S2E5: Jani Cortesini – How to run design sprints virtually

Design Sprints are a process created by Google and adopted by many. They allow businesses to get answers to strategic questions quickly, using design thinking methods and tools. Jani Cortesini talks to us about how you can do Design Sprints remotely.

Season 1 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty
Season 1 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty
S2E5: Jani Cortesini - How to run design sprints virtually
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We’ve partnered with ProtoPie, the future of interactive product design, to help you navigate through uncertainty and overcome the challenges today’s unprecedented conditions have brought to the industry. Join us for Season 2 – Designing for a new level of uncertainty.

The ZOO, Google’s creative think tank for brands and agencies, has adopted and implemented Design Sprints as a way of helping brands quickly ideate, iterate, prototype and test creative ideas that then get implemented and launched.

During lockdown and due to people not being able to get together in a workshop environment, Design Sprint Masters have had to utilise different tools and methods of facilitation, and have had to change the process to fit with the new reality. 

In this episode you’ll learn more about how they’re doing it at Google ZOO, what they’ve learnt in the process so far, what has worked and hasn’t worked as well as tips to make your remote sprints successful.

About our guest

Jani runs Design Sprints to help brands and agency partners solve business problems through user insight, Google Technology (from Machine Learning and Voice Interfaces to YouTube Content and Data Driven Creative) and rapid prototyping.

What you’ll learn

  • What problems do Design Sprints solve?
  • What’s the best thing about Design Sprints?
  • What are some of the challenges clients have implementing them?
  • When shouldn’t you use a Design Sprint?
  • What are the challenges in running Sprints remotely?
  • What are some of the benefits of facilitating things remotely?
  • What methods have had to change due to the pandemic?
  • Are Design Sprints as effective when not done in person?
  • How does prototyping work in a remote environment?
  • How have Design Sprints evolved over time?

Show notes

Transcript

Chris Mears: I’m Chris Mears.

Carla: And I’m Carla Lindarte.

Chris Mears: We’re two UX designers.

Carla: And we hate jargon. So, we’re here to help you untangle the world of design.

Chris Mears: Cut through the crap and talk about what really matters.

Carla: Yes. Solving people’s problems.

Chris Mears: Welcome to Design Untangled.

Carla: Hello everyone and welcome to Design Untangled with me Carla Lindarte and my lovely friend Chris Mears. And today we have a very special guest Jani Cortesini. Who is a creative strategist at Google Zoo and he can explain to us a little bit more what that actually means. Welcome Jani, thank you for being with us today.

Jani: Thank you for having me.

Carla: That’s amazing. So, today obviously we’ve been talking about uncertainty and talking about what’s going on in the world and how different teams and different places have become have started to use different methods to collaborate and work. Especially when everyone is working from home. So, today we’re going to focus more about designing sprints which is what journey has been doing for many years. But before we start, just tell us Jani how has it been locked down for you? How are you coping?

Jani: Well, how am I coping, I’m learning a lot about myself and everyone around me. I think we were saying, it’s sort of when you’re thrown in an extreme state you. You get a lot of insight into what’s working and what isn’t working. One of the classic sorts of user interview exercises that we’ve sometimes done and I think this is this came from idea or someone. I can’t remember. But basically, having extreme users to speak to. So, someone who has an extreme perspective on a problem because they give you a much more insightful perspective and now we’re all living in an extreme world. So, learning a lot. So, I guess I’m trying to as everyone is but a positive spin on it and I’m learning a lot about oh that’s myself.

Chris Mears: I know Carla works there as well, but I’ve never really understood what she actually does at Google Zoo.

Carla: No one actually understands what I do.

Chris Mears: Yeah, maybe you can enlighten us on what happens there.

Jani: Right, so what happens in the mysterious zoo. Yeah, lots of animals running around. No, so what we essentially are is we’re a creative team at Google and we exist to help Google’s advertisers be creative and effective on any platform that google operates and technology. So, that spans all the way from YouTube to display advertising search to machine learning, Augmented reality, voice interfaces. You name it, any tech that Google’s involved in. And if there’s a brand that’s interested in exploring it to solve a specific business challenge, then we’ll help them navigate through that. The way we do that is by running our version of a design sprint, which is called a machine sprint.

