Back to top

What is it like working remotely as a designer? Join Steven and Dave as they discuss tips, tools, and process that help you be successful.

Watch episodes of Labs Live and Subscribe on YouTube.

Dan:

Yeah, exactly. All right. So I think we’re going to about to get going, but there is a question already on LinkedIn that says, what platforms are you using for these videos? That is a really great question. So when we shoot these at the office so for Our Labs Live Productions which are a little bit more of a production, we normally use a piece of software called Wirecast. It’s definitely more on the professional side for things like this, now that we’re shooting these at home at least for the foreseeable future. We’re using a program called StreamYard and it’s like 25 bucks a month, something like that. It’s completely Chrome based. So you just send the link out to people. They join with their webcam and their mic and as the admin you can add them and remove them to the stream.

You get some of the questions show up and this little admin post you can, I don’t know. Let’s see. Let’s play with a few things here. You can change the theme a little bit and change it back. You can add a black logo or a white logo. There’s a number of different things that you can do that’s neat and makes it very simple. So if you are looking to do something like this StreamYard has been pretty cool to use so far. Jeff Kelly had a lot of nooks and crannies for dust. All right, because that’s what he said on LinkedIn. So let’s get going here a little bit. So if you’re tuning in, thank you. We’re all in our home offices because that is currently the new normal. And I’m joined here with Dave and Steven, is it Parisi am I saying that right or?

Steven:

Yeah, that works.

Dan:

Okay. Does it work or is that accurate?

Steven:

I’ve used and heard Parisi and Parizi if you go with the Parizi it rhymes with more things cheesy, prezzy, greasy.

Dan:

Cheesy prezzy. Okay, Well, just throw that in there as an alias. No. So, what we’re going to talk about and I think we’re going to have a few more of these as we move on here. And one we wanted to make sure we kept doing our live streams. We wanted to make sure that we’re talking, we’re communicating with our community that we normally do and that felt important to us. And especially right now, it felt like it was a good time to have a little fun with it too as much as we can. Today we’re going to be two in a remote spotlight series. We’re starting this and we’re going to focus on design designers, tips, tools, tricks, maybe some processes that the designers work through. And we’re going to be paying attention to questions.

 

So if you have questions coming in on either LinkedIn or YouTube we’re on both, right now, so, either LinkedIn or YouTube. If you have questions, ask, we’ll interrupt anything to answer those. And I suppose if you have any questions on any other social platform, maybe ask, I’m assuming someone’s monitoring, I’m assuming Elise and Diane are. And with that, I think the interesting thing is, Steven, you are a veteran work from home. You are in Denver. Our offices are Detroit in Ann Arbor. So you’re a veteran. Dave, this is somewhat new to you, although you’ve been home probably for a solid month at this point. But I don’t know. I think Dave, why don’t you kick us off and talk about what this experience has been like from the new standpoint and Steven can chime in on being a veteran of the remote world.

Dave:

Sure. Yeah. Gosh, over the past seven or eight years, I’ve been remote here and there, but never for weeks at a time. And never really with a three year old who’s also play from home. So that’s been a challenging experience. I’m fortunate enough to have an extra room in the house that’s always been home office material just because I tend to work from home outside of work hours quite a bit. And like that has been critical. I am not sure how people are working from their dining room tables or the couch. So yeah, it’s been challenging to focus but I’ve really valued the extra time at home. No commute. But I do miss everybody. We’re just talking about this on a team meeting, on a hangout the other day. It’s nice to see everybody’s digital personas but like I want to see him in the flesh. Want to talk to them, yeah.

Steven:

Yeah. You’re talking about like working from the dining room table as a veteran remote designer here the first thing to get right is your equipment, make sure you’re comfortable and you can either sit there or sit and stand for long periods of time. Sitting is the new smoking people’s make sure to get up. Also equipment wise, Claire and I have some like over the ear headphones, super nice especially, if you’re going to be on calls all day. All three of us have some external microphones. It’s nice for your team that you’re talking to make sure this quality audio coming through. Last but especially not least, is have high quality pair of sweatpants.

