How we design remotely at Shōgun

Good design is a collaborative practice, one that can benefit immensely from in-person communication, but just isn’t possible with a fully distributed team. How do we pull off being a highly efficient design team while working thousands of miles apart?

We keep timezones in mind

The first designer outside of myself to join Shogun was in Rome, Italy. The next was in LA. After those first hires we decided that we would keep everyone else inside those timezone bounds. While our engineering team is spread out globally, we wanted to keep the design discipline collaborative and highly in sync. The driving factor behind that decision was being able to have the entire design team online and in a meeting once a day. It left good overlap at the beginning of the day for the West Coast team and at the end for the European designers.

One added benefit is we have really good timezone coverage for design issues, and it allows designers to get unblocked through getting feedback while they’re offline.

Since our squads are based out of wildly different timezones (almost all of them!), we pair up designers with other disciplines where timezones make sense. Design can be tightly integrated and present with each other, while each designer can be present with their squad. That creates really valuable insight into every aspect of the company at all times.

We also try not to bug each other if it’s outside of working hours. Utilize timezones to your benefit and realize the downsides and be respectful.

We keep meetings to a minimum

Outside of 1on1’s, we only have 3 scheduled meetings every week for designers, and then each designer will sync up with their squad on their own rhythm.

Here’s an overview of our meetings and their purpose.

Mondays we sync up and kickoff the week. We start by talking about our weekends, then dive into a quick roundtable of what everyone focused on last week and what their goals are for this week. We then discuss any housekeeping items and I provide context for strategic/company changes that might be coming from leadership. Last we dive into a question of the week asked by a different team member each week in an attempt to learn more about each other and become closer as a team.

Wednesdays we show off in progress work. Every designer is encouraged to show what they’re working on providing context to their problem area, and asking for the necessary level of feedback they require. The designer then posts the work in Slack afterwards for more directed feedback.

Thursdays are our hangouts. We discuss team problems, new tooling, share inspiring work, or just generally talk about design as a practice.

Even though we’re fully remote we manage to be a very highly productive team with less than 3 hours of recurring meetings every week.

Whenever possible we do things a-sync. A meeting isn’t always the answer.

We pair up with Design Buddies

Every week we pair up designers and encourage them to expose each other to their problem area. This pairs up marketing designers with product designers and product designers between different products. This allows everyone exposure into what other departments are working on, and allows designers to stretch different creative muscles every week.

Every grouping treats the exercise differently, but generally people will meet for a few hours and either work on projects live, or diverge and come back together with results and give each other feedback.

We hire the right people

Ultimately the team is what you make of it. Here’s what we look for when hiring for Shogun UX:

• People who have worked remotely before. It’s hard to learn how to work remotely and know how to make yourself productive. If you have a proven track record of remote work that’s a huge leg up.
• People who are fairly senior. I don’t think we’ll ever hire interns for the team. While we promote personal growth, the reality of working remote is that you likely need to have experience being a designer already.
• People without an ego. There can be a lot of miscommunication working remotely and we look for people who are going to make the product and company better and support each other from afar.
• People who complement each other. We don’t hire the same person at different levels, we try to hire people with new skills and new experiences. This allows us to lean on each other and learn from each other. Since everyone is fairly senior, everyone can handle a project from beginning to end.
• People who are organized. One of the biggest keys to remote work is documentation. We write down everything. We document process, we write down problems, solutions, data, and analysis, and we keep everything tidy.
• Different people. Being able to hire people in lots of countries and of varied backgrounds allows us to have a lot of different viewpoints on the team. Our company is spread across 20 countries, and that is a big benefit when it comes to understanding users and creating a great product.

Interested in learning about who is designing for Shōgun? Read about the team here.