So, we work through the business problem insights ideas all the way to initial prototypes. And then sort of launch them on and keep consulting if they need any help beyond that. So yeah, that’s essentially what the zoo is and in terms of who is in the zoo. So, you’ve got a broad range of skill sets. So, I’m a strategist as like Carla is when she’ll be coming back. We’ve got creatives, we’ve got creative technologists, we got producers who are a little bit like project managers for the programs that we run. And then you’ve got sort of client partners that handle the client relationship. So, it’s sort of a standalone unit within the Google universe that helps advertisers do amazing things with Google tech.

Carla: Oh, that sounds good like I said a job I applied for and then left and then haven’t come back to.

Carla: Hopefully they are well enough to you’re happy to come back.

Chris Mears: At least you know where your job is now right.

Carla: No very excited to come back. So, obviously we talked about the design sprints and perhaps for people who haven’t worked with design sprints or haven’t heard about design sprints. And also, in the context of the work that you do which is more on the advertising side. So, what problems do design sprint solve?

Jani: So, you mean in terms of what problems do they solve for advertisers or you mean just in general?

Carla: In general, and also in your experience working with advertisers.

Jani: So, I think the scale of challenges that we work on, they’ll go from anything related to an advertising challenge to anything about raising awareness or consideration for a specific brand. All the way to, okay how do we design a voice experience or how can we reinvent our app using machine learning or whatever it might be. And when you look at such a broad range of challenges, I think what’s really interesting is and it’s kind of become sort of a philosophy for me in terms of how I try and live my life as well. The sprint sort of forces you to, it pushes this way of thinking which we call bias for action that you try and get to something even though it’s not perfect as quickly as possible.

I think when we run sessions, we have obviously a little bit of conversation and discussion. But I think a lot of the focus is on okay well let’s get it down on paper or now that we’re remotely on a slide. And find that when things have been written down somehow, you’ve applied a different level of thinking to it. It’s so much easier than to see the pros and cons of a concept once it’s out of your head than when you’re just talking and talking and talking and going around in circles and potentially not getting anywhere. So, I think in terms of one of the major challenges, it’s solved is just getting somewhere concrete. That again might not be perfect, but at least it’s something tangible. And having something tangible definitely helps innovation and helps things move forward.

So, I think that’s we’ve been one of the biggest problems. And then in terms of us as a team, it’s given us the opportunity to work with lots of different brands which has been which has been amazing. I think previously, we used to have maybe longer engagement with an individual brand you know a few months working with a specific brand on their project. Which is great and exciting, but now you get to work with 12 or 15 per quarter right. So, the impact that you can have on the industry on the world is so much greater. Because the methodology is so much quicker and faster So, I think then when you look at it from the point of view of the of the clients and brands that we work with then for them also to be able to get to something concrete in such a short amount of time, obviously brings massive benefits.

And it starts to then seep in and become a way of working for them as well, because you think oh well actually it is possible to maybe you know in two or three days get to some sort of a prototype it doesn’t have to take weeks or months. And you start to influencing then cultures and the way organizations work. You know it’s very exciting, you know it’s a whole new way that humanity can operate. So, I think speed to get to something that’s not perfect and then improve it as you go along, I think is the problem that’s that it has solved.

Chris Mears: Yeah, I’m interested to talk a bit more about the some of the challenges with design sprints. So, outside of Google I’ve worked a few places that have sort of tried to use them. I think they’ve run into a few kinds of cultural challenges and that the organization itself wasn’t almost fully bought into the idea of user-centered design in the first place. Which obviously you know made a bit more challenging and sometimes they weren’t prepared for the amount of time and focus that they needed from their different stakeholders to actually take part in the sprint over, however long it ended up being.

So yeah, you mentioned that one of the challenges clients have is just not being able to get something down almost. Are there any other kind of problems you’ve seen with implementation or actually running the design sprints across your clients?

Jani: Yeah, well I think that’s sort of one of the problems that it’s one of those things that until you’ve experienced it you don’t really believe that it can work. So, it’s true that in many companies there’s this sense of like oh surely and we can’t do this in two days and surely it needs to take longer and we need to think. So, I think that is a difficulty. I think still some of the other challenges is making sure there’s the right people in the room. I think especially the more complex the problem is, it’s important that all the right stakeholders are in there and feeding in and making sure that you get their buy-in in the session. Because that’s one of the things that enables you to move quickly that the people that have a strong stake in whatever you’re producing can be there, see it happening and can give you a point of view.

And it’s not always possible, which is a challenge and then I think it’s probably a brand problem related maybe the first point I made that. You know we’re calling it sprints, but it is a workshop and I think the word workshop still has a negative brand. I think people see it as having lots of colorful post-its on the wall, but then walking out of there and nothing happens. So, there’s this sense of oh it’s just a waste of time, right. And I think that’s a challenge. If you’re working on the inside of a company trying to work in this way, you know it’s understandable that you might get lots of pushback like really does this work.

