Voices of UX
Working through COVID-19: An interview with Red Hat’s User Experience Design team
Red Hat’s UXD team has been designing, developing, and collaborating from home during a global pandemic. Here’s how they make it work.
March 2020: Red Hat transitions all associates to a work-from-home model.
October 2020: We’re still there.
For a global group like Red Hat’s User Experience Design (UXD) team, remote work isn’t new. But a full work-from-home model is.
Since March, Red Hatters have been working from their homes. Some work from a dedicated office space, while others work from repurposed basements and family rooms. Some live with families or spouses; some live alone.
No two home environments look or feel alike: each one brings unique adjustments, challenges, and lessons with it. For three of UXD’s members, this statement couldn’t be more true.
UX Researcher Wes Luttrell and Interaction Designer Ben Clark used to work from Red Hat’s headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina. Now, they both live at home with their families––Wes’s family just welcomed a new baby, and Ben’s supports three children in their teens.
Interaction Designer Nicole Thoen used to work from Red Hat’s office in Westford, Massachusetts. Now, she works from home, where she and her husband raise their three-year-old and eight-month-old.
Like many Red Hatters and individuals now working remotely, Wes, Ben, and Nicole saw their work and home lives collide.
At the beginning of October, we connected on a Google Meet to walk through each of their experiences. From home, I learned how this global pandemic has transformed their working world––and how they’ve been working through it.
What did your work experience look like pre-COVID and how has that changed since you’ve been working from home?
Wes: I was going to the office an average of four or five days per week. I enjoyed it, and had a nice routine going. I liked to use the gym at the office and rode my bike to work, so that’s something that’s clearly changed since. I’m not riding my bike as much. Up until recently, I haven’t been exercising quite as much either. And that’s probably because we had our first child in April, so that changed things up, too. These days, my work schedule is different from the normal 9-to-5 or 8:30-to-4:30 I was doing before. I wake up, get our kid ready, and then 7:30-9:00 in the morning is work. I try to do some kind of exercise after that. It’s been a puzzle of when and where I can fit everything in. Going into this, aside from our kid, I thought, “Maybe I’m going to have more time to do things!”
Wes chuckled.
Wes: Somehow, that hasn’t been the case. We’ve adapted to this. My wife used to work in her office in Durham, so she was driving three or four days a week, sometimes an hour each week. My commute didn’t change much––I didn’t gain much more time. But for her, getting roughly two hours of her weekdays back was a big deal. The biggest change for me has been a less structured day outside of meetings, and trying not to just hone in on work for 10 hours straight. Trying to make time to sit and eat lunch away from a computer, that’s been something I’ve had to keep in the back of my brain to do.
Wes gestured to the back of his head with open palms while echoing the reminder he keeps there throughout the day, “Get away from the screen!”.
Wes: The main difference for me is trying to find time for all the things I used to do that were previously baked in to my routine. I had breakfast, then I’d leave for work, work out, and come home. Now, it’s like… When does all that fit in?
Ben: That sounds very familiar. I was used to a 45-minute to an hour commute each way, depending on traffic and the time I left the office, because I’m up in Wake Forest. Normally, I’d go in to the office three or four times each week. I miss walking to 42nd and Lawrence for coffee, and the lunch breaks. I didn’t realize how much walking we were doing downtown, since now I don’t leave the house very much. That lack of exercise has other side effects.
Cue a laugh. From its perch behind him, Ben’s Red Hat fedora seemed like it laughed along, too.
Ben: The context switch isn’t here any more. Once you get to work, you can focus on work. Once you get home, you can focus on home. But when it’s all right here, with three kids and virtual learning, it’s… Wow. It’s been a pretty rough adjustment.
In the midst of work-from-home chaos, Ben expressed the value of keeping his priorities straight.
Ben: You know, I actually took a course on prioritizing to basically figure out how to focus on the things that are actually important and not so much of the random stuff that pops up while working from home. Organizing that, and my thoughts, helps. I used to be able to keep track of things in my head at work, and now since it’s all combined, I can’t keep track of anything. So writing it down, either on the computer or on a piece of paper, has helped immensely.
