the partnership. The frequency of
visits depends on the project phase,
geographical distance, and team
budget. It could vary from one week
per month to two weeks per quarter.
While the activities in the kickoff visit
are mostly intended to establish the
partnership, activities in recurring
visits should focus on getting things
done, especially those tasks that
require face-to-face interaction, like
agile UX fit-and-finish and usability lab
studies.
3. Quality is more important than
quantity when setting up a partnership.
Focus on a few remote champions—
people in the distributed sites who will
advocate your ideas in your absence—
when connecting with distributed
teams. Good candidates are team
leads or individual contributors who
are passionate about user experience.
Make good use of the kickoff and
recurring site visits to let them know
what you can offer. Activities like the
design process workshops mentioned
earlier are good ways to communicate
your role in the project. Use great
deliverables to substantiate your
message to the teams. Having strong,
close working relationships with
colleagues in your distributed teams,
particularly developers, is essential for
implementing your ideas when you are
not physically present.
4. “The medium is the message”
–Marshall McLuhan. The way
you communicate is part of the
message itself. People have a set of
expectations that depend on the
communication channel. Therefore,
use the appropriate channels tailored
to different contexts and goals. Here
are the channels I use often and their
considerations:
• Email. For relatively non-urgent
matters. Expect more than a day’s
turnaround time, especially for
international teams, due to time
differences. Try to be brief, but
more contextual information can be
included compared with, say, instant
messaging. Be smart about who to put
in the To: line for the most impact.
• Instant messages and phone calls.
Because of their instantaneous nature,
they tend to be used for quick check-
ins on timely issues. However, keep in
mind your correspondents’ local time
to avoid sending it at an awkward time.
• Online meetings. They allow
for more interactivity with video
and audio and are thus suitable
for real-time collaboration (e.g.,
UX fit-and-finish, lab-study result
presentation). At Microsoft, we use
Lync, a videoconferencing and instant-messaging application, for all online
meetings and presentations. If some
stakeholders cannot attend at the set
time, the recording function in most
online meeting applications nowadays
is useful for archiving and sharing
afterward.
• Microsoft SharePoint. It’s a
team collaboration tool that we rely
on at Microsoft. Among the many
collaborative features, versioning
control enables partners to get the
most up-to-date design and research
documents, all stored in one location.
• Microsoft OneNote. This
application is useful for capturing
non-linear discussion, like brainstorm
ideas, decisions, and follow-up actions
from online meetings.
• Site visits. Despite all the
capabilities that technology
provides, for activities that are highly
collaborative in nature, physical visits
are still more efficient. For example,
in the case of equipment setup for
usability studies. Moreover, the visits
allow both sides to have more candid
talks through the off-the-record nature
of face-to-face conversation. It’s
particularly helpful to catch up on the
“hallway conversation” happening at
regional sites.
5. Share your work early and
regularly. In order to foster a strong
working relationship with your
distributed teams, share your design
ideas and prototypes early and often.
Try to involve your distributed
partners in brainstorming.
It encourages them to have
a stronger sense of ownership of
your proposed ideas.
For distributed collaboration, it is
useful to have transferrable and self-
explanatory work deliverables (e.g.,
PowerPoint decks or click-through
prototypes) to document your design
thought process. Designers can use
storyboards and wireframes to lead the
design discussions. Researchers can use
lab study task lists and study results
to drive study logistics and UX change
requests into the product teams.
6. Be thoughtful when setting up
meetings. Scheduling meetings in
advance, avoiding last-minute changes,
and including a clear agenda with the
meeting invite are all well-known
office meeting etiquette. I’d like to
emphasize their significance when
interacting with distribution teams in
different time zones, as those teams
may have to stay up late or come into
the office early to attend the scheduled
meeting.
Be considerate: If you are working
at the headquarters, avoid making the
distributed teams always compromise
by choosing a meeting time that’s
convenient to you. They will recognize
and appreciate your effort to respect
their need for work-life balance. Also,
be aware that holidays, even work
weeks, may not be the same between
different regions.
7. Be aware of cultural differences.
When interacting with teams in
different cultures, be collaborative
and open-minded. Interpersonal
awareness is an important skill to have,
particularly for teams that are used to
working at headquarters and making
autonomous decisions.
Working with distributed teams
introduces both technical and cultural
diversity to the company, which is
integral to excellence. As with any
collaboration, mutual respect and
open communication can go a long
way toward a project’s successful
completion. Fortunately, most of the
challenges mentioned here can be
alleviated by recent improvements
in technology and data-connection
speed. Initially, you may find there
is more preparation work needed for
distributed collaboration. But over
time, the effort you spend will be well
worth the creativity and insights you
might not have gained otherwise.
Charles Yiu is a senior program manager
at Microsoft’s Next Generation Devices group.
He has been leading products across U.S.
and international product teams, defining and
delivering user experience for next generation
consumers, information workers, and IT
professionals. He has a master’s degree in
human-computer interaction from Carnegie
Mellon University.
→ cyiu@microsoft.com
DOI: 10.1145/2627341 COP YRIGH T HELD B Y AUTHOR. PUBLICATION RIGH TS LICENSED TO ACM. $15.00