UX Design
On the same page: How Jamboard enhances collaboration across remote UX teams
These designers strengthen their design communications, iterations, and reviews by whiteboarding on the web.
If you work in product or UX design, whiteboarding is probably your jam.
Pop off those marker caps––dry erase markers sketch concepts and get your design, development, and content teams up to speed. But what happens when those markers dry out? The office closes? Your team isn’t local to you?
Interaction Designers Katie Riker and Roxanne Hoover use Google Jamboard to go the distance.
Before COVID-19 sent Red Hat’s offices into a remote work model, worldwide teams would whiteboard through video call: In-person colleagues would point a camera at the board to keep non-local contributors up to speed.
“Now, everyone’s just at home — there’s no whiteboards, there’s no office supplies or visual aids handy.”
— Katie Riker, Interaction Designer
Working from home brought new challenges. With no easy collaborative mediums at her disposal, Katie went back to the drawing board. Literally.
“Before I found Jamboard, I stuck a whiteboard up on a chair and tried to draw on camera,” she said. “It was horrific. No one understood what I was doing.”
Visual collaboration over BlueJeans meetings, Google hangouts, or Slack messages just didn’t cut it.
“Working with people who aren’t co-located to you, it’s hard to communicate without a common whiteboard ground,” Katie added while reflecting on her remote design work.
It’s difficult enough emerging from normal meetings with a unified understanding, let alone remote syncs. Katie reminisced about a three-month stint where, despite meetings upon meetings, her team couldn’t quite figure out what a certain design was doing.
“Everyone would come out with a different idea of what we did,” she said. “It only really changed when we had a face-to-face meeting and were able to whiteboard together.” This solution, of course, is unavailable to teams who collaborate from different locations.
Enter Jamboard, a platform that takes whiteboarding virtual.
Jamboard doesn’t quite advertise itself as a facilitator for UX design. Instead, the application presents itself as part of a package deal, to be used on a dedicated surface, incidentally called a Jamboard. (Major points to Google for creative naming on that one.)
Even without a Jamboard branded surface, the application works as a way to collaborate visually from different locations. For a global team like Red Hat’s, this distanced design capability was a major draw––remote whiteboarding sessions could become engaging for more than just the person holding the pen.
Jamboard satisfied two main criteria Katie had in her search for a remote whiteboarding solution:
1. It’s more engaging than the other screening and wireframing softwares she’d used in the past.
2. It enables a visceral experience. Everyone can talk, write, and emerge from a session with the same understanding of what was accomplished.
Shortly after Katie began using Jamboard, she looped in fellow Interaction Designer Roxanne Hoover.
Remote design work isn’t new for Roxanne. Her team, product managers, and stakeholders live around the world. Regardless of COVID-19, Jamboard’s remote solution is applicable to her teams. But in the current pandemic, it has a stronger meaning.
Roxanne frequently mentors younger designers, and she finds Jamboard provides valuable support for that communication.
“Sometimes you talk to a more inexperienced designer and they might not know the name of the PatternFly component you’re referencing, or the interaction you’re describing,” she said. “Being able to quickly sketch something, even if it’s not an exact wireframe, is way more efficient.”
Jamboard lets teams annotate, comment, and draw together in real time, troubleshooting misinterpretations or misunderstandings before they happen.
Someone doesn’t know what a card view is? Circle it. Unsure of which component another person asked about, or how a design needs to be changed? Sketch it right in view. With Jamboard, designers can explain their work the same way they create: visually.
“The nature of what we do is very visual. We work in a visual medium, period. So being able to communicate in that same medium is helpful, especially being able to describe designs to non-designers.”
— Roxanne Hoover, Interaction Designer
Jamboard offers a less time-consuming alternative to creating more precise mockups in apps like Sketch, Balsamic, or PhotoShop. In the brainstorming or investigatory stages of design, high-fidelity templates are often unnecessary and wasteful.
“We’re in SaaS development; we’re in sprints; we’re agile,” Roxanne said. “Sometimes you don’t even have the time to do that level of brainstorming for every new feature. You need to go through options quickly and refine those solutions down to the handful you’d even consider sketching in a more high-fidelity manner.”