Dan:

Yeah, it’s been interesting. I’m a passionate, sweatpants cynosure. And so I feel like I’m right now is my time to shine. So now with this going on I can look at my wife and I probably don’t look as foolish now for spending copious amounts of time and money consuming sweatpants.

Steven:

Are we allowed to talk brands here?

Dan:

Yeah, I don’t see why not. I got lots of different ones.

Steven:

Okay. I thought once you go Lulu Lemon, you never go back.

Dan:

I didn’t get to that point. There’s an alternative called Miles Apparel. I really dig their stuff and then a Reigning Champ if I’m feeling really fancy. But before we get down the rabbit hole of sweatpants because we probably could we should probably acknowledge Steven’s stash because it has made its own presence on this stream.

Steven:

Okay. Since you brought it up, I don’t always wear a stash. I thought a couple of weeks ago that I would start growing a mustache just to be silly. While a lot of these businesses are closed down like a playoff beard, but alike a Corona stash. It’s silly though. And I found a way to layer on something for if anybody brings it up. I’ve got a link handy to send that person to you, maybe we can share in the live comments here.

Dan:

Bingo, is it to give directly.

Steven:

Yeah, anytime someone has brought up my mustache in the last few days, I’ve sent that link and asked that person to donate five bucks. This is the most legit site that I could find that helps folks most affected by the lockdowns. So if you were thinking about asking me about that or mentioning it, I’m going to ask you to donate five buck that going to help out people most affected by the shutdowns. I won’t see that you did it. I don’t think you can post anywhere saying that you did it but I’m just asking five bucks if you were wondering about the mustache.

Dan:

All right, now let’s get back. Let’s get back to the design topics. Dave?

Dave:

Yeah.

Dan:

What do you want to talk about next, you want to talk about tools?

Dave:

Well, during their intro we talked about our environment a little bit. How are we Steven, how do you organize your environment in the past and now with, I mean you’re always remote, so what is your environment like? What you have there to inspire you?

Steven:

Sure. Well, I’ve got a ton of design books. That’s nice to refresh yourself on some processes or just get some inspiration. Another nice thing is that you can all see around here is that I’ve got like the walls in the office covered with framed posters and I wanted to share this book with you from the bookshelf and this is just for you all watching not for sharing with your friends. This is your privilege. There’s this book called Gig Posters. There’s two volumes on Amazon and this is a very standard sized poster and you can find really cheap frames for this but it’s just a ton of really well done professional gig posters, concert posters and they’re all perforated so you can tear them out and frame them really easily. So, like this book is like 25 or 30 bucks. So while you could be working from home for awhile might as well get some good artwork up and do it easily and cheaply. It’s just for you don’t tell your friends.

Dave:

That’s nice. I’m struggling with like this like target purchase back here. It looked neat at the time but now when I’m sitting in this room, things are very monochrome and there’s not a whole lot of energy and I’m only realizing that now that I’m spending entire days in here at a time I need freshness like you just shared there.

Steven:

It’s pretty spicy. You can’t show all of these on this live.

Dave:

Yeah. Dan, how about your space, there? A lot of shoes.

Dan:

A lot of shoes. Shoes inspire me, David. As you, as you might or might not know, I view them as works of art and every one of them has a bit of a story even the ones that you can see in the background have some level of a story which I appreciate that. And when we got this house I had these great built in bookshelves I wanted to keep that there are a little beat and I like that about them and it gives it a little bit of a warmth space. And I went through with a really terrible idea of transitioning to work from home but also redoing the walls of my office at the same time.

 

I don’t know why that was ridiculous, but I’m very happy with how it turned out. And I have a great Draplin Poster on the wall and Detroit, Michigan one that he did and handed out one. I’m sure I bought it but handed it out, when he was here speaking. So that can be a pretty inspiring. And I think just in general having a nice little remote setup, microphone, camera is really helpful. I have a sit to stand desk too, which is also really, helpful as well. [crosstalk 00:15:34]

Steven:

Do I see Sonia’s back there, speaker or are you?

