Running an online collaboration session

On our team in Springer Nature Digital, our work is to make improvements to our scientific journal websites. To create a collaborative and inclusive work environment, we run a cross-disciplinary workshop which we call Sketching Sessions.

What is a Sketching Session?

Sketching Sessions help us define what improvements we should make on the site, either based on feedback on user journeys, or specific requirements that come up. We normally have a representative from each discipline — Quality Analyst, Business Analyst, Back-end Developer, Front-end Developer, User Experience Designer, Brand Designer. Where needed, Project Manager and Product Manager. They run between 30 to 90 minutes long, once or twice a month, depending on what needs to be discussed. The work defined is then translated into development work on our board and prioritised afterwards.

We’ve normally run the session in-person where we discuss around a whiteboard with a facilitator sketching and distilling everyone’s ideas into an agreed way to move forward.

Here’s an example of what is an outcome from a Sketching Session. Highlighted areas indicate the improvements we will make within the drawn user journeys. In this case, the journeys are around how a user might get from the journal homepage to our articles through the Collections or Volumes & Issues pages.

Keeping focus

Given the recent change in our circumstances where we have to work from home for the next few weeks or more, we wanted to make sure we didn’t lose the sketching aspect of the session. Since we had a conference call with 12 people, we wanted to set up the call in a way that keeps everyone focussed, yet collaborative. The structure of the session was still the same. We had a facilitator that would share their screen and the “sketching” and note-taking would be done by the same person, much like how it would be done in-person.

On the left is our drawing tool called Miro. As sketching is often a way to describe where we think a feature/item should sit on the page, we only needed a tool that allowed the facilitator to draw quick boxes and write text. The drawing should only be made by the facilitator as well so that there is always a focal point for people to come back to.

On the right is our “whiteboard”, where we always had a clear goal for what we’re discussing as a reminder up top, and enough space to make further comments and indicate some next steps as the discussion went on. This makes sure we’re always on the same page and if something was captured incorrectly, someone can always indicate it on the call.

Collaborating remotely

With many people on the call, we were mindful to make sure everyone was heard. Some house rules were set up from the beginning and a co-facilitator was there to help the discussion to move as smoothly as possible.

House Rules

• Mute when you’re not talking to reduce echo and external noise that could be distracting
• Facilitator will ask if there are any comments/feedback/questions after every major point
• Get agreement from team before moving forward to the next point
• If multiple people speak at once, Facilitator / Co-facilitator should indicate the name of the person to speak first and next
• If the discussion moves too much off topic, the facilitator should make a note to park the conversation and arrange that to be discussed outside the session

One of the happy accidents we found was that by using Slack’s screen sharing functionality, participants of the call could make drawings on the shared screen quickly to get a point across. Here’s us ticking in agreement when the facilitator asked for it. It was a quick way to get everyone’s “head nodding” before changing topic.

Reflecting on our process

As our first remote Sketching Session, we found the screen setup and tools used helpful in keeping everyone’s attention on the right subject. Everyone was respectful of one another by giving each other time and space to speak, while also feeling safe enough to express differing opinions. Leaving space for silence and allowing some discussions to meander turned out to be a good way for people to feel comfortable and heard.

These are just some of the things we’ve done and learnt that worked well during a meeting that required more diverse inputs. Above were tools that everyone was used to within our teams but in general, we do have access to a lot of good, free tools. We advise to use ones that people already have as it’s then easily accessible to everyone after the session.

Working from home can be challenging in different ways for everyone. For us, it was important to maintain a sense of camaraderie, fun and teamwork during our activities whilst still being effective in our work. Based on feedback from the team so far, the setup of the session worked and we hope to continue to share what we learn in the coming weeks.

If you have other insights on how you and your teams learnt to run better and more collaborative meetings, please share in the comments below.