MOE Collective
Postgraduate project · Hyper Island
Can nineteen designers in thirteen countries design as one team?
Testing working practices and tools for a design collective spread across thirteen countries.
- Year
- 2015
- Discipline
- Experience design
- My role
- Researcher (remote work practices), concept development, prototyping
Our brief was to set up a collective of nineteen experience designers across thirteen countries. We needed to agree on how to work together and present to clients when most of the team would be joining remotely.
Setting the team's culture first
We talked about our strengths, weaknesses, and what we needed from one another. We agreed to daily check-ins, regular energisers, and active listening. We also agreed to prioritise getting things done over getting everything perfect.
Approach
I was on the internal team, looking at how members would communicate and work together. We consulted practitioners, mapped the steps from receiving a brief to delivering the work, and tested tools including MURAL, Trello, Stories on Board, and Hangouts. The trials helped us identify problems and try workarounds.
Outcome
For the presentation, remote members joined through tablets dressed as small humanoids, with one team member in the room to facilitate. We tested the setup several times beforehand, and the presentation was well received.
We also developed and tested working practices for the collective, including check-ins and ways to manage remote discussions.
Reflection
Working remotely made small communication habits more important: acknowledging someone, taking turns, and checking we'd understood. When the Wi-Fi dropped during a difficult discussion, it added frustration. The time we'd spent getting to know one another helped us work through those moments.
Team: Christine Valentin, Dessy Chongarova, Gaelle Le Gélard, Ligia Oliviera, Soraya Cadelli, Tiago Varandas, JL Wong (Hyper Island)