Dan:

Oh yeah, there’s a lot. Let me say it. There’s a lot going on back here. Also have a canned gold lion right there.

Dave:

So shinny.

Dan:

Yeah. And apparently that’s a big deal in the advertising world and we didn’t know and now it’s on my bookshelf, so that’s cool.

Dave:

Oh gosh, I lost my train of thought there. Let’s move on to communication as Steven, I’m going to lean on you pretty heavily for this one. Since you’ve been remote for so long, how do you communicate design effectively being remote?

Steven:

Yeah. So I rely heavily on my tools. My digital tools. Obviously, being a tech company, we use Slackaton but there’s a call feature that’s really easy and it’s, you don’t have to schedule anything. You don’t have to put time on people’s calendars. But if I’m having a conversation with a coworker several you can just hit the call button and jump on a call, share screens, you can even like do some like scribbling on there to identify things. That’s when I rely on pretty heavily and just that human interaction is really important throughout the day. I’m in my basement right now and if I’m not like seeing my coworkers and interacting with my coworkers more than just like Slack Messages or more than just audio messages, I get a little stir crazy.

 

So I really like to use that call feature and there’s a bunch of coworkers that I have that really usage, jumping on video calls and chatting through concepts or making debates a little bit more high quality when we’re getting on a video and showing our screens. So Slack is really critical for a full time remoter. I screenshot a ton, that command shift-four and then like drag an area, I screenshot a ton. I hate having a messy desktop like my digital desktop like I like my background that I have. But oh boy, it’s just messy with some, so that’s a weekly thing that I do and I go through and clean up that desktop. I can employ the same method with my physical my analog desktop, my acoustic.

 

Other than that, there’s a couple of the tools that we use to communicate that are really useful for being remote. We should reach out to see if they’ll send some money our way for this. But Miro is a nice one. It’s great for post-its like the digital post-its. They’ve got a bunch of templates for organizing Kanban boards even or for making journey maps. But really just like coming to decisions in anything or doing like design, you can do full design sprints using that. That’s another critical one for communicating well.

Dan:

Hey Dave hooked me up with some of those links. I’m going to throw them up on the screen. So if people are interested in finding out some of these resources as Steven’s going through them, I’ll at least post them up on the stream.

Dave:

Yeah.

Steven:

So Miros got a free version too. So you can make a couple of boards for free and work with your coworkers using that without having to get the corporate credit card out. Yeah, highly recommend just given that one a try.

Dan:

Miro, is it?

Steven:

Yeah, M-I-R-O.

Dan:

Okay. Please sent to me Dave.

Steven:

Since we’re doing that-

Dan:

I got it.

Steven:

There’s another one called Crisp that like digitally removes background noise. again if you’re well we’re all full time remote now, but if you’ve got kids in the background, banging on pots and whatever going on in the background sometimes they have got a space heater here because my basement is so cold, that Crisp thing and I’ll find a way to link that, that’s another great tool for full time remoters. And it’s like they’ve got a Freemium Model as well.

Dan:

I used that earlier I think the Crisp AI. Yeah. It’s pretty nice.

Steven:

Yeah. So if you’ve got any background noise it works well for muting your own background noise and muting your coworkers’ background noise. So you don’t need everybody to use it to get the benefits.

Dave:

Yeah. Just acts as an in between audio device. You just switch your input and output over to it and gosh, I think it’s like, well it’s paid, right? But there’s a trial.

Steven:

There’s a Freemium Version. You get like 120 free minutes a month. So yeah. Digital noise cancellation.

Dan:

I saw there’s an iOS and Android ad to right. Do you do voice calls them through their servers? Is that how it works?

Steven:

It’s, yeah, it’s like a go-between, I haven’t used it on mobile. But it’ll live in your status bar up on your desktop and you can like switch them on and off especially if you’re limiting your 120 free minutes. I’m not sure about mobile though.

Dan:

Cool. Cool.