So, you know the best advice is starting with small little projects prove that it works, because it’s so powerful when people experience it. They’re like oh my God oh I could do this could do that. That’s the best way to sort of uh sell in and get people to believe in a new way of working.

Carla: Yeah, definitely. I think you know when sprints go wrong is when as you said you don’t have the right stakeholders. And it happens in agencies a lot and is when they actually just end up being lots of posted notes on the wall. Which it’s happened to me in my experience many times and it is because of the lack of stakeholder buy-in. So, you know I think we at dessert we’re lucky that we normally get well at least in my experience a lot short experience working at the zoo that we did have the right stakeholders in the room. But it’s not always the case, isn’t it? I also think that obviously sprints require a lot of facilitation, right.

It kind of depends on whoever or whoever people are facilitating in the workshop to kind of get to the right point. And also the power everyone giving together and you know brainstorming and working together in groups and then like you know showing back etc. But obviously throughout the pandemic and you guys working remotely. I don’t know how you’ve been doing it, because it’s tough, isn’t it? It would be really tough to actually get to an outcome when you’re not physically with the people in the room.

Jani: Yes, that’s interesting. It’s been sort of one of those things that at the beginning back in when was it back in march. There was a sort of like, oh how the hell are we gonna do this, yeah and I think everyone felt that way, whether it was even just working remotely let alone doing sprints, right. But I think to sort of live by the philosophy of the sprint, I think we quickly put together not even a prototype a hypothesis of how it could work and tested it out. And surprisingly we learned quickly, I think that that was one of the biggest things of trying to figure out how things could work as smoothly as possible and then iterated as we go along. But I think we just jumped in.

I think some of the biggest hurdles are you know obviously the tech setup and making sure that that’s 100% clears from the beginning. So, you don’t waste any time figuring out how person X access document Y or this whatever. So, you can just hit the ground running when you enter the sprint as being critical. So, one of the most useful things is just doing something as simple as just checking the tech before we jump in. So, that everyone’s 100% clear and there’s no time no time wasted. I think the other sort of unknown which I think we’re still figuring out is how long you can actually stare at a screen.

It’s I think we initially and we’re still kind of working with this assumption, that it has to be a little bit shorter than it would be in person. Because I think there’s been studies. I mean don’t quote me on this. I’m not an expert, but studies that it takes a lot more cognitive effort to figure out what people are doing. Because you can’t fully see their body language, so your brain has to work a lot harder like what people agreeing disagreeing, do they like me, do they hate me or whatever it might be, right.

So, it feels more tiring. So, it sorts of cut in half the amount of time that we dedicate compared to when we do things in person. So, that’s meant more focus, which in a weird way you know sometimes focus has made us realize that maybe sometimes doing things in person where you know maybe we were taking a little bit too long maybe it could have been quicker. And so, at the moment we’re still running with this model of trying to do things in a shorter amount of time. I think as time goes on and again, I don’t have the actual answer. I think we’re still figuring this out. I think maybe when it comes to more complex really tricky problems that require a lot of back and forth and a lot of discussion from a group maybe.

And again, this is just a hypothesis maybe still in person, you can’t beat that. It’s a little bit trickier to facilitate a good discussion from an overall group when you’re in a remote setting. Just because you can’t see the body language and uh you can’t see what people are saying. You don’t really know how they’re feeling and instead if you’re in the room with them, you know exactly what’s going on and it’s easier to sort of riff ideas throw things around. And then obviously, having a tangible white wall that you can stick stuff draw stuff on. Immediately when you get a thought is a lot more spontaneous and easy, than maybe what we can do digitally.

So, we’ll see I think it might be a case of we just need to get used to it as human beings and it might be that our brains will quickly switch on and we’ll be absolutely fine. I think we’re still figuring it out. But at the moment it’s working surprisingly well, probably better than expected. But let’s see for the trickier more complicated problems. I don’t know, we’re still figuring that out.

Chris Mears: Yeah, I mean that’s interesting. Because design sprints are famously you know very compressed time scales anyway almost by design. So yeah, you’re now having to actually shrink it even further but still get the same value out of it. So yeah, it’d be interesting to see what the impacts of that are long term, I guess. Yeah, just looking to get your thoughts really. Like is there any tech or tools that you’ve been using that you’ve felt have helped enable that kind of um that you missed by being there in person.? So, like you know Myro or I guess any of the google sweet stuff presumably you’re using quite heavily. But there are any particular good tools or good ways that you’re able to facilitate those workshops in different ways?