Ben smiled as he qualified his tactics as helpful tools, but not miracle-workers.
Ben: There are still days where it’s a struggle. Accepting that it’s going to be like that sometimes has also been helpful.
Nicole: For me, I live about three miles away from the Westford office. I went in every day. I was one of the only people in the office who went in that often; there were four of us on UXD who did. At home, I have a three-year-old and now I also have an eight-month-old. They don’t understand the difference between Mom when she’s working at home and Mom when she’s not working at home. We try very hard to make that very clear, but it’s been difficult.
Nicole considered how her home work situation impacts her work as a whole.
Nicole: I benefit greatly from accountability at work, in terms of my ability to stay on task and stay focused. Those are the main reasons why I liked to go in to the office versus work from here. It’s been really hard to not be there right now. I get interrupted often. And when I struggle to figure out the coding solution I’m working on, it’s difficult to not just walk away.
Nicole let out an exasperated breath.
Nicole: From home, there’s very little accountability and very few resources at my disposal to power through those kinds of coding roadblocks. So I can have days that feel very unproductive right now. But some days are fine.
We were interrupted by one of Nicole’s little ones opening the door behind her. She waved and blew a kiss with a quick, “Hi, bye!” before turning back to the camera.
Nicole: Sometimes they just pop in to say “Hi, bye.”
Nicole said heartwarming moments like this happen fairly often. But working from home with young children isn’t always an adorable walk in the park. Between work and family responsibilities, she said, time to take care of herself can be difficult to come by.
Nicole: Similar to Wes and Ben, I have the same slight decline in active minutes every day. Hopefully that’ll adjust. I tend to try to work out early in the morning before the kids wake up because that’s the only chance I get. I’ve been so tired lately that it’s been impossible, but we’re going to get there again! I think that will help my focus a lot. In general, it’s a lot of what Wes was talking about––it feels like there’s not enough time to take care of myself and all the things around me because there are no boundaries set between any of it.
Those blurred lines seem to be a common experience for everyone as we navigate working from home. Have you discovered any helpful strategies or tools for adding some structure back into your day?
Wes: I did notice we had a big change in the middle of August, when we put our son in day care. It wouldn’t have been a conversation before COVID; we would have just done it. But putting him in the care of others during a pandemic was a weird situation. We really had to think about it. That has added a bit more structure to the day. He’s just about six months old, so when he’s awake, he has to be with somebody. There’s a lot that goes into that. Now, we have a most-day routine where I get up with him, we get ready, we feed the dogs, and then my wife drives him to day care. So that’s a mark in the day where if the weather’s nice, we’ll take the dogs for a walk. It added bit more structure back into the day by creating a decision point. And then pick-up, which is usually my job, gets me to a stopping point and gives me, like Nicole mentioned, some more accountability. If I look at the clock and realize it’s 3:30, I have about an hour left to close out some projects. It keeps me on pace. So that’s something maybe we didn’t try, but was more forced on us due to the circumstances.
Wes also talked about a small change he’s made to his daily routine that contributes to feeling a bit more control over his workday.
Wes: I’ve also been telling myself to go eat lunch upstairs, since I work in the basement. Sometimes I won’t even take my phone; I’ll just stare out the window or something. It’s just better than sitting here surrounded by screens. I haven’t tried anything earth-shattering, but that scheduling from day care serves as bookends to certain parts of the day, kind of like a commute to and from the office.
Ben: I think my home life has gotten a little bit easier with virtual school, which sounds really weird.
We all shared a knowing smile. 2020 has thrown many a weird-sounding concept our way.
Ben: My kids are a little older; I can’t imagine having a kid younger than 10. I don’t know how you guys do it, because at an older age, they can be pretty self-sufficient. At 8AM we poke our heads in and make sure they’re logged on. Although today, they have a teacher-work day, so it’s kind of a freebie––we just have to make sure they’re not getting into trouble. Um… I forget where I was going with that. Welcome to work from home!
Everyone shared a nod and smile of solidarity. We’d all been in Ben’s same shoes.
