As of mid-March, 12 months have officially passed since hundreds of millions of people around the world began working remotely to help slow the spread of the newly emerging coronavirus. What many of us thought might be a month or so of “flattening the curve” has now been a full year of working from our homes, with far-reaching effects on our relationships, processes, and work habits.
Everyone has their own tried-and-true methods to jumpstart creativity. For many, the process involves physically writing down ideas on Post-it® Notes and then huddling around the whiteboard to flesh them out with colleagues. But as remote and distributed work environments become the norm, teams need a new way to ideate and collaborate online while still allowing for independent exploration with pen and paper.
Oh, the blank canvas. While the freedom of a blank slate may be a breath of fresh air for the new year, when you’re in a bit of a bind it can be overwhelming. You can end up spending hours searching for that creative spark and setting everything up just the way you like it from scratch—or you can tap into one of our templates to get the ideas flowing. When we started building templates for the first time, we wanted to give users the quickest of starts.
You know that engagement is the secret sauce for any virtual meeting or workshop. But, it’s tough to get people to stay focused—let alone actively participate. A recent survey found that more than half of workers admit they do other things (like check email or peruse social media) during online meetings. This is where workshop activities come in handy.
“Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you – they might have different tastes.” — George Bernard Shaw When it was time to look back and reflect on my three-month onboarding period at Miro, I was convinced that I’ve never been part of such a collaborative, open team culture. Curiously enough, I’ve never met anyone from my team (or company) in person.
Since the dawn of time—when humans were still living in caves—we’ve been solving life’s problems through innovation. Back then, we invented fire and hunting spears. Today, we create things like portable toasters and wireless headphone translators to meet our needs. As a product designer, I’ve learned that great design comes down to one important thing: listening. I practice the principles of design thinking to solve problems in a human-centric way.
Are the people in your organization equipped with the tools they need to get their work done efficiently, effectively, with minimal roadblocks, and maybe—just maybe—have fun while doing so? This is not a distant reality. 2021 will be the year for IT professionals to step up and play a major role in driving organizational success by helping employees thrive despite the challenges presented by distributed work.
Whether you do it quarterly, annually, or even weekly, running a planning workshop can be challenging. You need to make sure everyone understands the big picture and vision. You also need to ensure each person has a voice in the planning process. Finally, you need to lead the group to alignment and verify that they’re clear on next steps. These are the challenges I confronted while leading a goal-setting session at Miro’s recent Executive team offsite (virtual this year).
When most people think of startup incubators, they probably imagine famous hubs for startups like Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Austin. The small team at INVANTI is trying to change that paradigm and cultivate entrepreneurs from their startup studio in South Bend, Indiana.
We have been running our own design and development agency for over 10 years, successfully collaborating while fully remote since long before the COVID-19 crisis—in fact, most of our international team has never met in person. Several years ago, we shifted from email to using an online chat tool. We were looking for ways to improve team communication and boost morale.
