Exploring the scope and future of remote working professionals and using technology to help collaborations in future. Study created for Mural - A remote brainstorming tool. This deck covers the reflective journey of my team, in the hunt of solutions.

1. TEAM TEDDY
Design Thinking
HYPER ISLAND
DMM CREW 7
02/2016
Aksha Sachdev - Clara Aparisi - Gabriel Negri - Patrick Turtchin - Sofia Nihlén - Viktor Olsson

2. INTRODUCTION
AGENDA
Intro
1. The Team
➔ Teddy's Canvas
➔ The Briefing and Criteria
2. Diverging
➔ Understanding the Consumer
➔ Problem Definition
➔ Ideation
3. Converging
➔ Ideas
➔ Prototyping and Testing
➔ Final Ideation
➔ Pitch Day & Feedback
4. Conclusion
➔ Individual Reflections
➔ Team Process
We are Team Teddy, a team formed by Digital Media
Management students at Hyper Island, UK.
Our objective is to present the best solution to Mural's
expectations about remote work in the future. In this
exercise, we will use Design Thinking to guide our
solving problem flow which is based on a human
centred project.

3. HELLO!
Who are we?
Clara Aparisi
Gabriel Negri
Patrick Turtchin
Viktor Olsson
Sofia Nihlén
Aksha Sachdev

4. ROUTINES
➔ Check in
➔ Energize
➔ Reflect
➔ Check out
TEAM STRENGTHS
➔ Experience in academic
writing
➔ Different ethnic
backgrounds
➔ Varied professional skills
➔ Adaptable in nature
TEDDY’S CANVAS
VALUES
➔ Listen
➔ Respect
➔ Help
➔ Share
➔ Be Playful
➔ Be Honest
➔ Be Clear
➔ Ask questions
SCHEDULE
➔ Show up at 9.00 am
➔ Start work at 9.30 am
➔ Lunch at 12.30-1.30 pm
➔ End day at 5.30 pm
Short summary of the team canvas. Which is
the team framework of how we decided to
work together as a team.
GOALS
➔ Meet the deadline
➔ Deliver a product and presentation
that makes each one of us proud
and content
➔ Have a good teamwork, enjoy the
process
➔ Take notes, share insights
➔ Do documentations throughout the
process

5. Needs & Expectations
➔ Structured process, clarity in
what we are doing and how we
are doing it
➔ Leave room for flexibility
➔ Manage time during tasks and
assignments
➔ Create a happy and positive
work environment, with time for
fun and energizers
➔ Discuss goals, every week
➔ No work during weekends
People and Roles
Clara - Time Manager
Viktor - Group Planning overviewer
and time manager
Patrick - Making us as a team move
forward, if we get stuck
Aksha - Definitions of Value and
Subjects that important for us as a
team, to define
Gabriel - Team Representative in
meetings
Sofia - Team Culture, reminding the
team of allowing everyone to be heard
“The success of teamwork.
Coming together is the beginning
Keeping together is the progress.
Working together is success”.
Henry Ford
TEDDY’S CANVAS
Documentation
During the first days of our team project, we
learned the importance of having clear schedule
and deadlines to work with.
Some of the members had used Gantt-Chart
before, so we decided to make one. However,
we ended up giving up, since the plug-in for
Google Drive just did not work. Thus, we
created a Team Diary both for documentation
but also with the pinpointed activities at hand
day by day. We decided to do check ins and
check outs everyday, as well as try to have
reflections regularly.
We created a team folder on Google Drive that
helped us collaborate with ease. On days we
worked remotely we kept in touch over Slack,
while catching up on Google Hangout for bigger
alignments. We also made a group on Facebook
Messenger which helped us share media files
such as images instantly.

