Weeknotes 16–20 Mar 2020
This is the week most of us began working remotely “all the time” and started feeling a bit trapped inside the house.
Dear reader of the future, this week many of us have been confined inside our houses trying to prevent the spread of a new virus. So much has already been said and tweeted about coronavirus and COVID-19 that I am going to leave it there and not add anything else. Dear reader of the future, you can google it if you really want to know about it. That is, if Google still exists in your time.
So the week started on a Monday, like weeks usually do. Wait, no. That’s terrible. Scratch that, let’s start over again.
What did I do this week? I did A LOT of things. Contrary to my belief that working remotely full time would lead me to long walks in the park with my dog, I discovered that remote work is a never-ending list of things to do, with piles of laundry clothes and unpaired socks in between. And that unless there is good communication with the team, it can feel quite lonely too. So the first thing I learnt is that exercise, regular breaks and routines are essential, as it is to take time off. I would say I started the week OK, then it went down and then up again.
Here are other things I learnt this week:
- “Good video conferencing solutions are all alike; every bad video conferencing solution is terrible its own way.” I believe Tolstoy said that; or maybe it was Steve Jobs. This was the week when I got to try a multitude of videoconferencing software not only in my own computer, but with users. We kicked off Monday with a full day of remote user research, and ended the week it the same way. I love talking to people, but conducting research is not like having a conversation: you have to listen and give them space to wander, pause, make mistakes, ask questions you can’t answer and sometimes ramble about things you didn’t ask about. We tested the prototype we created last week in Figma and asked them to share their screens while performing tasks and talking about what they were doing and why.
- “People are awesome.” I was moved by the generosity of strangers offering to help, volunteering and/or raising funds to help others, especially the most vulnerable. Shopping and doing errands for elderly neighbours, supporting those with jobs at risk and most affected by the outbreak, or those that simply reached to check how others were doing. Every small kind gesture counts. Virtual lunches and coffee meet-ups, digital book clubs, text messages... We’re all in this together.
- “It’s good to disconnect”. There are so many other things I would like to say about this week. Like how we ran an amazing collaborative virtual design review session with the developers, how iterating quickly enabled us to refine the prototype and a bunch of other things that probably would make sense to my design bubble but not mean much to anyone else. The truth is that I need to stop checking the news every hour, log off twitter (and the Internet in general) and really take my dog for that long walk I’ve been promising her. I will be back on Monday with renewed energy and a plan to withstand ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶y̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g almost everything that is going on.
Other things I am reading, seeing, pondering, listening to…
- How to Run Remote User Research (Like a Boss!) by Lindsey Redinger
- How to Run Great Remote Workshops by Sebastian Mueller
- Street Food, on Netflix. Watching it in the evenings, to disconnect. It’s the closest thing to traveling we can think of right now.
- Pablo Stanley’s “Sketch Together” live sessions
- Quarantine Book Club
- Alaskan Malamute puppies
- This little Chinese girl singing “I wish you Love” and playing bossanova on her guitar ❤️
Ant that’s all for now. Stay safe… and wash your hands. 🧼👏
