Hi everyone, I'm happy to be back here announcing this huge update for Metro Retro, the collaborative whiteboard for fun team meetings!
I launched the first version of Metro Retro in 2019 to help teams run productive, fun, and engaging retrospectives. Now 1 million sign-ups later, our bootstrapped team of 3 people have built a new version of Metro Retro that caters for all the meetings and workshops that teams hold.
We believe that using a fun tool is important for team collaboration because people will look forward to and enjoy their meetings, which in turn drives engagement and effectiveness. Hence, Metro Retro.
Metro Retro combines the flexibility of an online whiteboard with a layer of tools designed to help facilitators manage the meeting flow, plus a sprinkling of quirky tools to keep everyone engaged.
This version was in early access for over a year as we worked with our first 100 paying customers to make a product they love. We learned a lot through the process and are excited to now launch it publicly!
In this version:
- Revamped whiteboard experience: practically everything has had an upgrade while keeping the simplicity that made the first version a hit.
- New Facilitator Functions: polls, anonymous mode, pointers, bring everyone to me, timers, ready checks, and tool selection.
- 100+ Templates: professionally designed templates across retrospectives, icebreakers, estimation, product planning and prioritization, interactive workshops, and other meeting types. All are completely customizable or create, save, and share your own.
- Overhauled Dashboard: Private team rooms with workspaces and folders, invite collaborators, and set roles. SSO keeps your security department happy!
- Better Import / Export: Drag and drop a CSV file onto a board to create auto-stickies, or pull out your selected stickies into a HTML table!
- And Lots More: drawing, hats, improved confetti cannon, index cards, tokens, poker planning, shapes and arrows, to name a few.
We've had fun building this and we hope you enjoy trying it! Looking forward to your feedback and comments.
Thank you
Steve
@alexanderptitsyn
Hi Alexander! Thanks for your message. We have a fairly open free plan that lets you use all the board functionality with your colleagues for free. There are some limits on the number of boards (4 per account) and more advanced facilitation features (e.g. anonymous mode) require a paid plan.
Cheers
Steve
@david_sipos Hi David, thank you!
Both products share common features as online whiteboards, but in general, Figjam is good for activities like sketching ideas, diagrams and concepting in small groups or solo, whereas Metro Retro is also a more specialised tool for recording and processing ideas, and excels in medium-large group workshops.
In particular, Metro Retro's facilitator controls, zones to organize stickies, private writing, grouping, and voting tools combine to get a team all the way through from brainstorming ideas to deciding actions together - a process that can be tough for remote teams.
This is particularly useful in retrospectives, workshops, and other similar meetings with an agenda and a process.
Lastly, our users tell us that they get the most engagement from their teams when using Metro Retro out of all the tools they’ve tried, and that the active participation leads to better meeting results.
I have used Metro Retro and other collaboration boards in my work experience.
It is the BEST tool for board collaboration as it is easy to use, versatile, and brings JOY.
@jamie_hanratty, honestly, more aggressive marketing.
I would like to switch my organization to MetroRetro.
As a techie, I would enjoy using the same UI/UX for architectural charts.
Just a few comments from my teams and peers: "The best tool I have seen to run retros efficiently - or really any kind of meeting where you need to organize and coordinate actions of lots of people."
"What a fun and interactive tool that helps teams provide feedback as well as inspect and improve their processes! "
"Fantastic tool for encouraging team interaction and helping provide a fun visual component to team discussions and ceremonies.”
Metro Retro 2.0's new collaborative whiteboard seems like a fantastic tool for making remote meetings more engaging and productive. Wishing the team great success! I'm curious about the range of interactive features available and how it caters to different team dynamics.
@venky_venky4 Thank you!
So we set out to make Metro Retro feel as close to real life as possible, while using the benefits of the digital realm. This means things like sticky notes should feel like you expect them to, while giving you the power of digital to import and export the underlying data in the board to other formats and places when needed.
We think you should be able to express yourself online with near the same fidelity as you can in real life. Obviously online interaction lacks body language, so there are other ways you can do this. We get some of our ideas from the interactions found in online gaming (and there's more ideas to come!).
Some examples of this in action:
- Our sticky notes *feel* like sticky notes when you use them. Not like digital coloured squares with text in.
- Each person is randomly assigned a different handwriting font so their stickies are individual and identifiable from other people's stickies.
- The topic tool lets you "affinity map" int he same way you would with a marker pen on a real-life whiteboard, it draws a nice big loop around the stickies you've grouped together.
- Writing your stickies in private and revealing when you want to is essential for effective group brainstorming, and helps reducing bias and groupthink. In the same way that you would hide your notes while thinking in a workshop, you do so in Metro Retro.
- In a difference to other online whiteboards, you write and draw *on* objects in the board, not on the board background. In the same way that you wouldn't draw on the table in a meeting room, but on a piece of paper. We're not saying this is the correct way and will be like this forever, but it felt right for now.
- We made each template and activity based on what we think good team interaction should feels like. Honest and open. And teams can make their own formats. We see this as a great future direction, that teams can evolve with Metro Retro to decide and define what factors are important for them to track, measure, and talk about.
I've always found that the hardest thing to emulate well with remote working is the whiteboard. It feels like it should be such a simple thing but getting the same vibe as you would in person has always proven difficult.
I look forward to giving your product a try 👍
This tool makes retro fun and engaging. I've worked at 4 different companies in the last 5 years and introduced this tool to all of my teams. Everyone loves it :)
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