6. The client
Mural a company that works
with remote design work.
Asked us to come up with an
answer to their question:
“With the lense of feeling
smarter and closer together
how might we design the future
of remote working”
The Brief & Criterias
In order for our team to get started with the
planning and outline of the project we had
to make sure that everyone was on the
same page and had understood the brief in
the same way.
Since we all had taken part in the video
conference with the client and read the brief
individually, we started with a small
discussion based on our insights and
opinions on the two. We reached the
conclusion that we should read the brief
again together out loud. This helped us get
in sync and find common ground on what
the brief was asking us to do.
During the same time, we were a bit
stressed as we had been asked by our
industry leader to put together a schedule
to show how we planned to manage our
time throughout the project lapse. Because
we all recognised the importance of syncing
on the brief, we decided to postpone the
time management in favour of the brief.
Reading the brief seemed like a simple task,
but it turned out to be difficult to get
everyone on the same page.
When we finally started to actively listen
to each-other and asking questions like:
“What do you mean?” “Can you explain
more… ?”; instead of assuming things,
we found a good flow. We got on the
same page for the brief but also came
together as a team.
As we saw the power of syncing on
tasks, we decided to go through the
learning outcomes as well, so that we
were all on the same page there as well.
We reviewed and interpreted the
criterias from Hyper Island, using the
insights from the criterias to rephrase
the outcomes to make it clear for us to
understand.
In order for us to deliver an end result
that not only satisfied the client, Mural,
but also met the standard that Hyper
Island, we took time for the brief and
criterias. Looking back, this was
important to us as a team, as we synced
on own expectations and values as a
team as well.

7. UNDERSTANDING THE CONSUMER
Attempt at remote working
“That’s it. I’m coming back to Hyper!”
We tried remote working ourselves to gain insight on the
feeling and process of remote work. Some stayed at
Hyper, the others went to different cafés and settings like
the train station. We set a time for Google Hangout, which
ended in a havoc of loud noises, low power and poor
Internet connections. During this time, we also tried to
share our insights with each-other through Mural. Though
some had a more positive experience, the joint conclusion
in the end was that we should just meet back at Hyper to
have a more efficient and functional process together.
This experience made us reflect on how difficult remote
work could be, which guided our questionnaires. Aksha’s
quote above sums it up rather well.
Desktop research and benchmarking
“Wow, I didn’t even know this tech existed!”
As our brief asked us for the future of remote work, we
decided to make thorough research to get a sense of the
current state of tech for remote work. We looked at
competitors of our client, read up on blogs and articles
and watched YouTube-videos. A great insight was that a
lot of tech that came into our minds as being the future
was already being worked on, such as Microsoft DVE
which offers possibilities to have virtual meetings and tech
that allows you to touch and control objects in another
physical space. This gave us a lot of energy and when we
realised how far tech has come, we decided to push
ourselves to dream even bigger. The agreement within the
group moved us to focus on how to bring digital into the
physical world rather than trying to digitalise the physical
word, which much of the innovations we found did. We
had an “aha-moment.
technical problems remote work?

8. UNDERSTANDING THE CONSUMER
Organisation
Flexibility
Tools
Misunderstanding
Distraction
Decision
Collaboration
Communication
Efficiency
Trust
Human contact
BARRIERS & DIFFICULTIES
Procrastination
Brainstorm
Guidance/help
Co-planning
Feedback
Understand others
Knowledge
sharing
Quantitative survey
People who have not
experienced and do not want to
People who have not
experienced but would like to
People who have
experienced remote work
After understanding the brief, we
interpreted the need for a solution
that can help people think and
connect with others around the
world. But to do this, we needed
to go deeper into the realities of
our consumer’s needs and
problems. Therefore, we
conducted a quantitative survey
with multiple choice questions to
three distinct targets:
Qualitative research
However, the quantitative survey was
not enough to improve our learnings
about the alternative way of work. So,
we conducted a qualitative research
with some open-ended questions
which were answered by 13
interviewees who have experienced
remote work. Below, are some quotes
from the research that helped us
define the problem:
The findings that came from the
interviews, we were able to find
commonalities with the quantitative
survey which led us to our next steps
of defining the problem.
The outcomes of this survey, fulfilled
by 105 respondents, were really rich
and we could realize the main
discomfort points, the barriers and
working difficulties when operating
remotely. Aside we highlighted the
key outcomes.
“I’m not very effective when we
[colleagues] miscommunicate”
Hedvig, 25, Motion Graphics Creative
“Interpersonal relations will always be
dependent on physical presence”
Sid, 34, Edtech Entrepreneur
“When you have some personal
preoccupations you tend to try to solve
them before to solve job issues”
Erik, 24, Freelance Designer

