With fearsome speed the covid-19 global pandemic has prompted some radical transformations, not mere changes, that will have long-standing effects \u00e2\u20ac\u201d as a true \u00e2\u20ac\u0153black swan\u00e2\u20ac\u009d event like 9\/11. A new normalcy will prevail, demanding profound adjustments to our behaviors, and attitudes. This is true across many facets of our lives \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to focus on the area of hi-tech office work, especially as a designer in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153three in a box\u00e2\u20ac\u009d collaboration with peers in engineering and product management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my LinkedIn feed, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s currently happening described as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153strange times\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bizarre circumstances\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00c2\u00a0 perhaps a polite way of hinting at new difficulties for hi-tech workers, forced to continue their work from self-isolated contexts (aka, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153home\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). Putting aside inevitable disruptions to home life with awkward, fraught \u00e2\u20ac\u0153blurring of (actual) boundaries\u00e2\u20ac\u009d , a key aspect of the uncertainty involves the challenge of how to sustain such business continuity\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6and one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own sense of self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, there are plenty of good videoconferencing apps with chat and team features, as well collaborative docs\/apps like G-Suite and Office 365. For designers there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Figma and online whiteboarding\/brainstorming apps like Mural or Miro. But those are tools and tactics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really being upended, and what are we really missing?\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To enable continuity of work across contexts, there needs to be means of ensuring communications, which involve dialogues to debate issues, frame up and generate ideas, prioritizing points, come to closure and making decisions. Much of this involves storytelling and engagement with audiences in a high-fidelity (facial and bodily gestures, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153reading the room\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) and coordinated manner. The higher order goals of enabling collective partnership and genuine respectful collaboration still matter. We must ensure those are not merely supplanted by virtual tools, or that the tools (and their inherent frictions) become the focus at the risk of losing the cohesion of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153working together\u00e2\u20ac\u009d towards a goal or mission.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, as a cross-functional designer, I worry about missing or losing the following, which I find essential to team success:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Modes of presence, levels of fidelity, visual presentation, live\/real-time debates and spontaneous creativity \u00e2\u20ac\u201d these are all essential underlying aspects of continuous business and design work that we need to consider as we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re wrangling with the tools and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153work from home\u00e2\u20ac\u009d setups. But at least knowing what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re missing can help us discover what needs to be retained and valued amid radical transformation\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6and how it might live in new forms.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, as a designer, I wonder\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 How Might We\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 introduce and sustain those unique qualities of physical in-person, shared physical space interactions and communications amid virtual contexts, across geographic areas and time zones? How could we manipulate the digital tools for online work to enable what we miss in the real world? And more likely, how may we create new ways of interacting that speak to underlying needs for social interaction, collaboration, moments of joy and surprise? More on this soon\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With fearsome speed the covid-19 global pandemic has prompted some radical transformations, not mere changes, that will have long-standing effects \u00e2\u20ac\u201d as a true \u00e2\u20ac\u0153black swan\u00e2\u20ac\u009d event like 9\/11. A new normalcy will prevail, demanding profound adjustments to our behaviors, and attitudes. This is true across many facets of our lives \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like … Continue reading “What are we missing here?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1168,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions\/1168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}