Let’s Design This!
By: Praveen Charles, Charlie
Tags: Design Thinking, Covid 19, Interaction Design, UX, Digital Marketing

In the last few months, we’ve all been witness to how an invisible virus has made some visible changes to the world around us. Who would have imagined that we’d all one day work and live within the confines of our homes for months at a stretch? Historically speaking, this new normal is everything but normal. Once an accorded privilege, Work from Home is a now bane. It has been very demanding so far, both physically and emotionally. With the prevailing uncertainty on the resumption of work back in our offices, we need to brace ourselves for a better tomorrow.

Now is the time to empower our teams with the toys, tools, tips, tricks, and all it takes to get them back on their feet. Our efforts may not be immediately reciprocated with gratitude and enthusiasm. In fact, it is alright to not expect people to return to be their usual selves. We need to give people time. We need to continue to encourage them to work their way through their emotions. Each of us is part of a community, we need to back each other.

In society, as individuals, we are encouraged to take out personal time and rationalize our work time, etc. On the contrary, at work, we are expected to be units of labor, creating value for the organization. Whatever we face in our lives outside work gets labeled as ‘outside’ work. This puts us in a state of stress as we are the same person between 9 to 6, as we are before and after. The pandemic has further blurred the lines that divide personal and work time.

From battling for Wi-Fi bandwidth to grappling with unscheduled power outages, these daily challenges are a different kind altogether. Parents, children, pets, personal space, and the cacophony all populate the canvas of our video meeting calls. Pretty much everything about our work and workplace is now taking up the mindspace of the rest of our family. Some of the funny instances have even found their way into memes and social conversations. That’s how much this new normal has percolated into our lives.

On the other hand, there’s also this incredible pressure to be in the right frame of mind. Regardless of how happy or upset we may be at 8:59 am, we pull ourselves together for the morning 9:00 am stand-up call; or for that matter, the cadence call at 8.00 pm that gets extended, while the family eagerly waits for us to complete and join for dinner. Space and time seem to shrink and expand mysteriously.

As a design practitioner with close to two decades of experience, I have been privileged to work with and lead multi-disciplinary teams and consulted with clients across geographies and time zones. I have regularly conducted exercises to determine the core value that teams believe in. Unfailingly, every single exercise to date has thrown up the same answer. EMPATHY. As creative folk, visual designers and experience designers, there is this intrinsic need for us to be deeply empathetic. That’s what holds the key to crafting great design and experiences. If we were to conduct a similar exercise with our traditional tech communities, I doubt if they would unanimously rank empathy as a core value. The idea here isn’t to glorify designers or suggest they’re a class apart. It’s just that designers are a different tribe altogether.

If you are part of a design / digital marketing community, and if you’re a leader especially, this should make more sense to you than anyone else. It is entirely up to us to recognize this differentiator and preserve it in our teams and culture. Our teams need us to look out for them. Empathy is what enables great designs and experiences; ultimately that’s what keeps us in business. It forms our responsibility to keep that empathy alive. It’s not a gadget, one simply turns off when they close work for the day and turn back on the next morning. There are really no bounds or barriers. Empathy lives and breathes through them. We need to ensure people have space and leeway to process what they’re dealing with in the present circumstances.

As leaders and managers, we need to step up and encourage our peers to embrace humanistic values, lead with compassion, and respect the space that our team members need. Now is not the time to gun for productivity, velocity, or any sort of quantification at work. This is the time to listen, introspect, reflect and look out for one other.