apart from rarefied exceptions that seems to be gone.
Vibe designing is turn-based single-player, for now… which brings me back to the day job…
Petafloptimism 