Jani: Well, funnily enough although there’s a lot of amazing stuff out there. I think for ease and to sort of reduce the learning curve for some of the partners that we work with, who may not have worked in this way before. I think literally using, we often use Google slides as the foundation of where everything happens within a sort of a slide presentation. That’s every team will have their own workbook. There’ll be a main presentation that we all work in that everyone has access to. And that is the collaboration space, because it’s so similar to tools that people have used in the past. It’s a lot easier to pick up and run with.

So, to be honest with you, I haven’t actually tried that much many of the others. It’s probably something that maybe we should do, but we try to keep that barrier sort of as low as possible. So, that anyone no matter what your skill set is you can basically jump in and be able to contribute to the sprint.

Carla: So, you talked about obviously very briefly about the possibly a positive thing about doing remote sprints, sorry design sprints remotely. Which is obviously be more effective and quicker in some of the tasks. Is there anything else that you think is actually better by running them in that way?

Chris Mears: Well, it’s sort of like two sides of the coin, right. There’s something I don’t have any data to back this up, this is highly subjective. But it’s this idea that you know while it takes effort to stare at a screen it also does take effort to get somewhere physical. Like I think when we were doing sprints in person there’s a location that we always used to do them from and you know getting the tube there the bus there. You know you might be late, you get, they’re all flustered. There’s something nice about kind of spontaneously being able to jump into your home office now that we’ve had a few months to get used to that way of working.

I’m kind of seeing also with some of the partners that we work with that you start to get comments like, oh you know I’m actually liking the fact that I can be anywhere in my home and jump in on this call and contribute ideas. And I can be in a maybe in a space that I’m individually comfortable with, right. I think sometimes when you do sprints physically, you know it’s at someone’s office or someone’s workshop space, you know it takes a little bit to get used to the environment. And that has an influence on your creativity and how comfortable you feel about and how brave you feel with the sort of ideas that you might put forward.

Chris Mears: Yeah, I’m often kind of contributing ideas whilst I’m in the shower you know.

Jani: Exactly, there you go all right. So, I think that’s kind of maybe an unexpected benefit, who knows what might be getting better thinking from people. Because they’re in a place that they feel 100% comfortable.

Carla: Yeah, I was gonna ask that question actually, because I’m actually a quite shy person believe it or not. And in a workshop environment I always get a bit worried about what other people are saying or whether the others have better ideas than me etc. Did you find like running um workshops in this way that perhaps more people everyone had the chance to participate, or is it there’s always certain personalities that kind of take over a little bit in a workshop environment? Or do you think now is a bit more balanced, because everyone has their turn to talk?

Jani: Well, I think that depends on facilitation, whether it’s remote or in person. I think making sure that everyone gets a voice. I don’t necessarily, I don’t know feel that. It’s made a huge difference remotely or in person. I think someone who’s loud and opinionated is gonna behave in that way no matter what context you’re sort of in. But I think a lot of it comes into how you design the session and simple things that you might have covered before. But making sure everyone has individual time to do their own thinking. So, then everyone gets to share their own thinking and it’s not sort of the classic brainstorming of, okay who wants to say their idea first.

No, it’s more of a structured give everyone a voice kind of approach, which has worked remotely as well. That being said though as I was saying earlier, I think facilitating a broader discussion with a group with a larger group of people is just difficult, full stop. Either you can’t see them properly you can’t maybe detect how they’re how they’re feeling as a result and therefore the facilitation becomes a little bit trickier. Because I think when you’re in person, you can maybe understand where the energy is where the power dynamics are and you can play around with that. Remotely you’re a little bit more detached. And so maybe has been more difficult for certain kinds of personalities, I don’t know.

But then on the other hand, you know the screen is also I’m a little bit more on the introvert side as well, believe it or not. And the screen does act as a little bit of a protection, right. I think it’s a lot more kind of in your face literally when you’re in person. And I think when you’re behind the screen like I was a year at home and you’re protected. So, maybe you know at least when it comes to me, maybe you feel even more compelled to share more. Because you know someone’s not looking at you and I know there’s been studies around because there’s been some companies that have been working remotely even before the pandemic. And one of the things that they realized is that, it’s interesting it’s sort of it becomes less about appearance and clothes and all these things that create first impressions when you meet in person.