9. PROBLEM DEFINITION
Key problems
After compiling the research insights, we found that there were
a number of commonalities in the 3 three target groups with
regards to the barriers and needs when working remotely. To
move our analysis further, we clustered the problems into
groups based on their nature and occurrence.
We ended up with 12 major clusters: Decision Making,
Miscommunication, Flexibility, Human Contact, Efficiency,
Collaboration, Trust, Tools, Organisation, Work Space, and
Emergencies.
As 12 clusters were difficult to manage and felt widespread in
nature, we decided to try and focus the clusters further to arrive
at a more focused problem which we could use towards our
final goal.
We divided ourselves into groups of two, working closely with
four topics per group to engage with the task at hand.
5 Why’s
Within our groups of two, we applied the method of the
5 Why’s to look deeper into each problem statement.
At this stage we had an interesting discovery, when we dived
deeper into the 12 problems, we realised that the root cause of
several of these seemed to be the same.
All the problems and needs related to communication, such as
decision making, miscommunication, human contact and trust
were deeply connected to a human need of belonging and
being acknowledged. It seemed that remote workers felt a
serious lack of these “real connections”.
Similarly, another subcategory, the need for flexibility and the
problem of separating work life from private life, arose from a
deeper need to better manage time and increase focus.
Lastly, the set of issues that focused on organisational gaps,
efficiencies and co-worker collaboration, pointed us in the
direction of performance and quality of work.

10. PROBLEM DEFINITION
FUNNEL OF FOCUS
WHY
Work Quality, Time
Management &
Real Connections
HOW
HOW MIGHT WE
The 5 Why’s helped us identify
subcategories and areas of problems
and needs. To move forward, we
recognised a need for focusing on the
‘How’ to point out our direction in which
we could review our options and
possibilities.
We defined our goals more strongly by
analysing what was tangible to solve.
This helped us frame our problem
statements with greater empathy to the
needs of our consumer.
Work &
Life
Balance
Creativity
Collabor
ation
Stimulate and facilitate
creativity in remote
working?
Facilitate balance between
work and personal life for
remote workers?
Have a remote experience
delivering human contact
and promoting collaboration

11. IDEATION
Brainstorming to solve 3 HMW
After spending an afternoon on brainstorming many HMW’s and sorting them into categories, we ended up with 3 HMW’s.
The morning after we met at Aksha’s place to work on the final brainstorming. We first did some more silent brainstorming
and awaited Gabriel (who was in a meeting with the other team reps). After that we did a team brainstorming and started
ideating on the suggestions we had to move towards prototyping.
Refining ideas
We ended up with two ideas for prototyping that we felt reflected the content of our HMWs and could address several of our
ideas. We split up in 2 groups of 3 (Sofia, Clara, Aksha, Gabriel, Viktor, Patrick) to put together something visual and concrete.
The end product of this was two big sheets with illustrations, post-its and keywords. One prototype of “Spirit Animal” and
one prototype for “Brain Coin”. This process helped us in trusting other’s capabilities and the efficiency of splitting into small
groups. Both prototypes focused on how we can bring digital into the physical rather than digitalizing the physical. The brain
coin focused on how to enhance human2human interaction in remote work and the spirit animal could help both working
alone and teamwork.

12. IDEAS
Spirit Animal
Spirit Animal is an AI device that accompanies you in life,
learning from you, teaching you and supporting you.
It can help you brainstorm, find data, reflect on previous
experiences you have shared together or even help you
with self-care and mood.
It can be compared with a mix of your perfect co-worker
and personal assistant, also substitute you at meetings.
Intelligent Personal
Assistant Camera and Projector
Real time language
translation
Voice command &
response
Big data syncing &
analysis
Interacts with other
IAS
The brain coin is a small device that you attach to your
temple as show in the image below.
When two persons put on their brain coins, the two brains
can connect to share the five senses of smell, feel, sight,
hearing and tasting.
This means that you can switch between the two persons’
experiences and impression in real time.
Brain Coin
No distance barrier
Real time
transmission
Share experiences
5 Sensories

