Designer News
Where the design community meets.
↵
Ask DN: What is it like to be a Remote Designer?
over 9 years ago from Lance Q, Designer/Founder
Lance Q, over 9 years ago
You got me on self-sufficiency and self-motivation. I have to admit I suffer sometimes for feeling out of sync with the team and a cold mood doesn't help my output at all. I think I have to communicate harder to overcome this.
How did you guys arrive with the "no drop dead" deadlines mantra? Was it like that for the past 6 years?
Toby Keller, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )
Feeling out–of–sync is one of the drawbacks I alluded to. It's part of it… we're actually thinking of ponying up to fly the whole team out together every year or so to combat that very thing. But if you're remote, in the end the work itself has to be enough motivation.
As far as no deadlines: it's a strongly ingrained belief shared by the founding members. Our mantra is more like: never promise a date. But if you promise a date, you must hit it, come hell or high water… so pad the living hell out of it. Like, to the point where there's no way you can miss it.
If you promise something in two weeks, the client doesn't give a shit if you killed yourself with 20 hour days and just barely made it. But if you promise something in a month and deliver it in two weeks, they'll love you.
Under promise but over deliver – I almost forgot about that. Thanks Toby! You made me smile :)
I'm the design director at an agency and have been remote for 6 years. There are positives and negatives, but for me the work/life balance it affords is priceless.
I'm in Thailand while most of my team is on Pacific time. That's a 14–15 hour difference. Sounds terrible, but I actually prefer it to the times I've worked from Europe, which was 9 hours. I get to work pretty early and have an hour or two overlap with the team, who are just finishing up the previous day. After touching base, I have the rest of my day to work uninterrupted.
Our entire team works asynchronously using various tools. We use Basecamp for client-facing discussions, Campfire as a sort of in-house message–board–slash–chatroom, and Invision for feedback on frames and design comps. Our files live on a company Dropbox account.
The number one thing that makes this work: we don't do deadlines. Milestones, yes; but no "drop dead" dates. Besides the fact that "crunch mode" is unhealthy and counterproductive (http://chadfowler.com/blog/2014/01/22/the-crunch-mode-antipattern/), it doesn't work well with a distributed team for obvious reasons. But by setting realistic expectations from the start and being choosy about clients, we avoid those scenarios.
We use a hybrid agile flow for our in-house work and something closer to waterfall for clients, and both work just fine with a distributed team as long as you eschew rigid deadlines.
This of course requires a team of incredibly self-sufficient and self-motivated people. In my experience it's not terribly hard to find devs with those qualities, but it's insanely difficult to find designers who both produce great work and are reliable in a setting like this.