The First Question after a Design Workshop...
There is a big general difference between folks in smaller companies than larger ones. People in larger companies generally work with distributed team members, where *sometimes* that is true for smaller ones (like our case).
Their teams are all over the world. It's their reality. Ten developers in Rome, two designers in New York and a project manager in Austin. True story. They wish they were together (more). They wish they could have a teleporter, a hyperloop or whatever, but they can't.
I like that we are training folks in workshops where they are fully into the project, no tech for interruptions, and in that permission environment for them to be playful as kids.
But, I've been to too many design workshops when the first question right after it is:
"How do I do it with my team, which is all over the world?"
The first replies generally range from, "it's impossible" to these are the tools you can use.
My suggestion is that, before thinking about the tools (or together with their implementation) you need to think about changing the team's mindset.
Joe who is working from home can't be ignored when he wants to say something, those two hour sessions needs need to be broken down into smaller ones with smaller objectives that add up towards progress, etc.
People skills come before tech skills in order to make remote collaboration work.
Given that this was a common issue, we are bringing in Laila von Alvensleben, graduate from Hyper Island who did her thesis on digital nomads and design collaboration to share her experience researching and practicing remote design. Sign up here, it's free.