In addition to saving time, connecting through Jamboard saves Katie and Roxanne from the sticky note show-and-tells they experienced when Red Hat first went remote.
While considering remote design collaboration pre-Jamboard, Roxanne raised a tiny notepad into frame.
“When I was working with another designer, I drew this. And I held it up to the camera,” she laughed and demonstrated. “It’s ridiculous. It works, but only as a one-way street.”
Sharing design ideas on paper left no avenue for anyone to build or expand from Roxanne’s sketch.
“There was no way for anyone to iterate on what I drew, unless they do, what?” She smiled and shook her head. “Screenshot and ask me questions?”
Katie mirrored Roxanne’s exasperation with a nod.
“And then you’re requiring everyone you talk with to not only be able to do that, and do that work, but you’re also requiring them to have those materials on hand,” she said. Assuming teammates have a notebook and pen may not be absurd, she reasoned, but it’s still an ask.
Even if notebooks and pens aren’t a burden, documenting that pen-and-paper session might be.
“Do you think I’m going to remember about this sketch in a week?” Roxanne asked, pointing to the same notepad from her example. “Who keeps track of paper any more? There’s no way to historically keep track of this design in one place.”
Jamboard, in contrast, stores slides on the cloud. Roxanne can share slides with her entire team. Everyone can access them, even after the session.
“I think Jamboard is kind of reflective of the products we use [at Red Hat],” she said. “It’s virtual. It’s accessible. It’s all online.”
Katie finds Jamboard makes successive meetings much easier. Attendees can review past work and realign on next steps, all within the same whiteboard. They can flip from slide to slide and reference what they’d like to comment on for later.
Overall, it’s a lower lift than trying to document every iteration in words.
Jamboard’s features put it just above a physical whiteboard. Katie and Roxanne said its simplicity leaves little room for confusion.
“There’s a beauty to that simplicity for adoption, especially for people not necessarily used to collaborating through this type of medium.”
— Roxanne Hoover, Interaction Designer
Even so, this simplicity does leave a few things to be desired.
Roxanne wouldn’t mind being able to manually expand an art board to accommodate larger work areas, or chop screenshots in or out of a frame to draw in their place.
Katie said the same. These features would be nice-to-haves, but working without them doesn’t compromise Jamboard’s usability. Overall, the application suits their needs.
“We adopted it because it works,” Katie said, “And that’s really all there is to it.”
Easy to use, easy to integrate: adopting Jamboard sounds like a piece of cake.
Except one barrier does stand in the way: materials. The application works best with a tablet and stylus, which could cost a pretty penny if you don’t own them already.
You can use Jamboard without that tech, but drawing with a mouse won’t offer the same precision.
“You either need to spend your own money for a tablet and stylus or find a reason to get them expensed,” Katie advised. “Starting without those materials isn’t ideal.”
Once Katie and Roxanne bought their own iPads and pencils, their design experiences with Jamboard improved.
“Drawing with your mouse is really weird,” Roxanne agreed. “Once you have the materials, it goes from being super awkward without a pencil to being amazing with one.”
Katie has been using Jamboard since June, and Roxanne is about three weeks deep. Both began without an iPad, then decided to buy materials to improve their experience.
“Drawing with your mouse is always going to be less effective than drawing with a pen,” Katie said. “A tablet with a stylus affords a lot more precision to you as a designer.”
Katie and Roxanne found ways to limit their initial expenses. They don’t have top of the line iPad Pros. Instead, they bought regular iPads and pencils.
“The pencil was $99,” said Roxanne. “I’m not scoffing at $99, but you get more than that value out of it.”
“And you could probably do it cheaper with an android tablet,” Katie noted. It all hinges on your personal preference.
On Red Hat’s UXD team, everyone works on MacBook Pros. For Katie and Roxanne, iPads made the most sense, since they can AirDrop between their tablets and computers. It’s easy to sync and access their boards on multiple platforms.
