How to Online Meetings like it’s 2020.
Tags: Remote, Work From Home, Meetings, Remote Work, Productivity

How to Online Meetings like it’s 2020.

Photo by insung yoon on Unsplash

A vast number of tech companies have come out and said that their employees could remote-work for little or long as they would like to! Now the whole world prepares to adapt to the new norm of remote working or even hybrid environments. With people working remotely, and in the office, we need to be even more conscious of everyone’s involvement in team activities, like design sprints!

In this story, I talk through my learning and experience in virtual, hybrid and in-office design sprints. Here are just a few ways we can better design our sprints to be inclusive for everyone no matter where they are!

A quiet space & staying on mute

I spent most of my time during Phase 1 of Antler, working remotely during sprints. The worst thing when running hybrid design sprints is when there’s a group of people working together in a noisy office on a video call. I had this happen too many times, and it was so hard to hear the team in the office over the background noise.

So my top tips for running hybrid sprints start with:

Try and find a meeting room or quiet space to run your sprint (if you’re in an office)

Make sure you have a multi-directional microphone to talk into or pass around a phone when speaking (sit as close to the mic as you can!)

Always mute when you’re not talking!

Regularly check-in with the virtual team to see if the sound and connectivity is okay!

Multiple channels for communication

Sometimes we can get a little carried away when we’re running a hybrid sprint — and without a great way to see verbal cues from the virtual team, a great solution is to have multiple channels of communication. We naturally have various forms of communication in the office day-to-day, and now it’s time to bring them into our virtual meetings!

Non-text forms of communication

Typically you’ll be doing a video or voice call, and that’s one of the best ways to communicate. But sometimes it can be unreliable in the long term because it relies on fantastic internet connection. Furthermore, sometimes we need to get a message across to the group urgently, but we want to cut off the current person speaking, so a parallel form of communication is excellent to the add-in.

One parallel form of communication here can be the use of reaction or emojis- for example, if you’re in a zoom call you can use the clap or thumbs up responses to make sure everyone is engaged or when someone wants to speak next! It’s a little unnatural doing this, but it’s one way to make conversation flow better!

Text communication

Text communication is probably the best form of communication — but it does have similar issues with an internet connection (although your internet has to be bad for it not to work well).

In the past, I have suggested the use of Slack or the chat function in the video calling app to allow for a parallel channel of communication. Using text/chat is great for so many reasons:

You can always share what you’re thinking and your opinions with the group (in a voice call or in-person meeting sometimes you don’t get time to share all your thoughts)

It allows people to have side conversations and instant feedback (like that of facial expressions in real meetings)

You can use emojis — and who doesn’t love extra uses for emojis?

The only real con of doing this is if you’re a slow typer and also hearing the typing on the call if you’re not muted!

The final reason that I can think of that this is great is when I was in a busy cafe in a virtual meeting — it didn’t make sense for me to unmute myself and speak because I knew it would be a terrible experience for the people on the other end. So I decided I would communicate my thoughts and ideas through text via slack, and periodically the sprint leader would read out my messages to make sure I was heard.

The next way to enhance this is by using realtime collaborative tools like Figma, Whimsical and Google Docs/Slides.

Use collaborative tools

Traditionally we could take turns passing around pens, markers and sticky notes in a room but now we have to make do with our devices! One of the best ways to create sticky notes and fun, collaborative meetings come to life is by using design tools like Google Docs, Google Slides and Whimsical.

Whimsical

Whimsical is incredible because you have endless amounts of space and it’s as close as it gets to a real room with sticky notes & a whiteboard! It’s also super awesome when you break into subgroups and work on your own, you can still see what the other teams are doing and if they’re stuck or have too many ideas!

Whimsical can also be an excellent tool to use as a form of parallel communication to your video or voice calls! Just set up a section for thoughts & conversation somewhere on your board. Just be sure to watch it or review it regularly through the meeting!

Google Docs

Google docs is a traditional form of text the entire team should be familiar with, which means you can work faster and potentially more efficient. The only downside to google docs is that it’s not as visual and fun as whimsical and sometimes you’ll write on top of other peoples ideas.

But if you just want to record thoughts and brainstorming, it’s an excellent place to start. Don’t forget to add some colour and fun fonts to make it more engaging!

My favourite part about google docs is the fact that you can use the Table of Contents and your headings to make all sections of the document easy to find.

Confluence & Notion

Both of these offer real-time collaboration and easy access sharing of your files. I love both of these because they have great inbuilt features, tagging etc which are more superior to use than Google docs/Word online.

Another great feature about these tools is how easy it is to create and edit cards/kanban boards, lists and even tables.

The only downside to these tools is that the free versions are limited to only a few people.

Google Slides

Need to create a pitch deck quick but want to make sure everyone can work on their slides at the same time? Google Slides has you covered; you can upload a PowerPoint or Canva presentation directly to Google Slides and then let your whole time works its magic. In no time you’ll have an entire presentation ready to go that your entire team helped with!

Google Slides can also work a lot like whimsical or a whiteboard; you can section off slides into problem areas and add text boxes, flow charts and images to supplement your conversation.

Don’t forget you can change the page size before you start working to allow for more space on each slide!

Online Coding tools

If you’re running a team coding challenge or doing a code review, maybe it makes sense for you to use a voice call with an online collaborative programming platform. Some of my favourites (as a frontend engineer) are:

If you’d decide to go down the screen share route, be sure to increase the size of your font in your text editor and change your editor theme to something high contrast, so the code is clear in the screen share.

Also be sure to scroll slowly if you’re ever scrolling, and keep in mind that the image will be delayed compared to what you see on your screen!

Subgroups

Sometimes the internet can be difficult, or you just have a vast team, and virtual calls are a little chaotic. It’s always great to pair and share — break the team into subgroups (2–3 people), discuss for a few minutes and then report back to the team. This is great to make sure everyone feels heard, and the ideas are shared back to the group briefly.

Make time for EVERYONE.

Sometimes people working remotely will feel disconnected or left out from the meeting, so it’s essential to sometimes call them out by name just before you change to a new section or idea. Checking in with everyone regularly for feedback on how the meeting is running and any extra thoughts that need to be added should be a regular thing in virtual and non-virtual meetings. But it’s especially crucial for virtual ones.

I found that people who asked me if I had anything to add regularly through a meeting made me feel more a part of the team than those who didn’t. This also might be as simple as making sure you’re checking messages from the chat etc. along the way to make sure everyone feels heard!

Implement a feedback system

One of the best takeaways I had from Canva was a feedback system we had. At the end of every meeting, the whole team rated the meeting out of 5, and then quickly discussed reasons on how the meeting could have improved or actions they could take next time to make it better.

If you don’t have the luxury for time, you can always create a quick form or email and send it out to the group you just had a session with on feedback on how it could have gone better.

Communicate!

Before you start your sprint, communicate ideas, suggestions and plans for the sprint before you dive in! Make sure everyone is feeling comfortable with the program before you jump in. The best meetings always have fantastic communication from the start.

To wrap up

Don’t be that annoying person who’s in the office and forgets about the people online. Set yourself reminders if you need, and always be open to feedback and making meetings better!

What are your remote meeting tips?