Ben: But yeah, I’ve been making time for the little projects at home and treating them with the same importance as the little projects at work. I’ve been trying to restore my car for the past forever. Making time, even if it’s for just an hour here and there, removes everything from the picture. Mentally, it helps too, because I’m making progress on this monster of a project that’s going to take years to do. I’m inching it forward. I realized when I started making progress on that project, I got more done at work the next day. It helps me keep that focus. And prioritizing a list really helps me, too.
Nicole: Hm… I think any day that has structure built in has helped. My husband is a stay-at-home dad, so that makes some things easier than they could be, in terms of keeping the kids entertained and meeting their needs. I don’t have to devote too much brain power to that during the work day if I don’t want to. One of the best things we did over the summer was get a mother’s helper to come in (or, I guess technically in our case, it would be a father’s helper) two mornings a week. Even just for me, that took a mental load off, knowing my family was all happy out there and my husband was feeling productive. Any small way that I can accept help or find creative solutions to manufacture help has been awesome. Also, I’m not the kind of person who tends to have a super busy work calendar; I develop and write code almost all day. So days that do have meetings tend to be good for me. That schedule-based structure helps.
Nicole shared a way she’s been using online communication tools to her advantage.
Nicole: The last thing I’ve done that’s helped with productivity and focus is coding together with coworkers on a call. We’ll have the cameras and microphones off, but we’ll both be on the call still so we can just unmute when we have questions. Those calls were almost like having someone sitting at a table with me again. I didn’t want to be unfocused when I had somebody on a call with me. That helped me build the accountability and resources I needed without blindly interrupting somebody for help. Because if they’re on a call with me, I know they’re not already in another meeting, so I can just ask.
That parlays right into my next question: Have you noticed any changes or shifts in the way your teams communicate with one another or adjustments in how they share workloads?
Wes: The research team is all in different areas. Essentially our team is almost all remote to one another. For us, not a lot changed. We were always pretty comfortable with just pinging one another on Slack or asking each other to hop on BlueJeans. One of my teammates who was fairly new once this whole thing started set up a few recurring coffee chats. It’s half hashing out questions or issues with work, and half talking about what we’re watching on Netflix or something. If anything, there’s just even more ease with hopping on a call or people being more available. When I was on my parental leave, timelines got accelerated, and some of my teammates jumped in and kept things moving, which was awesome.
Ben: Most of the day to day didn’t change a whole lot, because almost everyone I work with is based in Boston, the Czech Republic, or scattered all over the world. Some of us would even wind up on the same call staring at our computers in the same office building anyway. I guess the face-to-face meetings and quarterly events are lacking, but there have been some good adaptations. One of my product managers will record a segment at home and then send the recording to everyone, so instead of a week-long face-to-face, we have a few days to watch a couple videos so when the meeting happens later in the week, we’re all up to speed and can go through any highlights or questions. It’s made the virtual collaborative setting a lot more organized, so you’re not just sitting there staring at a computer screen for a week straight. That gets really old. With this adaptation, you’re still staring at a screen, but at least it’s with different people. That’s been a huge change, and it’s actually worked really well.
Nicole: I think most of what Wes and Ben have said goes for me, too. Our weekly standup includes a random question just to break the pattern up a bit. Questions like, “What was an exciting thing you did this weekend?” I think those kinds of disruptions have been intentional and effective. People have been making time for talking about life and getting to know one another like we would have done in the office with our colleagues next to us. I have a tea time chat with some people from the Westford office, since we usually ate lunch every day together.
Nicole said COVID’s impact is observable less on Red Hat’s workflow than it is on everyone’s individual work environment.
Nicole: We had already established a good scattered-team workflow before. That’s an advantage a lot of tech companies have, especially Red Hat, since we’re so international.
Wes: I feel a little bit guilty saying that I miss going to lunch with a group of people a couple times a week, but that’s one thing I do miss because I like the people I work with! I think we have a great organization, and it was nice to do that. I know Ben will laugh at this, but we don’t have any of the Dash Question-of-the-Days any more. Dash used to have these hypothetical questions and you know he thought about them beforehand.