13. PROTOTYPING & TESTING
Client inputs
We had a mid-project brief with Mural, in
total 10 minutes long on Zoom.
Presenting our prototypes and our
gathered insights, we asked for feedback
and thoughts. The client was positive
about the prototypes but concerned,
asking for what they could start develop
tomorrow or in the next year with our
product in mind. Based on this feedback,
we realised that we needed to do a
backcasting for the final pitch to guide
our client from today to the product of
tomorrow. We also realised that we
should have prepared ourselves more to
answer the questions in the best way.
Industry leader inputs
During the process, our industry
leader Andy has been available for
us to get some feedback and insight
on mainly tools to move forward. He
also served as an interviewee and
gave feedback on the prototypes as
well as participated in our mid-
project brief to come with some
feedback.
Consumer feedback
There were several point in our
project process where consumer
feedback and insight helped us
guide us forward. Before even
moving to prototyping, consumer
feedback had been used at two
occasions. We gathered new
consumer feedback until the last
days, where they helped us redesign
our storyboards for explaining the
products into videos. These were act
out situations in which the product
would be helpful. This was then
tested again and gave more
favourable results for us to
understand how to show how the
product can add value to people’s
lives.

14. PROTOTYPING & TESTING
Creating personas helped the team
understand and reflect on consumer
needs. The three personas created
differed from one another, as one
had a more open mind and was an
early adopter of new tech, whereas
the two others were more
conservative and perhaps restricted
in their tech use, but the two also
had particular habits and wishes
compared to the other. Doing
customer journeys, we realized the
needs and problems of each
persona. Thus we could adapt to
and approach different consumer
groups in the best ways possible.
CUSTOMER JOURNEYPERSONAS
With the customer journey,
the team found out that with
our rather future-thinking and
tech-savvy ideas, most of the
personas would need a
learning process to get to
actual use to the products. As
the personas start to
understand the products
better, the usage and usability
would increase and they
would start to adapt the
solutions (products) to their
respective needs. We gained
good insight, such as that
tech-savvy users might not
end up being the power user.
WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF REMOTE WORK?
The definition of remote work was an important step for the team, as it guided the process of prototyping. We found the
definition in the wording “Working alone together”. To reach these words, we analysed several kinds of people and concepts of
remote work. Remote workers were working far from their offices, if they had any, or far from their homes or in public places such
as coffee shops. With the interviews, surveys and insights, the team found out that the concept of working remotely was not
actually determined by location, but rather by how they could, or could not, collaborate with their teams or clients. With this
definition in mind, we created three personas that were all working remotely but in different contexts.

15. FINAL IDEATION
MAKING THE TOUGH CHOICE
The process of making this choice was rather stressful for all of us. One of
the major reasons for the stress was the time constraint, we were only a
day away from the client pitch and still working on double prototypes.
Looking back, the weight of detailing and validating two ideas until the
very end made us feel somewhat burnt out.
At this point we had already received enough responses from our various
tests which indicated that the idea of “Brain Coin” was exciting and
experiential in nature, but as a lifestyle product and not as a remote work
product. As the aspect of remote work was only noticed when we asked
for it, it would not be the main reason for consumers to buy it.
Furthermore, the features of the second idea, Spirit Animal, were
perceived to solve issues of remote working more clearly as compared to
the Brain Coin. We also reflected upon that the fact that the idea of
Artificial Intelligence has been in research for a longer period of time,
giving more credibility. This also supported our interviewees to see the
concept as possible and not just fiction.
After shortlisting the Spirit Animal over the Brain Coin idea we put it to
further test to ensure our concept was clear and understandable to the
audience. Our observations from the previous prototypes had made us
realise that storyboards were difficult to follow for a complicated product
as ours. Hence we recorded some short videos which helped us in testing
but also to present in the pitch to the client. Click the following link to
watch the final video of our product: https://youtu.be/DXQMdTe2nT4
Key Factors
Below diagrams aims to point out the major factors
that led us to our final decision of which one of the
two ideas we were planning on pitching to the
client.
35%
20%
25%
10%
10%
Consumer
feedback
Time
Pressure
Existing
Research
Closest
to Brief
Near
v/s Far
Future

