Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Dakota Berg

Ever tried a long distance relationship? Well, working remotely is a lot like that. You need the right people, great teamwork, top notch organization and most importantly, constant communication. I have learned a lot working remotely with various clients over the last few years and have adopted a variety of tools to streamline my work flow and maintain better relationships with the people I work with. Luckily, we have an overwhelming amount of tools available at our fingertips to make communication and collaboration easier than ever. I believe the need for remote workers will only grow in the future as our generation expects more flexibility in the workplace. Don’t forget at the end of the day, none of these tools can completely replace face-to-face interactions. That’s where real relationships are built.

1) Instant Messaging

Good communication is absolutely necessary when working remotely. Slack, WhatsApp, Hipchat and other instant messaging apps are ideal for remote teams. Gone are the days of sending off an email and getting a reply 3 hours later about a simple product question. Hey email, don’t worry, we haven’t forgot about you. You still have a special place in our hearts. I mean we hardly have to pick up the phone anymore! Well, sometimes a quick call still works the best, but if I’m being honest, I really don’t want to get 20 calls from teammates throughout the day, every day. Slack can really help streamline your communication process. On top of that, it provides a place to catalog your conversations by subject, having everything searchable to refer back to at any point. Using available integrations within these services can “level up” your communication game like never before. With everything good instant messaging can provide, it can also be one of the easiest distractors. Some types of work require an immense amount of concentration, and getting pinged every few minutes can really kill your focus. Most services allow you to temporarily disable (or snooze) your notifications, use it when you need to.

Hey email, don’t worry, we haven’t forgot about you. You still have a special place in our hearts.

2) Video Conferencing

The ability to speak face-to-face to anyone on your team, at any time, is now available through Google Hangouts, Appear.in, Skype, etc. This is really incredible if you think about it, but anyone that has tried it understands that it has its flaws. There is inevitably somebody that can’t connect, somebody that can’t hear and one person’s camera always seems to freeze. People talk over each other followed by those long awkward pauses where you’re all waiting for somebody else to speak. Be patient. Make sure you have a solid connection before you try to join and do yourself a favor and make sure your Uncle Tony doesn’t come down the stairs shirtless in the background during a live video conference.

Pro Tip: Put your light source behind the camera (rather than behind you) for the best lighting.

3) Screen Sharing

Screen sharing can be extremely helpful, augmenting the office scenario where one of your teammates is looking over your shoulder as you walk them through something. Screen sharing is generally built-in to video conferencing services like Hangouts and prototyping tools, like InVision. It is one thing to be able to say “Okay now click the button and tell me what happens. No the other button. No the GREEN button.”, it is an entirely different thing to be able to have them watch you smoothly cruise through the interface in a live product tour from 1,000s of miles away.

Okay now click the button and tell me what happens. No the other button. No the GREEN button.

Keep your shit with your other shit.

4) Project Management Software

Organization is paramount when building a product. There are many moving pieces, some of which need to happen in tandem, while others need to happen sequentially. Project management software like Trello and Basecamp can provide extraordinary value by keeping everybody on track and moving toward the same goal. Everybody organizes their projects differently, some by stage of development, some by feature, some by team member, etc. Figure out what works best for your organization and run with it.

5) Prototyping Tools

Designers should absolutely consider using prototyping tools to help present, gather feedback and ‘hand-off’ their designs. My personal favorite is InVision, but there are dozens to choose from, like Axure, Adobe XD and Balsamiq, all providing different advantages and disadvantages. Prototyping tools like InVision allow you to create a “clickable” experience to walk through the design. You can add transitions and make your prototype feel as “real” as possible, but you should weigh whether that is worth the time to you. Remember that most of the time, prototypes are just used to show the concept, not necessarily to show every bell and whistle. Communicate that to the people you’re showing your prototype to. Some have commenting features so you can gather feedback from your coworkers, some save a version history of each screen so you can refer back at any point and as I mentioned before, some even have screen-sharing features built in. Use what you need but don’t waste your time.

Pro Tip: Use an extension like Craft to prototype directly in your design program and have it automatically sync to InVision.

This isn’t actually what the Cloud looks like.

6) Cloud-Based File Storage

Should everything be stored on the cloud? Probably not. But for most of your work, it is perfect. Everybody that should need access to files should have access to those files. Having “file gatekeepers” is antiquated and slows productivity down. Make sure the files are organized, follow a naming convention and make sure people aren’t unknowingly overriding your files. Luckily, services like Dropbox and Google Drive maintain a version history of the files, so you can generally go back and revert a file to a previous version if necessary. Storing your files on the cloud allows you to cheaply and conveniently access them from any device, anywhere. Also beneficial is the ability to quickly generate share links to send large files, because you know, email can’t handle anything over 20mb.

About the author

Dakota is an entrepreneur & designer from the Pacific Northwest. Founder of DKTB Design, Partner at Black Hatchet & Lead Designer at SportsCastr.

6 Tools Essential for Remote Teams was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

6 Tools Essential for Remote Teams

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