Dave:

I want to a plus one that scribble tool in Slack too. I find that incredibly valuable, like talking about anything not just design. It helps to mark things up. Something we generally use Meet in the office which is a Google product and I don’t know why, but no doodle pen.

Steven:

No doodle pen. We have a lot of fun with that. When there’s several people on the call and someone’s just doodling away and it doesn’t say who’s doodling. That’s the thing. So we tried to demo some work and someone out there on the call is like doodling away on there. You go, “Who is this? Who doodled that?”

Dan:

Is it the doodle bot is that what it is?

Dave:

No, no, no. We were just talking about, so when you’re on a Slack Call you get the little pen tool, right. You just scribble and then it fades away. It’s a temporary way to-

Dan:

Oh, I did not know about that.

Dave:

… to show, yeah. Yeah. It’s great. When you’re on these calls and you’re speaking about a particular area of the thing you’re sharing and you don’t have a cursor, the scribble pen just gives you an opportunity to circle it, draw an arrow here get your thoughts out temporarily before it fades away. Nice little handy tool.

Dan:

Oh, I can’t wait to scribble some things for you Dave, you’ll design so many things. Hey Jeff Kelly just asked if there was anything like Crisp but for the visual mess behind him. I believe that is called a Green Screen.

Dave:

For sure Green Screen.

Dan:

Collapsible green screen from El Gato and you are good to go.

Steven:

There is a couple of like digital versions. I think Zoom has a way to do that to green screen. And even Microsoft Teams if you’re using that, don’t think Google Hangout has that though.

Dan:

No, yeah, Skype and Team has a way to blur your background at the very least which would be really nice if Hangouts would offer that to or Hangouts Meet or whatever they decided to call it today. They have messaging and video apps. So whatever the flavor of the week is.

Dave:

Now, talking tools here something else on my list to talk about it’s collaboration and how we talked a little bit about it there and I wanted to talk a little bit about Figma since it seems like it’s well suited for entirely remote teams if that’s what you had because you get that ability to work together and see the presence of other contributors in that document itself. Steven, I don’t think like you are able to use Figma heavily on your current project but you’ve seen this in action, right? I guess I’m just curious, how you collaborate when not using Figma or just any tips for remote collaboration?

Steven:

Yeah, I’ve actually, I have used Figma for my current client project early on but we switched back to Slack. But I wish we would use Figma all the time. It’s a little more robust. You can’t use Figma for all the things that you would use Miro for. But it’s a lot more robust. So, and you might not be able to get enough people on the same project without having to pay first, but it’s got all the same picture like a design tool like sketch, if you’re familiar with that Figma like that but plus the collaboration you have in like Google Docs. Anybody who’s in there can move around like a component or add to a component or like duplicate an art board and work directly next to the up board that somebody else is working on.

 

And you can actually do all the things that just about all the things that Miro does in Figma but a little more robust and I think it’s for some people just a little bit scary because there’s just all sorts of tools on the left and the right and layers and all that. That’s why I fired my favorite design tool these days though. And like it’s got the prototyping inside a Cloud, I forgot to mention, it’s got the prototyping like pretty much all the features that Envision has for prototyping. But again, it’s all in one tool so you can send out a link of a prototype which when you’re using a link for prototype instead of prototyping one tool which is hard to get like third party users using just a way easier way to operate.

Dave:

Yeah, yeah, it took a while to warm up to it, but I’m all in on it. Just love these collaborative features.

Dan:

Hey, Tobi actually snuck in a question on LinkedIn.

Dave:

Tobi.

Dan:

Yeah. So while he’s not with us and video he’s with us in LinkedIn spirit. So similar to Dave’s question, what tools do you use to collaborate with clients remotely for real time design activities?

Steven:

Yeah, so if by any chance you can get your switched over to Figma that’s huge. We’ve got someone on the design team who recently switched over to Figma and so this designer is working with at least one other designer from the client’s side and they’re doing that same thing. They’re working side by side on maybe the same opportunity space. That’s pretty neat. When you’re working with a client or a stakeholder, I tend to just go with whatever my client or stakeholder and my counterpart is using to collaborate. So in this instance, my client is using Microsoft Teams and so they’ve got like a video chat feature. So I tend to not ask too much of whoever I’m talking to on the other end especially if there’s like four people using the same tool.

