Like most large enterprises, IBM’s success relies heavily on teams spread all around the globe. More important, their success relies on the ability of these distributed to effectively collaborate as well as they would in person. They still demand highly productive remote design meetings, as well as workshops and sessions focused on Design Thinking. Perhaps no one knows this better than Jordan Shade and Eric Morrow, design coaches and facilitators at IBM. Eric, who is also a certified LUMA instructor, and Jordan help teams around the world implement best practices to facilitate engaging and productive remote design sessions, and they recently shared their secrets with us.

2. Jordan Shade
Designer & Researcher
IBM Design
@ibmdesign
Eric Morrow
Design Facilitator
IBM Hybrid Cloud
@ericmorrow
mural.co @mural #remotedesign #remotework

5. An exemplar story

6. New Product Team meets for the first time

7. using mural.ly to keep everyone connected, aligned & design thinking

8. Murals: first attempts
• I’m doing most of the work
• Asking for contributions on “your own time”
• Documenting work that already happened

9. • Un-synthesized
• Hard to read
• Not a good point
of reference

10. Empathy Maps Mural
• Very little
participation
• Murals feel like
dead ends

11. Murals: taking it up a notch
• Bringing others into my process
• Radical inclusion
• Transparency
• Documentation of growth and progress

13. Murals: taking it up a notch
• Talk very little—lots of silent
activities
• Call on people on the phone to talk
about the mural at different times—
keeps people engaged
• Real time collaboration
• Share the links everywhere

14. Get your feet wet with
a warm up activity to
learn the tool

15. Define areas on
your mural with box
shapes and labels -
lock them in place;
Give lots of hints
and tips on the
mural in text—lock
them in place too

16. Imagine how you will facilitate
in phases; number the steps on
the mural.

17. Replicate the environment of
a physical workshop: use
parking lots, voting, post
the rules and the agenda.
Think of the mural as a
project war-room.

18. Use a detailed agenda
as in in-person
workshops; keeps
sessions under 2 hours

19. • Start small the first time, then add people
to the next session as you gain momentum and
work out the kinks.
Murals: taking it up a notch

20. Hills Scenarios Mural

21. • Communication Tool
• Point of reference
• Alignment-er amid ambiguity
Murals: taking it up another
notch again

22. Access & Agency

23. Scaling a remote approach