Can A Tool Designer Work Remotely

Best Remote Work Tools, Tips & Jobs to Work from Home Effectively

The best remote work tools, tips & jobs are picked to help you work effectively & safely from home amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

Within the past weeks, the novel coronavirus, officially dubbed COVID-19, has spread across the world. Many countries have taken lockdown and social distancing measures to stop virus spread. More product teams and companies are joining this war against viruses each day, finally choosing to work remotely.

However, as a designer, product manager or developer, how can you work from home effectively and safely while social distancing?

We've picked 10 of the best remote work tools, tips & jobs to help you to stay connected, productive and safe amid the outbreak.

What is remote work?

Remote work is a rising working style that enables employees (from all over the world) to work together on the same project or file by breaking the limits of the traditional office environments.

In other words, without walking into the traditional office each day as before, the remote working style allows the whole product team or company to arrange and complete their daily work more flexibly and effectively. They can easily choose to work from home for spending more time with families or just work anywhere and anytime while traveling outside.

It offers people full freedom to work anywhere and anytime.

What are the benefits of remote work?

Remote work spikes these days following the social distancing measures. Many big tech firms, such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon, etc, are asking their employees to work from home. Honestly, even before the outbreak, remote work is already on the rise and attracts lots of firms to join in each day. Do you know why?

It benefits both you and your team a lot. Here are its main benefits:

Much time saved. Without wasting time on the way to the fixed workplace, you and your team can spare much time working or doing other valuable things.
Lower cost. Working from home also reduces traveling cost, team-building and management costs and even house renting costs, etc. It helps save much money for you and your team.
More freedom. Working remotely also allows you to more flexibly arrange daily work based on your own schedule, giving you more freedom to enjoy both work and life.
Increased work efficiency. Working from home also means less distractions, less pressures, less and more efficient meetings, more comfortable and happier working environment, and so on. It will help increase work efficiency and productivity easily.
Easier access to top talents. Remote work also enables your team to hire top talents only from all over the world, making it easier to create a stunning website or app.

Remote work brings many benefits, and allows you or your team to work more efficiently and enjoyably on the same project.

10 best remote work tools for your product teams

Thanks to these benefits, working remotely has become an overwhelming trend for many product teams to continue working at home in this special period. To help improve your work efficiency, we've tested and picked 10 of the best remote work tools for you and your team to design, communicate and collaborate online effortlessly:

Best communication tools for remote teams

1. Slack — an online workplace to communicate easily across teams

Price:

Basic -free

Standard — $6.67/month

Without face-to-face communication, a communication tool will contribute a lot to your work efficiency. When choosing a communication tool online, Slack is often on the top list.

Slack is a fully integrated messaging app that allows your teams to brainstorm and iterate design ideas together, exchange files and automate design tasks easily.

Pros:

Create channels to manage different designs and teams easily.
Track and view conversations anytime in case of missing anything important.
Communicate with voice and video calls effectively.
Integrate with over 2,000 tools, like Google Drive, Office, Jira, DropBox, etc.

Cons:

Limited file storage.
Constant notifications throughout the day can be very annoying.

It offers a unified online platform for you and your team to communicate effectively.

2. Zoom — Communicate smoothly with video conferencing or calls

Price:

Basic — Free

Pro — $14.99/month

Zoom is a web-based video communication tool that allows your team to host video or voice conferencing/webinars, real-time chat and share screenshots with ease.

Pros:

Easy to use.
Provide high-quality video meetings and voice calls.
Support simultaneous screen sharing.
Send messages even during the video conferencing.
Record video meetings well.
Host one-to-one or group video conferences.
Integrate with many tools, like Google, Skype, Facebook, Workplace, etc.

Cons:

You may need very fast, seamless network connections.

It is a perfect tool for your product team to hold video meetings online remotely.

3. Microsoft Teams — Communicate effectively with Microsoft tools integrated

Price:

Free for Office 365 users

Microsoft company has never let us down. Microsoft Teams is a modern communication and collaboration tool specially made for remote teams. It allows you and your team to easily work remotely with chats, meetings and calls online anytime and anywhere.

Pros:

Create different teams and channels for better management.
Provide seamless file search, backup and collaboration.
Create/use bots to process boring or repetitive design tasks or messages.
Integrate with other Microsoft Office apps.

Cons:

Lack of notifications
The number of channels that you can create is limited.