Wes laughed as he reminisced about one of his favorite Question-of-the-Days posed by his and Ben’s coworker.
Wes: My favorite one was: “There’s a restaurant that run by a dog who’s the best chef in the world. If you order something, it’s going to be the best whatever-that-is you’ve ever had, but there’s a 25% chance it’ll be whatever a dog would want to eat, like dog food or a dirty tennis ball. Once you get your food, you can’t reorder… Would you chance it?” I’m missing those somewhat spontaneous lunch adventures. That’s something I’m hoping we can get back to someday.
Ben: Yeah, we kind of vent on the way to lunch. Then once you’re at lunch, no work talk. But then on the way back to the office, you’re back into work mode, and off you go. I miss interacting with people outside of the people I’m in weekly meetings with. Not that I don’t love them, but there are 75 other UXDers.
Wes: And counting, usually.
Nicole discussed how her team is trying to elevate communication to bridge their newfound distance.
Nicole: There’s been a conscious effort on behalf of my team to increase communication and encourage asking for help. I think, when things are getting backed up, there’s no visibility into why, or at least less than there was before. A lot of people on my team worked in an office at least part of the week before this, and were in face-to-face meetings more often than they obviously are now. So the team has had to practice intentional reminders: If someone’s spinning their wheels, saying, “I’ve heard you say you’re spinning your wheels for the past few days. Let’s actually talk about it.” I think that kind of stuff would take care of itself more naturally in the office than it would in this remote work environment.
Let’s fast forward a bit into the future. Once our work patterns return back to whatever normal they’re going to be, what would you say is the most valuable takeaway you’ll carry with you from this time?
Wes: The first one that immediately popped into my head is, “You can do this.” I’ve never worked from home for an extended period of time. I’ve always worked in office environments. The big revelation was, once my wife and I were both working through the first few weeks and tech support hiccups, it’s doable. And we’re making small tweaks every so often. Right now, for example, I’m shopping for a new chair. The biggest thing was learning that all of this is doable. It can be done, so don’t be scared of working from home.
Ben: I think I’ll be a lot more organized, once I’m able to go into the office all day. Or if I’m at home, my kids won’t will probably be back in normal school, so I’ll be able to focus on everything I’m supposed to. I’ll miss my standing desk, though! The day we learned we were all going to work from home, I ordered a standing desk for myself. At work, I don’t have one. But who knows, with new office layouts. Maybe we’ll all get upgraded to standing desks.
Nicole: On a very personal level, I’ve been feeling very blessed that I’m getting to spend over the first full year of my son’s life with him at home. That’s not something I expected. It’s also cool to get a front row seat to watching my husband spend time with our kids and raise them. I also have learned a lot about communication technologies that will only help, I’m sure, in a company where I spend so much time communicating on a computer.
I couldn’t help but chuckle. In my own remote onboarding experience back in May, I leaped through many IT hurdles. From dropped calls to faulty connections, we’d all seen lighter days when our tech worked properly––and the darker ones, when it wasn’t.
Nicole: I’m sure I’ve developed a lot more endurance when it comes to focus and persistence to deal with problems on my own than I would have otherwise.
Do you envision yourselves going back to the same in-office patterns you had before COVID-19, or do you see working from home becoming more of a mainstay in your work life?
Wes: Can somebody else go first? My dog is going crazy, just one second.
Wes laughed and removed his earbuds to check in on his furry friend.
Ben: Par for the course.
We all couldn’t help but smile — from curious kids to other family members putzing around the house, we’ve all had no shortage of unforeseen (yet endearing) interruptions.
Ben: I was working from home a few days a week, and I could easily see that being more. Half the reason for me going in to the Raleigh office was so I wouldn’t lose my parking pass for parking in the tower. It was that, and I didn’t want to lose my seat on the floor. But that’s neither here nor there now. Assuming we’re phased back in eventually, I’ll probably be going in to the office a lot, just because I miss it.
