Delivering Design At A Distance

Image by Alexandra O’Toole

Once upon a time, people meeting other people in real life to collaborate and bring ideas to life, was something we did daily. Now, our ability and appetite for face to face meets depends on which Coronavirus Tier is in place where we live. Our physical connections and relationships to each other are giving way to virtual associations as a result, and for many of us, our working lives must make the shift online too.

In the early days of the UK’s lockdown, in response to the enforced transformations taking place in businesses the world over, I was commissioned by Creative Lancashire to write a series of guides called Delivering Design At A Distance. As a test piece for the series, I interviewed, Jonathan Ball, a product designer and design strategist at Designmine and WhatCouldBe, about his experience of the sudden requirement to move all of his work online, and into the world of the webinar.

Sharing his learnings of creating and delivering collaborative webinars, Jonathan makes a series of recommendations for delivering design at a distance, and speaks candidly about what worked, what didn’t and what’s he’s still figuring out.

His initial advice for designers and creatives? “Get your tech right, and get it in the right place, to make the process of ‘broadcasting’ and communicating ‘in broadcast’ as seamless as possible…Then practice, prototype and test sessions with friends and colleagues before your own live ‘broadcast’.”

Read the full interview here.

Jonathan and I will be back with a suite of articles and guides focused on different aspects of Delivering Design At A Distance and featuring top designers and creatives from around the world and on our doorstep, later this year.