It is a good option when your team gets used to using Microsoft tools.

Best brainstorming tools for product teams

4. Mural — an online brainstorming and collaboration tool for small or medium teams

Price:

30-day free trial

Starter — $12/month

Mural is an online digital workplace for your whole product team to brainstorm project ideas online together at the very early stage. It features a big free-style HTML5 drawing whiteboard that enables you and your team members to directly draw out your design ideas. So, it would be really cool to discuss and draw a UI flow, workflow or prototype draft with your team members.

Pros:

Brainstorm new design ideas with your team members easily.
Add sticky notes to further explain or leave feedback.
Collaborate on a project in real-time.
Integrate tools like OneDrive, Dropbox, Microsoft teams, Jira, Slack and more.

Cons:

The pricing system needs to be improved.

If you are looking for an online platform to discuss design ideas before designing, Mural is absolutely a good option for your remote teams to check.

Best project management tools for remote teams

5. Trello — Plan, track and manage design projects visually

Price:

Basic — free

Business class — $9.99/month

Trello is an online visual project planning and management tool that works perfectly for remote teams. It has very simple, intuitive and effective boards created for you and your team to plan, track, prioritize and manage design tasks and projects at a glance.

Pros:

An email address is all you need to add a new member.
Provide boards, lists and cards to track and manage your design tasks easily.
Instant email notifications are quickly sent to notify you any update or change.
Share files, images and videos with your team members.
Comment on a card to update the latest changes of a design task or project.
Create to-do lists to keep everything in control.
Integrate with many management tools , like Google Calendar and Google Drive.

Cons:

Limited file or attachment storage.

If you are in a small team and have a cost budget, this project management tool can surely help you out.

6. Asana — a project tracking and managing tool

Price:

Basic — free

Premium — $10.99/month

Asana is a popular project management solution for project teams in all sizes and has more than 3,5 million users around the world. Your team can easily create an online workplace there to track and manage design tasks and projects easily. All tasks can also have notes, attachments, tags, and comments for further communication.

Pros:

Use boards, tasks and subtasks to organize and manage your tasks and projects easily.
Use Timeline to create a plan, track and finish all tasks without missing any deadline.
Collect suggestions and requirements easily.
Use Calendar to have full control of all tasks and projects.
Change task status for a better view at a glance.
Integrate with over 100 tools, like Slack, Salesforce, and Microsoft Outlook.

Cons:

Limited exporting functionality
You can only assign a task to one person.

It is a good option for product teams to create a design plan, track and manage design process with ease.

7. ProofHub — an all-in-one project management tool

Price:

14-day free trial

Essential — $45/month

ProofHub is an all-in-one project management tool trusted by many remote product teams. It provides powerful features for you and your team to plan, collaborate, organize and deliver projects on time easily.

Pros:

Advanced search
Online proofing
Discussions
Events & milestones
Chat to share feedback
Time tracking
To-do lists and tasks
Workflows & boards to manage all design tasks well
Offer you developer APIs to integrate with other third-party tools freely

Cons:

The pricing plan needs to be improved.

If you or your team really needs a very high efficient tool without worrying about the price, it would be good.

Best file management tools for remote teams

8. Google Drive — create, save, share and manage design documents online

Price:

Personal use — free

For business — $8/month

While working remotely from home, you may need to share design related PRDs, PDFs and documents with your partners. A file management tool can help you and your team save much time and effort. Google Drive is one of the best file management tools to help you create, save, share and manage design documents online effectively.

Pros:

Enable users to create Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings and Forms easily.
All documents are auto-saved and backed up online.
All documents can be shared with team members and any changes are live.
Set sharing permissions and security level for documents easily.
Access documents anytime and anywhere.

Cons:

Free account has only 15GB of free file storage.
Rely on internet connection and status.

Best design collaboration tools for remote teams

9. Mockplus — an all-in-one product design platform for prototyping, collaboration & design systems

Price:

Basic — Free

Team — $9/month

Mockplus is an all-in-one web-based product design platform trusted by over 1,000,000 users all over the world. It provides powerful features for designers, developers and product managers to work together online effortlessly with auto specs, assets and code snippets. It is a comprehensive design platform for your product teams to design faster and collaborate better online.

