How to work from far away

To be very honest with you, I didn’t ask myself this question the first time I flew 10 000km away from Paris for the months to come.

I should have, as the way of working I had in my office needed to be adapted to those new conditions, and it took me quite some try to find the accurate workflow.

Find your routine

I used to be afraid of the word “routine”. It sounded like a repetitive and depressive thing, something I felt I would never experience as a Nomad Remote Product Designer. I thought I would work during the day, backpack at night, move from cities to new places every given day.

Oh dear, how badly opinionated was my definition of a routine.

Routine is a gift, especially in those conditions.

Remote working, even from far away, isn’t vacationing. It’s doing your work, but remotely. Simple. Would you everyday change the place you’re working from? Chances are, probably not.

Before understanding this, I was working almost immediately once I would land to a place, and it was a lot of struggle. I didn’t know where to work from 9am to 5pm, in which place I would make my calls with my team, etc…

It was clear I wouldn’t be able to continue like this. I was losing quite some time and stressing myself for nothing.

After a few tries, I developed some rules to make things easier:

Duration: Stay from 2 weeks to 1 month or 2 in a given place

Stay from 2 weeks to 1 month or 2 in a given place Exploration: Take 1 or 2 days OFF if needed on arrival to explore and find places I could work from (usually, Hotel Lobbies, Coffee places, National Library, Parks and very few often, co-working places)

Take 1 or 2 days OFF if needed on arrival to explore and find places I could work from (usually, Hotel Lobbies, Coffee places, National Library, Parks and very few often, co-working places) Network: Give a shot at FAST (Netflix’s network speed measuring tool) to rank the internet quality of those places

Give a shot at FAST (Netflix’s network speed measuring tool) to rank the internet quality of those places Breakfast: Check where I could take my breakfast from (if not cooking it myself)

Check where I could take my breakfast from (if not cooking it myself) Sync: Mix everything to have an applicable routine

Manage your time

Depending on where you’re working from, you might have a luxury very few Designers can brag about: focus time.

Time and Attention are our most precious ressources, and with the time zone difference, you might have several hours without being interrupted by a Slack notification (well, if Slack is your biggest issue, there’s probably easier ways than leaving to the opposite side of the world you would say…).

This is kind of the Holy Grail.

In this context, it is important to set time for you to focus, and time to sync and share the work done with your team.

To make the best of this focus period, I used to dedicate some time to plan the following day and prepare the tasks I would spend my time on. Trick is that, as a Remote Worker, you’re fully in charge of your time, and it can be tempting to be distracted by something else.

Paihia, New Zealand

Planning and prioritizing helped me manage this precious ressource.

When I was working from Singapore or New Zealand, I knew I would have 4 to 6 hours alone to focus before syncing with my team in Europe. Finding the good balance for focus and sharing has been a key element to stay productive when working remotely.

Ideate remotely

Usually, Ideation is done during the Discovery phase of our Product Framework, and remember, this is the step we try to be together as much as possible. But no matter if it’s because you’re the one far away or the people you’re working with, ideate remotely can happen way more often than you would think when you’re part of a remote first company.

Knowing how to hold ideation meeting and workshop can be a tricky situation. Internet is full of ressources to articulate Remote Workshop, but here’re the few keys we’ve been using so far to make it work:

Remote Workshop means it’s parity time!

If member of the Workshop is remote, then everyone should be in a remote condition. This means that if one of us happens to use Zoom to talk with us, we all jump on Zoom as well and dispatch from each others.

It can be very easy for someone being remote to feel excluded when everyone is talking in the same room. Noise, bad network can make it a nightmare call for the remote person. By enforcing everyone to be on Zoom, we make sure we’re all on the same table and create a safe environment for sharing ideas.

Reproducing a white boarding environment

During those remote workshops, Product Designers are often designated to animate them. Overtime, Designer role evolved. From being Creators and Thinkers, they are now being expected to be Facilitators as well.

Some of our Product Designers, Product Managers and Engineering Managers are equipped with iPad and Pencil. Alongside a collaborative white boarding software such as Miro, we try to reproduce the dynamic which happens in those face to face workshop.

Define a clear agenda & goal

When doing a remote activity, a person’s attention span time is often way shorter than when doing the same activity with real person next to each other. It can be very easy to be distracted by minor things and quickly lost interest for what’s happening.

Defining shorter sessions with an agenda and clear expectations helps fight this habit, and this is where the facilitator role take central stage: it’s not always easy to play the Cerber and make sure we’re not deviating off road, but this is the most important responsability to make sure the workshop is doing well and no one is feeling like they are wasting their time.

Test from far away

With defining the correct problem to solve, testing your solution is probably the most important step on our Product Framework. And again, there’re plenty of ressources online to learn more about remote testing, more than I could ever share in this article.

Still, there’re a few keys to share to help you decide if doing remote testing is the best option for you, and if you should be here to do the testing yourself or not. Those are the questions I asked myself each time to take the decision:

Which kind of feedback am I looking for?

Which test or protocol can help to get those feedback?

Do I need to create a specific testing environment to get the feedback I’m looking for?

With very few bits of context, does the people or users around me can help me get those feedback?

As a Ride-Sharing Company, it was quite easy to find in the street of some popular cities users who have already encountered a product like ours. I think that any user can give you valuable feedback, it’s just a matter of what feedback you’re looking for.

Trust your Product Manager

I have the belief there is a big overlap between Product Managers & Product Designers’s role and what they’re able to do. Both should be able to take part into each other processes and participate to it without any frustration or exclusion.

Together, they form the Problem Framer & Problem Solver duo, and sharing your toys is the best way to work together in the most efficient environment.

As part of this duo, both should join when testing the solution, and if one happens to be remote, in our case the Product Designer, then Product Manager should be able to take the mantle of responsabilities, with some few guidelines:

Create & share the testing protocol

If you can’t make it to the test, prepare in advance the testing protocol to ensure the test will be efficient and won’t be biased. When done, and if not built with the Product Manager already, share it and organize together a few fakes sessions to try it.

Assist to the test no matter what

If the test isn’t a guerilla one, you should be able to assist to the test no matter what. Set up a video call, don’t show your face to not intimidate the tester and let the Product Manager do the dance. Take note and discretely tell your partner if any questions pop in your mind.

No bias when it’s not done by yourself

Once curious discovery we made in our Start Up environment is that when you, Product Designer, aren’t the one doing the test, there’s way less chance to bias it. It’s easy, even unconsciously, to orient the test when you’re the one asking the questions and sharing the protocol about something you designed. Letting someone else, sometimes even someone who isn’t part of the project itself, run the test for you helps getting straight forward feedback and erase those biases.