Alone Together: Remote Design Internships in the Time of Covid
Part 3 of a Series on Creating a Design Program for COVID — 19
Design Brigade connects design students to new spatial problems that have emerged in the era of COVID-19; rooted in values of equity, inclusivity, and transparency, we are creating collaborative solutions in our communities.
When Dana and I first began thinking through the structure of Design Brigade, there were so many unknowns: people, projects, and process were all questions that needed solving. There was one thing we knew for sure, though: any design program taking place in summer 2020 would need to be remote. While our design firm has long had remote work days and was structured with flexible work in mind, we were anchored by our home base in the office and by our long history of working together on projects.
This new design program, however, would bring together a group of design students, multi-headed clients, and an untold number of stakeholders to solve complex and sensitive community design problems…and we have to carry out this labyrinthine design process only by connecting through our screens.
We’re now four weeks into the process. We’ve logged hundreds of hours on Zoom and exchanged thousands of messages on Slack. Our students, based in California and Indiana, Florida and Maine, and right here in sunny New Haven, convene daily to push their design projects forward with a group of people they have never met in person. To learn more about the challenges and opportunities of remote internships, I spent some time this week interviewing Design Brigade team members. Here’s what I learned:
Remote Internships: Internal Communication
Stock your toolbox: In March, as shelter-in-place orders took shape, all industries quickly pivoted to remote work; recent studies show that, while 23% of workers were able to transition to remote work, an additional 19% of our national workforce could become productive with remote work if given the right tools, including high-speed internet, proper hardware and software, user-friendly technology, and training in digital tools. If you’re considering a remote internship, it’s your first task to make sure interns have the right tools at their disposal. As soon as we selected the remote interns for Design Brigade, we sent out a survey to inquire about their access to hardware (laptop, camera, microphone, three-button mouse), software (graphics programs, 2-D and 3-D design software), a high speed internet connection, and a quiet and productive place to work. For those who faced challenges, we worked to help them get access to those missing tools as soon as possible.
Over-communicate: In an academic or professional design studio, some of the best conversations come about when you can casually bounce around ideas and share sketches with those around you. Because we are each working from our homes, we need to create a structure to better support communication. We set up multiple platforms for communication: Zoom or Google Meet for video calls, Slack for group and one-on-one chats, Google Docs for shared editing of emails and memos, and Miro for visual whiteboard collaboration. Our teams all found structured daily video call check-ins important to their process, some even meeting twice a day for an hour each time. One group leaves a Zoom link open from 9–5 each day, allowing people to pop in and out freely.
Split the agenda: Design isn’t just creative ideation; it includes extensive research, project planning, and conversations with collaborators, clients, and stakeholders. Sometimes it’s best to split out those tasks into multiple meetings. One of the Design Brigade groups meets first thing each morning to recap action items and work plans for the day, then again in mid-afternoon for a meeting focused on creative brainstorming. Earlier on in the program, they had set a single daily lunchtime meeting to cover all this ground, but found the agenda was muddled and meetings stretched on for hours, leaving them exhausted. Dividing these calls allows for the first meeting to be an efficient run-through without wandering into the woods of creative collaboration.
Build trust: Our remote internship brings together students from across the many schools of the university and advisors from all over the world. Without pre-existing relationships, we need to quickly build trust. We began our project with a workshop organized by Dwight Hall; through exercises like the Social Identity Wheel and The Trusted Ten, we ask the students to consider their identities critically, identify some implicit biases they may carry, understand the assumptions they are bringing to the project, and build community and empathy among a diverse group. If I could start Design Brigade again, I would have spent more time on building a group dynamic in each team through workshops and exercises like these.
Here and there: During the first months of quarantine, I left my home base in New Haven to be with family in Vermont. In the mornings and evenings, my mind was with my body on a forest-covered hill in the north, but during Zoom calls my mind was somehow transported to New Haven. In the three months since Covid changed the world, I’ve built new relationships with collaborators and clients; I’ve never met them in person, but our conversations are as vivid and productive as any real world experience. Despite all the frustrations of remote work, the potential to build connections across space is incredibly exciting.
End with a recap and an action plan: Every meeting should end with a clear path forward. It’s easy to misread situations and reactions on video calls, so it’s important to conclude each meeting with a concise recounting of what was discussed and a list of each person’s action items. That way, you give each person a chance to clarify any gray areas and make sure you’re all on the same page.
Remote Internships: External Communication
Outside of the internal team communication dynamics explored above, each team is tasked with learning about stakeholders through community engagement. As one team member said, “Community engagement isn’t just a way to solicit ideas and feedback, but a way to build trust and engagement in your community.” How, then, can we carry out community engagement remotely?
Build on relationships: One Design Brigade student lamented the loss of the casual encounters and in-person engagement we would normally use during a community engagement process. It’s harder to get people’s attention over email. We’ve been most successful when building relationships through our contacts. When a group wants to meet with a community organizer they’ve read about, we reach out into our network to make an introduction first. Design Brigade is structured as a super-collaboration of designers, clients, advisors, mentors, and stakeholders, allowing us to draw on a huge circle of help when we need it.
Trying different formats: Our groups have carried out community engagement in a variety of ways: digital surveys, paper surveys, post-it exercises, focus groups, phone calls, and video calls. All the groups noted that their most effective community engagement has been through one-on-one video calls, where they find conversations can be deeper, more meaningful, and more frank.
On your own turf: I’m working on a number of projects with the City of New Haven, and we are trying to engage with folks across our city. One potentially positive side effect of remote work is that now, instead of asking people to come downtown or meet at a gathering, we can engage with them in the comfort of their homes. Instead of requiring that people engage with the power structures of City Hall or Yale, we can meet them on their own turf. A Design Brigade group had one of their most engaging community interviews with someone who was talking and driving in her car. In the quest to build a more equitable world, remote work may offer some advantages.
Our work thus far has been focused on the early stages of design, including framing the problem, community engagement, and research. Now, we’re turning toward design work, including sketching, drawing, modeling, and form-making. You can read project updates and plans here, here, and here. This chapter will bring new challenges for remote work. Check back soon for updates on our process.