16. In the morning before the afternoon pitch, we started
rehearsing the presentation. Aksha and Patrick represented
Teddy’s team at the presentation.
The feedback that we received from the client was quite
similar to the check-in we had a week before. They liked the
idea and concept but they wanted to see something that
can change their company tomorrow. We had taken this into
consideration, making a backcast for them to follow our
suggested steps for them to move towards the future.
Despite this, some of their feedback after the pitch was that
“five year plans” are useless for a company.
The next day, we had a feedback session with our industry
leader Andy who shared his insights to us as individuals and
group, as well as gave feedback to our idea and process. The
biggest learning of our team from Andy was that we missed
the opportunity to tell a story. The first idea “Spirit Animal”
was very strong concept that could create a very good story
to engage with our client. We completely agreed with him
and we promise to improve that in the future.
In the afternoon we had our final team termination that
included our last reflection and individual feedback. It was a
very honest process and we end up very happy and proud.
PITCH DAY & FEEDBACK

17. CONCLUSION
Teddy’s team experience map
How our team was feeling on each step during the process
Week 1
Crew culture creation
Academic writing
Individual research
Week 4
Personas creation
Storyboards/Prototype
Choose main idea
Video prototyping
Final pitch
Feedback/Group session
Team Development
Week 3
How might we?
Team Development
Brainstorming
Storyboards/Prototype
Mural check in
Define remote work
Week 2
Brief and Insights from it
Gantt
Research
Questionnaire/Interviews
Insights
Reflection
Patrick
Aksha
Viktor
Sofia
Clara
Gabriel

18. "The process of understanding different
cultures and backgrounds helped me to
become a better active listener and
better team player. Beyond my
experience and projects that I have
worked for, the team helped me with
other points of view; the reflections and
feedbacks sessions exposed that blind
side that I did not notice. During the
whole process, I have learned design
thinking methodology by participating
of all decision making and working
actively with all tasks. Fell glad of taking
part of such high performance team.”
“I had seen the evolution of our
team, from day one until the end
and we created a very strong
group, making me confident,
growing and learning together. I
have learnt that the process is
more important that the actual
idea and the ups and downs are
good learnings to push me and
the team forward. My biggest
learning is a good communication,
expressing your ideas clear and
respecting each others, make a
team stronger and easy to trust. I
will miss this team.”
“During the whole process we faced
some situations that demanded us to
reach agreements for the team even not
everybody consented. But those
moments were really important for my
personal development, because they
made me left my comfort zone,
expressing my points of view, thoughts
and ideas. Likewise, is really amazing to
discover others backgrounds and learn
with the experiences of them. Lastly, the
presentation of the pitch affected me as
well, since it was my first speech in
english for a public. I liked very much
the result and the support of the team
that made me felt more confident. Let’s
practice more and improve it!”
INDIVIDUAL REFLECTIONS
What affected me the most during the process?

19. “What affected me the most was how
important communication actually is
especially when you are working in a
team with various cultural and
professional backgrounds. My biggest
take from this process is to try to
explain myself in more ways than one.
Just because you think you are being
clear does not automatically mean that
the person you are speaking to
understands what you are saying. Try
not to take it personal if you are not
being understood in the way you
attempted to, but rather try to see the
challenge in explaining yourself in
different ways as a valuable lesson.”
“For me, the different backgrounds
of my team members both helped
and hindered. The challenge for me
then, and what affect me, was to
realise this and actively work with
the team to turn the backgrounds
into help and not hinders. This was
possible from a very open and direct
communication between the
members, something I have learned
to value even more during the
project. I also learned a lot about
myself and how I act and react in
different situations. For the future, I
will be attentive to others needs as
much as my own, and be open
about it.”
“What affected me the most was my
first hand experience at witnessing the
power of Team Culture. In the past
during group work at my university and
my workplaces my focus had always
been on being a contributing team
member, who helps and stays involved.
It is only now that I’ve realised that
work effort alone isn’t the ingredient for
success. A team of talented, hard
workers can fail if they don’t make the
effort to create an atmosphere that is
respectful and honest to each other.
The Keyword for great group dynamics
is Active Listening. And I’m in the
process of growing better at it.”
INDIVIDUAL REFLECTIONS
What affected me the most during the process?

20. A 10 minute-podcast in which the
team discusses the process and
group dynamics.
https://www.mixcloud.
com/epletviktor/team-teddy-podcast/
A 1,5 minute-video in which the team
explains the work process through
images.
https://youtu.be/QhdZD9bCwNc
TEAM PROCESS