Katie said she works with some team members who’ve foregone equipment costs by using the desktop version. Because of its place in the Google Suite, Jamboard isn’t restricted to certain screens or operating systems. Other team members can access the tool on any monitor of their choosing.
This welcome variation means there’s little to no delay in firing up a session.
“It’s quick to launch,” Roxanne said. “When I use it with people, it’s more spontaneous. I’ll say, ‘Oh hey, let’s move to Jamboard,’ and we’ll ideate there because we need another tool to help.”
And since Jamboard lives on the web, it isn’t tied to any video calling software.
“I really like that it’s not inside your communication tools,” said Katie. “You’re not restricted to the space inside your video chat, so if you’re someone who likes a bigger monitor, you’re not limited.”
Both designers plan to continue their use of this remote design solution, even when Red Hat’s offices reopen.
Katie and Roxanne work with Red Hat’s UXD and Smart Management teams, with members based all over the world. As a whole, the company spans the globe––Jamboard brings their visual collaboration to scale.
It also empowers better design documentation, since teams can easily save and access their designs after creating them.
“Even if we’re all located in the same office, what do you do when you’re done whiteboarding?” Roxanne asked. “You snap a picture. From a documentation perspective, it’s static. It’s not editable any more.”
In the past, Red Hat’s Boston office used Bluescape boards to digitally whiteboard. These boards required a separate login, which deterred many designers from using them.
“Even though we had six of these giant digital whiteboards, nobody wanted to use them because we had to sign up for a whole new thing,” Katie said.
Bluescape boards didn’t live within Red Hat’s existing ecosystem. Jamboard does.
For this reason, Katie and Roxanne envision proposing an in-office switch from Bluescape boards to Jamboards, to align team communication and collaboration within the same suite.
But with the convenience of Google Suite comes potential pushback, especially in an open source company.
“It is another Google product,” Katie admitted. “So some of my developers are like, ‘Really? You’re making us use another thing made by Google?’”
Roxanne has witnessed the same hesitation toward Google Suite, which hosts most Red Hatters’ emails, calendars, and documentation services.
“It’s definitely an open source Red Hat culture thing,” said Roxanne. “There are people who don’t like Apple or Google products because they’re proprietary and they don’t have the open source mantra.”
Both designers anticipate the proprietary nature of Google, Apple, and other tablet manufacturers would raise some roadblocks to cross-team integration. Jamboard works––but it isn’t open source.
“I’m not a purist in that way,” Roxanne said. “To me, it’s all about what helps me to get my job done well.”
In this remote work environment, functionality is key. Work-from-home orders took away the opportunity to loop remote team members in via camera––everyone became remote. For Katie, Jamboard provides a necessary (and accessible) solution.
“This is something that we all have access to, where we can draw together,” she pointed out. “But if Jamboard ever fell through, as long as there were another alternative that does the same things, it would work out.”
The criteria is fairly simple: Low-barrier. Low-cost. Jamboard checks those boxes.
“It’s pretty straightforward,” Katie said, “And that’s a good thing.” Anyone with a Google account can get started with Jamboard, no hurdle jumps necessary.
That’s the main reason why, moving forward, Roxanne hopes Jamboard’s Google roots won’t keep more teams from using it.
“It’d like to see UXD use it together as a whole,” she said. “Right now, a few of us use it; we’re sprinkled in. But I could see the value of mass adoption.”
This value, Roxanne said, lies in the ability to collaborate visually regardless of location. Before, hybrid in-office and remote whiteboarding was a clunky process, ending with a blank slate. Maybe a static picture or two. Jamboard streamlines and documents each session so that each design meeting ends with clear, concrete, and editable results.
Katie and Roxanne anticipate Jamboard will improve design workflows, even after in-office work resumes.
“The more people who use it, and the more people who have a setup in which they can virtually whiteboard, the better it will be.”
— Katie Riker, Interaction Designer
Jamboard has the potential to become a long-term tool to streamline design collaboration across Red Hat’s global team.
For now, Katie and Roxanne continue to use this virtual whiteboarding solution as a way to keep even the most geographically scattered teams on the same page.
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