When you’re remotely because pretty much 70% of your body is cut off. It really becomes a lot more about what you say rather than you know what you look like or whatever, which is some of these things that we gravitate to as human beings. So yeah, I mean like with all these things I don’t really know I think we’re still figuring it out. But I think by then giving a voice to everyone, I think that is a sort of a core facilitation thing and whether it’s remote or in person.

Chris Mears: Cool. So, I just wanted to talk about prototyping a bit. So, that’s obviously a core part of a design sprint. How has that changed as a factor of kind of being remote and also following on from that? Like how has that affected, how you actually get to validate these prototypes? Because you know it’s a lot more difficult or impossible to sit face face-to-face with customers now potentially. So yeah, how’s the whole kind of prototype and testing phase work now in the new world?

Jani: Well, one of the things that again it’s always two sides of the coin. One of the things that has worked well is that you know whether you’re working on an app or whatever kind of digital experience or a video storyboard. I think we’ve been a lot more methodical about including the visual assets and collecting those visual assets from when we’re preparing the sprint. So, that when people get to that point in the sprint, they have a lot of building blocks to start building something off the back of. I think when we were in person, sometimes we did that sometimes we didn’t. Because there was always this feeling of, oh we can just draw it somehow and whatever we’ll figure it out.

But now because drawing and things like that a lot more difficult. I think having I mean sort of visual assets to play with has become a lot more critical. In terms of getting individuals to test stuff and so forth, I think that hasn’t been too difficult. I think we’ve had people test things remotely via video call before. So, now it’s in a remote sprint rather than us all being in person. So, that’s kind of been okay, that hasn’t been impacted too much. But that haven’t been said we’ve been doing a lot less prototyping. I think we’ve kind of the way we work, our methodology is that we kind of stop at a let’s call it a pre-prototype.

So, it might be a few mock-ups of some key screens on a mobile app. It might be a very basic storyboard well before we might have gone maybe a step further. In terms of the impact that that’s had, I don’t know on one hand because we’re doing everything digitally in slides. I think the partners that we work with can literally hit the ground running. And it’s a lot easier to translate and understand the output of a sprint when it’s already in a digital format. I think before we’d have lots of drawings or paper prototypes and then transferring those, yes you could do a video. But that didn’t always work. Or transferring them into a digital format isn’t something that always happened, so it was a lot more complicated.

So, there’s pros and cons but I guess we’ve been prototyping a little bit less. But when we have been doing, it actually has been quite sort of effective.

Carla: Well you guys obviously, well Google invented design sprints and when you read the book, it was this like magic methodology that you know working with startups. We have the best setup to be running like a week worth of this workshops with all the steps etc. But obviously everyone is interpret design screens in different ways and Google Zoo has actually done their own version of it. So, tell us a little bit about that kind of transformation and evolution, I would say of the design spring. Since you started working with that methodology until now obviously with remote springs whatever even before COVID. How design sprints have changed in terms of methodology based on the needs of your clients?

Jani: So, where to begin? I think sort of the design that the pure, let’s call it the pure design sprint, as it is in the book and how it was intended is extremely focused on apps and digital experiences and specifically zooming into. We need to improve the filters on the results of this page and how can we come up with a different way of doing this very specific thing. Which is great, and I think it works brilliantly in that sort of environment and I think some of the example’s kind of focus on that when you read the book and so forth. I think what we’ve kind of had to shift to is maybe less specific areas, because some of the challenges that we work on are a lot broader. Such as, how do we reinvent this brand or how could we apply machine learning to this problem.

So, I think we’ve had to focus in more to be able to cope with which broader problems and therefore what that has meant is we’ve had to add a few more modules that maybe help you think about the problem in a different way. Help you articulate the problem; help you start to figure out ways to approach the problem. So, there’s a little bit more of a strategic phase as a result. And then the other the other sort of obvious change that we’ve made is just the canvas that we have is a lot broader. We work on anything from video to apps to voice to whatever it is. So, I think we’ve tried to develop bespoke exercises, modules and things depending on the canvas that we’re playing with. And not just sort of assuming that we’re building something specifically for an app or a website or something like that.

Because it’s a little bit different when you work with maybe a video right coming up with a series of video executions for YouTube. It’s different templates different formats and slightly different best practice different way of thinking about it. So, we’ve incorporated a little bit of that into the methodology. I think that’s kind of where this sort of the as we call it machine, our version of a has landed. And just to clarify what machine stands for to sort of back up the point I was making earlier. M stands for mission, which is okay what’s the business problem. So, let’s clarify exactly from the business point of view what the problem is. Then A stands for audience, and that’s really bringing a user-first perspective. And we go in on that very heavily, because I think that’s such a critical part of everything that we do that to understand what are really the user needs, the user struggles, the jobs to be done and so forth.