 

I’m not going to like ask them to all switch over to Google Hangouts. So I try to default. But that said, we do use, this is a little bit more specific for designers but we use abstract it’s like a Virgin Management Tool for sketch users. By the way, that’s another thing that Figma has just built in to itself. But for using the sketch like version management it’s like a Get Hub for design files. That’s really nice when we use it. So we’ll like work on a branch. I’ll work like working on a branch of what’s it called, like something like a principal design file that we have and then you can like merge a branch. So for this client, the communication tool we use like I said is Microsoft Teams. But we also have used Miro together for doing some like some sticky exercises with stickies. And there’s a couple of other ones where we also have some folks from our client on our Slack Channel. So been working pretty well.

Dan:

What about Envision or are we still, I mean, I think that was like the go to collaborative design experience at one point. And I think it was good. I think it got sometimes a little too much credit because people are like, “Oh, just do an envision prototype and it’ll be just fine.” And that’s just not always the case. Do we still use Envision?

Steven:

Yeah, I do use Envision with my current client project and again, like it’s, you can share a link for a prototype, which is just the easiest way to do it instead of asking somebody to install something special in their computer. I was just working on connecting all sorts of components and screens with the project that I’m working on. So yeah, it’s pretty interesting to see just so many arrows going back and forth. This component goes to that screen. If you hit back, it goes there. This is Envision also. It’s a good way to communicate, interaction but also that links out to a prototype that just anybody can use. So yeah, still using Envision all the time. It’s still, I don’t know, ubiquitous maybe with UX Designers that Sketch in Envision. So Figma does all of that. But, it’s hard to make that switch. It seems like Sketch is not that old. It’s just a few years old, a handful of years old. So it’s like another switch, it’s like another design tool. How long is it going to be before another one is even better than Figma?

Dan:

Sketch.

Dave:

And I wonder if this period of time is going to, inspire people or create like a surge of new ideas since we’re all in this position.

Steven:

That’s a good point.

Dan:

I wonder how many products are going to come out of all of this, right? I think that’s what you’re saying, right, Dave?

Dave:

Yeah. Basically.

Steven:

There’s enough people that are probably going to push up against limitations of what currently exists out there. And in a lot of ways, some of the best products are born out of frustration and limitations. And in a lot of ways, there was a couple schools of thought for launching a product. One is being first to market, but then the other ones being best to market. And I actually, I like the school of thought of best to market. I think you get a little spike if you’re first, but it’s really nice to see some other folks put something out there, create natural frustration that takes place and then you have the good fortune of analyzing and fixing some of that natural frustration.

Dave:

Yeah. A product from our past that came to mind was, Squiggle. Do you remember this? Squiggle or Squabble? It was a tool for remote teams where basically everybody’s camera was always on. So it looked like it was intended for smaller teams and then you could pretty easily jump into a call with a particular person and I just can’t help but think now that everybody’s remote and not seeing each other like we may have moved on from that but there’s a whole new group of potential users that may be interested in something like that and we maybe we’ll see tools like that return or some other problems being solved. We didn’t know most people had until today.

Steven:

That’s it. There’s another tool like that. I’m trying to think of the name of that still does that, I don’t know, maybe it’s like a little Oxytocin hit to have coworkers nearby but it’s like a window that has people’s cameras always on. But you can like blur out yourself. There’s like levels of blurriness you can add to it. So it’s not like you’re focused on your coworkers. It’s just they’re in there in the peripheral. Still a little weird, never caught on for me. So I’m going to go ahead and not remember the name of that and post that and had a creepy name too. I can’t remember. It was like lurk.io.

Dave:

Yeah, no thanks.

Steven:

You can add that to its name.

Dave:

If that product doesn’t exist already, it will now that you’ve given people that idea.

