Sign up or learn about what the coffees are on our home page.
Instructions for participating
Hello and welcome to your Virtual Design Coffee, thank you for taking part!
Theme for this round
- How can Designers best work as part of multi-disciplinary teams?
As Designers, we can’t operate in vacuum. But working with disciplines in and outside of User-Centred Design presents its own challenges. What can we do better, less/more of to make collaboration easier and more effective?
The theme can be a starting point to your conversation. You do not need to cover this and you will not be asked to report back on your conversation.
Key information
- You and your partner for this round have been CC’d in the email. These are the contact details for you to connect on
- One of you needs to initiate the conversation, it doesn’t matter who. Use the email as a starting point to arrange a virtual coffee
- You have until the end of May 2023 to have this coffee
- If you’d like to skip the next round, please let me know in reply to the email by the last week of May
Guidelines
We recommend that you aim for a 20-30 minute video chat, and it is usually a good idea to agree in advance on a couple of topics you’d like to cover. The subject(s) of your conversation do not have to be related to design, but sharing some of the things you’ve been working on or are interested in has often been a good starting point. Otherwise, feel free to use the suggested theme above.
You can use any video-conferencing platform of your choice. It is up to you and your partner whether you do cameras on or off, but consider that seeing each other may make for a more convivial atmosphere.
Troubleshooting
If you’ve been paired together before:
- So sorry! We’ve been doing these since April 2020, so it’s almost impossible to avoid this sometimes
- If you’d like a new pair, reply to the email and I’ll arrange that. If you’re happy to meet your partner for the second time, go ahead!
Struggling to receive my emails:
- I suggest you add barbara.mertlova@gmail.com to your contact list. If this doesn’t help, please get in touch with me directly to resolve the issue
If you can’t reach your partner:
- Please let me know and I will follow up
- If you are no longer able to do the meet up yourself, please consider your partner and let them know. CC me in your cancellation of the meeting as I will offer alternative arrangements to your partner
Need to accommodate for your time zone:
- Please get in touch with me if you are in a timezone that has made it difficult to organise those coffees. If I have a note of your time zone, I can try to rejig the random pairing a little where possible! 🙂
Withdraw from the coffees
If you want to skip a month, pause indefinitely, or completely withdraw, please let me know in an email. I appreciate your help with this as it avoids missed coffee opportunities for interested participants.
Quick note on timelines
I am working on revising the timelines and frequency of the coffees, to reflect the changing needs of the world and our work as Designers.
We had started as a weekly project, then monthly, and now we pair up roughly every second month.
Feedback
I appreciate all your feedback – please email me at barbara.mertlova@gmail.com with comments or questions. I hope you enjoy your coffee!
Barbara
Have you noticed anything that doesn’t work well?
We are keen to improve this website in any way that makes it easier to use for everyone. Please email your comments to barbara.mertlova@gmail.com
Virtual Design Coffee 