Nicole: I will be in the office. I live so close. Even when my son was born, I was looking forward to going to work and coming home for lunch to nurse him. Being at work is still easy to adjust to whatever life throws, because I can just drive five minutes and be back where I need to be. I gain so much from being in the office. When my kids are not home during the day, in a few years, maybe I’ll be home more again.
Nicole also shared some forthcoming developments in her work-from-home routine.
Nicole: I’m actually very excited for the winter. One of my best friends and her family are going to spend the winter in Florida, and they’re going to leave their house empty. So I’ll have another place to work. I’m so excited! It’s further than the office though, but only by a little bit.
Wes: I don’t know what I’ll be doing. Like what Ben said, initially, I’ll go in and feel it out. The desk space in the Raleigh tower is always at like 102% capacity––and that might be a low estimate. I’m interested to see how things are going to change, and those changes will probably dictate what I do. I don’t have great needs when it comes to peripherals; I can get by with mostly just a monitor. At a certain point, if we do go to something more like hoteling seats, is our team going to be more scattered? Are we going to have a certain section for our team?
Wes said knowing he can work from home successfully will also help inform his decision.
Wes: There are some days where I think, “I’ve got to get out of this house!” Going to the office allows you to forget about that home project you need to do when you get home that night.
Wes looked over his shoulder at the rest of his basement.
Wes: I look over here when I say that because our basement is just full of baby stuff, and needs to get cleaned up. That’s another weird thing about working from home. The little home projects and tasks are always staring at you. So being able to compartmentalize and go to the office to forget about those, even just for part of the day, is nice.
Nicole: I’m paying my sister to clean my house on Friday, so that’s exciting!
Nicole laughed. Wes looked like he considered making an offer for Nicole’s sister to do the same.
My next question takes on decluttering of a different kind. If you could boil down your work-from-home experience to one word or phrase, what would you choose?
Ben: Organized chaos. Because it’s just random stuff popping up out of the blue, and you’ve got to deal with it.
Wes: I have two. The more appropriate one is…
Wes raised a sticky note into view.
Wes: Post-it Note, if I can use that? Because I never really used them before, but now I’ve got a whole system. The bottom part of this monitor is the perfect spot for them, and I just go down the list. I never needed to do that in the office. I like paper notes, but these sticky notes have been useful for me.
The other one I was going to say is “bandwidth” because with everything going on, when my wife and I are both on video calls at the same time, it screws up. Weekly, we have some weird hiccup. We play musical desks––if she has to give an important presentation, she’ll take my spot down here to plug directly in to our network.
Nicole: I don’t know if I can think of one word.
Nicole hummed. We all nodded. It’s difficult to distill such a complex experience into a simple phrase.
Nicole: It’s been hard. That’s probably the most all-encompassing word I can think of. Not the bad kind of hard all the time, sometimes the growing kind of hard. I’m really hopeful and excited that one day we will not be stuck at home all the time.
Wes: Even just having the option to go to the office would ease a little bit of all of this.
Ben: Particularly, if it’s a nice day. I love driving, and I haven’t put nearly as much mileage on my cars as I used to. I miss it.
I chimed in to share that my family got a new car right when the COVID-19 lockdowns first began. We’ve barely driven it since March.
The four of us spent our last few minutes sharing how little we were driving and moving through space. Beyond walks, runs, and essential errands, we weren’t putting in very much mileage at all. And while each of us spoke about vehicles, it felt like the physical stasis we were hinting at symbolized so much more.
After we wrapped our call, I couldn’t help but reflect on the long-term impact COVID-19 is having on team members like Wes, Ben, and Nicole. It’s teaching us resourcefulness. Resilience. Resolve.
So long as the global pandemic continues its hold, these workplace and work pattern changes look like they’re here to stay. Which, at first thought, may seem… discouraging.
But it doesn’t have to be.
I thought about each Red Hatter’s work-from-home takeaways and phrases. Controlled chaos. Hard. Doable.
When strung together, they become a statement infused with promise, just short enough to fit on one of Wes’s Post-it Notes:
For most of us, the controlled chaos of work-from-home can be hard. But, with the right support, it’s doable.
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