Issue 21: our pick of the best tools to make collaborating digitally work brilliantly
Since we last put together an edition of Sparks & Kindling, the world has changed. Many things that were thought impossible or immutable less than 8 weeks ago have been radically rethought. And the world of work has changed more than most. So instead of our usual fare, this time we thought we’d share with you all of our fully road-tested tools, tips and tricks for running projects collaboratively online. We’ve been using some of these extensively over the last 2 years and others we massively accelerated into as soon as the threat of lockdown emerged.
Hopefully this provides a useful and practical guide to the now, rather than our usual peak into the future.
BBC News
Zoom
So let’s start with the basics and currently the best video meeting tech is without doubt zoom. We insist on cameras on and avoid using mute too much – it’s important to be together and be human as much as possible - seeing each other’s faces matter. Zoom also has the best functionality around breakout rooms – being able to work together in smaller teams and then come back together for sharing and next steps is how people work best in our experience. And wherever anyone is in the world right now, we’re all working from home and the reality of that struggle is true for everyone, even if Professor Robert Kelly’s interruptions were the most memorable! So let it all in – dogs, children, the lot. It helps everyone feel a little more connected in these very disconnected times.
wheretheressmoke/miro
miro
There are a few options around whiteboarding technology out there currently, including some handy basic tools on zoom and Microsoft Teams that do make meetings more interactive. But if you want to up your game into full-on collaboration across projects, then miro is our choice. We create the equivalent of virtual rooms, packed with customer journey maps, adaptable feedback tools, video and image content and stimulus – infact possibly a wider and better array of what we might have in a face-to-face session. We use time differently when we collaborate digitally and clients can visit their boards for inspiration or to add in more thinking outside of our formal times together in session. Overall doing it digitally isn’t fundamentally different to face-to-face, so long as you still have great content and great design…the only big difference is you need to create clear navigation and instructions as part of the design of the boards.
wheretheressmoke/indeemo
Indeemo
We have been using mobile ethnography as our major tool for insight for well over 2 years now. Consumers, patients and shoppers share more with us, in more depth, with photos and videos as well as text, and give us more profound insight into our areas of research. We augment with video interviews as well, and we give an array of different tasks to perform over extended periods – from 7 days to over 5 weeks. Age hasn’t been an issue (the over 70’s are more adept than ever at wielding a smartphone to talk to their families as they self-isolate now). The insight we have generated has been superb. Otter.ai is another handy tool to have on your smartphone to record and transcribe interviews as you go. Needs a bit of correcting and editing, but it gets most of it.
Jaws/Universal Studios
You’re gonna need a bigger screen
Buy a monitor you can plug your laptop into and not only will you be able to see both the whiteboard and your colleagues on zoom at the same time, but your back will thank you too. Don’t sit with the sun behind you…it looks like Bela Lugosi has joined the meeting. Looking forward you might need to ask for a laptop with a bit more grunt and a better CPU for all the apps that you will now be running concurrently.
Dump Internet Explorer
Firstly, the golden rule is use the apps, don’t run these things off a browser window. The apps are better and have much more functionality, period. So make sure your IT team have opened up enough that you can download the apps. And if in the worst of all worlds you need to run anything off a browser….make sure you don’t bother with Internet Explorer – it isn’t fit for purpose anymore and you’ll need a better browser for the functionality you’ll now be using.
We hope you’re all staying safe and well. It will be great to see many of you once we’re all allowed out once again. In the meantime, there is much you can do with just a few tools, and in many ways we feel there’s a lot we can all take forward into the future as better ways of working. All the very best from the where there’s smoke team, and if you’re seeing us on camera in the next few weeks, it will be with our dogs and children too, no doubt!