Then the CH is challenge. So, we started from a business first problem, we’ve looked at how the user feels about it. Now let’s articulate it in a way that kind of balances the two things. And just the M and the A and the CH sometimes can used to take even a full day when we were face to face. Now sometimes it can take up to the first sort of half day when we’re doing things remotely. And then the I, is sort of imagined. So, your ideas going very expansive and broad and crazy and is the nutshell. So, going back productive and being a little bit more critical about what’s right what’s wrong.

Then E, stands for execution. So, how do we actually make this happen. So, a few tweaks there in terms of the core methodology, which maybe isn’t as specific when you think about the phases when you read the book and so forth. It’s a little bit looser to apply in lots of different contexts. We try to bring it back down and make it work for the sort of challenges that we work on.

Chris Mears: Cool awesome. So yeah, just kind of coming towards the end now. So, I wondered you spoke a bit about some of the challenges and how you’re tackling with them at the moment. If I’m a designer who’s about to run my first ever design sprint, are there any other tips or you know suggestions you might have for that person? I guess both design sprints in general and you know design sprints remotely. Are there any bits of advice or tips you would give to that person?

Jani: I’m gonna focus on the remote stuff, because I think at the moment that’s just something that obviously we might be doing for a while. So, I think I guess a lot of these things kind of can be translated in person as well. But I think it’s easy to underestimate as I was saying earlier the importance of checking the tech and making sure that everything’s fine. And I think you know when we say the tech, some sort of collaboration space whatever that might be some sort of chat functionality. So, you can keep communicating with people and then whatever you’re gonna use for some sort of a deck that everyone’s following along with.

I think its sort of three core ingredients to make sure that you have a backbone to stand on and make sure that that’s all prepared and sorted from the get-go and there’s no problems whatsoever. Saves lots of headaches. The second thing is and I think this applies also when you’re in person and again I think it’s a perception problem. But whenever people whenever I say this there’s always like, oh God. But the concept of an energizer right, which is which people always think it’s some sort of silly game that you play just for the sake of being awkward. But actually, when they’re done well, they really serve an important purpose in getting your brain into the right mind state depending on what exercise you’re about to tackle.

Because and again, I’m not an expert in this, but the brain has different waves depending on what sort of mode of thinking you’re in. And the whole point of an energizer is to get you into that mode of thinking. So, if you’re about to go into a creative exercise, you want to make sure that you walk into it feeling creative, enthusiastic, brave and not sort of nervous and anxious because it’s not going to serve any purpose. There’s tons and tons and tons of examples of these online. I think the biggest tip is pick one and pick one that’s relevant for what you’re about to do. Because it really makes a humongous difference to the mood and the energy in the sprint.

And then the final one and I think again probably applies to both, but even more so now is this whole area of over communicating. I think both in the prep phase and while facilitating and running the sprint, I think you know not being scared of repeating things and making sure that is this actually what we’re doing is this specifically what you meant. I think there’s so much more room for misunderstanding now, that we’re all or individually in different houses. You can’t have those impromptu conversations in the office. I think it’s so critical that everything’s documented, everyone’s clear on yes, we’re doing this and then we’re doing that. And then the same applies when you’re in the sprint sort of clear sign posting.

So, no one gets lost and keep repeating is everyone clear are we doing and sort of these basics of good facilitation become even more important to making sure that people don’t get lost. And I think doing these three things has such a strong effect on mood and energy. Mood and energy is such a such a big part of the formula. If that is high, the likelihood of reaching something positive will be a lot higher. So, doing whatever you can to make sure that the group is in a good mood and going in the right direction is the best thing you can do. So, that will be probably my three tips.

Carla: That is amazing. Thank you very much to tell me how to do my job when I go back in generally.

Jani: You know how to do it. It’ll be great.

Carla: No, it’s a very like weird time anyway. But thank you so much for your insight. I think this is going to be really useful not only for me. But all the designers listening to you and obviously going through these difficult periods. But obviously we’re learning so much and we’re also demonstrating that you know it is possible to work from home. It is possible to do any kind of job if you have the right technology and the right people working together. So, thank you so much for today. It was really insightful.

Jani: No problem. Again, thank you. Thank you for having me.

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