Dan:

You’ve said it now the domain has to exist now and that the rule, if you say a domain on broadcast television then you have to go out and make it exist or something like that. Some rule about that. All right, so we’re at 33 minutes. We can keep going if we want. Is there more that we want to talk about?

Dave:

Yeah. Listen, I’ve got one more thing to talk about that’s just like how we as designers are staying connected. Just to throw out an example, last week, one of the design team members set up, a digital happy hour just an opportunity at the end of the week for us all to see each other’s faces. And we got some interesting house tours and it was really just there was no agenda, right? It was just an opportunity for us to hear what was going on what people’s plans were for the weekend. And that was a nice way to cap a week off a week where we hadn’t really seen each other. I really enjoyed that.

Steven:

Yeah, it’s a really interesting perspective on your coworker that sometimes you get to always see my background. Well, you do always get to see my background, but you never really get to see what’s on the other side of the door. That’s where I was on that call. I’m on the other side of that door. So, I got to show my teammates that perspective and like everything else that’s happening in the basement, there’s some cool spaces that we get to see a bar great over there. That’s nice to have right by workstation.

Dave:

And how else do you stay connected? You and I talk frequently, I’m sure you do with other members of the design team. Is that really what it’s about? Just pinging team members seeing how they’re doing?

Steven:

You have to be deliberate about it working from home all the time but I’d like to talk to my coworkers and so I mean, it’s natural, but also I don’t want it to be coming off as, what’s the word? Something like cliché checking in when we’re all remote. Hey, how’s it going? But like, naturally, I’m just curious how my coworkers are doing. So, I like to randomly put on my Slack lists with people I’ve been recently talking to and just check in and say, what’s up? Find out how’s it going and in their part of town.

 

It’s always a good topic of conversation being from Detroit originally to hear about where folks are living around the Detroit Metro area or Detroit and talk about what’s in their neighborhood that they still have access to what grocery stores they’re going to. It’s good to check in. There’s nothing wrong. There’s nothing cliché or annoying about checking in just to say hello, I’d never get that in my work day there’s nobody coming in to check in and say hello, unless you count my dog. So I, yeah, it’s okay to strike up conversation and do that via Slack and jump on a call if you need to and do carry your computer around and do a home tour. I think that’s fun.

Dan:

Hey Steven, Tobi wanted to know if you could give one piece of advice for adjusting to remote work, what would that be?

Steven:

I’d say like back to just what we were talking about, just stay connected. Check in on your friends check in your coworkers and just see what’s up with their day. Otherwise you’re just not going to get that and you’re not going to be able to walk over to anybody right now and see how they’re doing. And so, it might feel a little unnatural at first but just give somebody a hello and say, “How’s it going? What’s up?” Just start having a conversation. That’s the big one there.

Dan:

We were talking about that before we went live as we were preparing. I was just talking about the most difficult thing that, I mean other than having kids at home, the most difficult thing that I’ve been experiencing so far has been missing out on the small conversations. So we have some folks that are really great at Slack, some folks that are not great at Slack. And one of my favorite things at the office is being able to either overhear the small conversations or if someone needs my input on something they can just quickly swing by my desk and ask and I miss out on those. And I found that you just have to be more purposeful, more intentional about your communication, which takes up more time, right? A quick swing by my desk might take a minute or two, but a jump on a call on Slack just may take a little bit more time coordinating, especially if you have kids and family and pets and all that stuff around the house. It just, it becomes a little bit more challenging.

Steven:

Tobi, if I can give you one more pointer for working out at home since you’re at home and you not be used to working at home and you’re not used to all these distractions that normally don’t have a over overlap with your work hours, that’s a difficult challenge to overcome right away your first few weeks working at home. So there’s a methodology called a Pomodoro Timer and there’s like a bunch of different like free products that you can use that are, that leverage this methodology. So the methodology is like, you, you can find a timer that will hold you to 25 minutes of straight work and then a five minute break and so you go through these cycles. I think you can go through three of those cycles before you get like a longer break like a half hour something like that.

