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Ask DN: What is it like to be a Remote Designer?

over 9 years ago from Lance Q, Designer/Founder

  • Karolina SzczurKarolina Szczur, over 9 years ago

    I'm working remotely for +5 years now. It's great, of course sometimes you miss the team you're working with (if in-house, not freelance).

    I have -9 hours difference with majority of the team in Richland, WA. Which basically means that my day tends to end when their is just starting. We don't really have any hours set, so people tend to pop up in the evenings too. There's definitely some overlap every day, but I wish the difference was smaller. The only annoyance for me is occassional meetings (or actually just chatting) when it's already evening in my timezone (sometimes I'm in a mood for rest already).

    For design reviewing we use LayerVault, obviously. Sometimes we talk in person or on chat (our own product - And Bang).

    Agile seems to be a fancy, hip word for Rails environments, so I digress. We ship daily and get things done. Don't need agile for that.

    1 point
    • Lance QLance Q, over 9 years ago

      Thanks Karolina, I find your preference on fewer overlap hours interesting but I guess with your long experience you've found that it works for you well. In my case we have a 13 hr difference so I have to stay up late every evening to catch up. The first few months I don't mind but I find it increasingly difficult lately.

      Just curious on agile. How much lead time do you have in the design side of things?

      Again thanks :)

      0 points
      • Karolina SzczurKarolina Szczur, over 9 years ago

        Lance — it's not necessarily a preference to overlap hours. I have a routine. Evenings are usually reserved for reading, watching, playing or hanging out with friends so give away this time very sparingly. I choose to stay with the team because I absolutely love the people who I'm working with. It's fun to catch up and sometimes it's also way more effective to talk face to face/chat than email.

        I terms of how much time I spend designing — it really depends. There are weeks when I won't write a single line of code because I'm 100% design focused, and there are weeks when I never open Sketch. It depends on my involvement in projects, but I'd say that my design/dev time is basically split in half. I'm a hybrid :)

        Hope that helps!

        0 points