Steven:

With certain timers you can even customize the length of the timers. But that’s what I’ve used for awhile when I was getting used to working from home full time, was like, it holds you to 25 minutes. That’s not that long to focus. And you can fit all that garbage that you might’ve been distracting yourself within five minutes and get back to it. I like having a system. I like having some structure like that. So try it on a Pomodoro Timer or you might find like a Tomato Timer up there. I think Pomodoro might’ve been the person’s name who invented the methodology. It means tomato.

Dan:

All right. Yeah. So tips. Anything else we want to talk about before I do some house cleaning stuff?

Steven:

Get out for a walk.

Dan:

Yeah. Oh yeah. Especially now man, it’s been cold here, so now it’s warming up finally.

Steven:

Yeah. Listen, having the birds out there chirping in springtime that’s pretty nice for harnessing your mellow these days if you’re working from the basement all day.

Dan:

All right, well Steven, Dave, thank you for talking a remote work specifically around design. We’ve shared out some good links for people if you’re looking for tools to either work with inside of a team or work with personally we had some viewers today and that’s good and some questions which is nice. And ultimately it’s just nice to go live today and have some conversations lives weird, right? We’re having this conversation, but in a lot of ways we’re also having a conversation with a wall which is very interesting and both fun and confusing at the same time. That said we will have a couple more times we’re going to try and go live this week. So tomorrow is actually Air Max Day. So Nike created something, I don’t know, a few years ago now called Air Max Day in March 26th and we’re going to go on for a few minutes with a couple folks to talk about their favorite Air Maxes and maybe show those off.

 

So won’t be tech-related whatsoever, but you know what why not have a little fun where you can. I think tomorrow’s will be around like anywhere between 2:00 and 2:30. And then on Friday around one o’clock we’re going to be going live but this time will be another Remote Spotlight Series and it will be focused on leadership and people ops. So the leader of our people operations team or yeah, team I guess, is going to be coming on Erika and she’s going to be talking about what that has been like. So I mentioned already some of my challenges have been those missing conversations because you need to be so intentional about it.

 

And I struggle with that. And so Erika has seen a lot of other different things inside the responsibilities of what people operations means at Detroit Labs. So figured that’d be an opportunity to have her on and discuss that with her. So thank you for those that ask questions. We’ll probably send out some social reminders about when we’re going live next. This one came together in a short amount of time this morning. So Steven, thank you for rearranging schedules and joining us and Dave as always and then anything else to add Dave before we log off.

Dave:

Yeah. I just want to jump in and say if any designers are out there listening and have remote tips, I assume there’s a way to re reply to this on LinkedIn or obviously in the YouTube comments or just hit us up on our Detroit Labs LinkedIn Page. We’d love to talk about it with you.

Dan:

Yeah. I think at this point we’re going to try to see how many times a week we can go live. Hold on, Steven has a handle I’m going to switch to him.

Steven:

I’m just thinking if you want to reach out directly.

Dan:

I’m going to create a banner. Here we go. There it is.

Steven:

Boom, there it is.

Dan:

On all the Social Channels. What Social channels are you on?

Steven:

Yeah. There’s Twitter and Instagram. I’d be on Twitter more often. Try to stay out of the Instagram black hole while you’re working from home.

Dan:

Yeah, the Explore Tab is a challenge. So hit up Steven on Friendster and we will be streaming later on this week. We’ll see you tomorrow for Air Max Day and Friday talking to Erika. Thanks. Anyway-

Steven:

More Tobi?

Dan:

What?

Steven:

More Tobi.

Dan:

Tobi will be on this week at some point.

Dave:

Hi Tobi.

Dan:

He has confirmed I think that he will be able to join us this week at some point. So you will see Tobi. All right, thanks everybody. Bye.

Dave:

Bye.

About Labs Live

Labs Live is a stream hosted by Detroit Labs’ very own Dan Ward and Tobi Adebisi, where they bring on guests from the Labs team and our clients to talk about the latest in technology, software design and development, and whatever else comes to mind. Labs Live streams live on LinkedIn and YouTube each month.