Pros:

Create fully interactive prototypes online from scratch with drag-and-drop.
Customize a workflow that suits your remote teams perfectly.
Write PRDs online and add prototype or document references for further explanation.
Compare pages or design versions for faster and easier design.
Handoff designs with auto specs, assets and code snippets.
Create UI flows and add relevant flow descriptions with ease.
Assign, track and manage design tasks or projects easily.
Inspect and download assets with simple clicks.
Comment on designs with rich comment tools.
Integrate with many design tools, like Axure, Sketch, PS, XD and more.
Collect, share and reuse design systems for keeping designs consistent.
Any changes on designs are auto-updated and notified.

Cons:

The free version allows you to add 3 users and create 5 projects only.

It is a perfect tool for you and your team to work on the same design project collaboratively and effectively online during this pandemic. It helps streamline your workflow and manage your teams' design tasks, resources, documents and members perfectly.

10. Balsamiq — a wireframing tool used at an early design stage

Price:

30-day free trial

pro - $9/month

Balsamiq is a quick wireframing tool that allows a remote to decide on the micro design direction of a website or app. For better communication, your team can also collaborate online to discuss about the design interaction together.

Pros:

Provide pre-designed UI libraries to help you create wireframe quickly
Search for desired component for faster design
Collaborate in real-time to make interactions

Cons:

It is better to be used at the early design stage.
The interactions are limited and need to be improved.

It is a good wireframing tool for your remote team to discuss a micro design direction before you really start to design UI details.

Want more tools? You can also check another 20 must-have online design collaboration tools.

5 best remote work tips to stay productive, healthy & safe

Apart from the remote work tools, we've also summarized 5 of the best remote work tips from our experiences:

Make a task list in advance

Working from home generally gives you more freedom to arrange the daily work based on your own style and schedule. However, it does not mean that you can overweight the freedom than the work. So, in case of missing any work, you should make a task list first in the morning and check it to see whether they all are done in the later afternoon before knocking off.

2. Take care of yourself

When you focus on working, you may just forget time and finally sat there for a whole day without breaking. That's really bad for your health.

So, while working remotely, you should also take time for self-care. For example:

Take breaks regularly
Eat healthily
Take exercises each day
Spend leasure time with your families

You can freely add anything to keep yourself healthy and happy.

Besides, if you often forget such self-care things, just try it add them to your task list or directly set an alarm to remind you.

3. Listen to white noise music to reduce distractions

Working at home often means that you have to stay at home with your kids, parents, families or roommates. Your working environment can be very terrible. To reduce distractions and work more efficiently, you can just turn on your white noise machine or app. A good pair of noise-canceling headphones also work.

4. Turn on community or app notifications

In case of missing any important news, you should turn on the notifications of your team's community or collaboration tools. Of course, if you really need time to focus on a design task, you can temporarily open the "Do not disturb" mode as well. Just do not forget to set it back.

5. Tell your team when and how they can reach you

In case that your team members may not find you online in emergency cases, you should tell your team when and how they can reach you in advance. And this can be very important for your entire team's work efficiency.

(By the way, you'd better not work in your pajamas. Trust me! Our team is also working at home recent days. You just cannot predict when and where a leader or colleague may contact you via a video chat. That can be very, very, very embarrassing!!!)

5 best remote work jobs for designers, developers & PMS

If you are still looking for a remote work job online, the job news below can help you out:

User Experience Designer & Researcher — VitalWare

This remote job is a hiring information posted by VitalWare that offers customers CDM Management solutions. They need an experienced User Experience (UX) Designer and Researcher to support the Product Development department.

2. User Experience Designer & Developer — Oracle

The well-known Oracle company is hiring an experienced user experienced designer or developer with a strong design sense to take part in interdisciplinary projects. Read more details to see whether you are proper for this.

3. Senior Product Designer — Kiva

This job news is posted by Kiva, an international nonprofit with a mission to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive. This company provides a full-time position for a senior product designer with over 5-year experiences.

4. Product/UX Designer (Saas) — Aha!

Aha, a well-known software company in USA, is now hiring a full-time product/UX designer with at least 3-year experience in product or UX design. You can also read this remote work job to see whether it suits you or not.

5. Full-stack Designer — SIDE Labs

SIDE Labs is now hiring a research-driven designer to do a project with Refugee Action. The candidate should love user research, have a strong sense to design and know how to use Webflow, Zapier and Airtable. No experience required.

Wrap Up

Remote working becomes a must for product teams and companies around the world to reduce the impact of social distancing.

We hope these remote work tools, tips and information can help you and your team to work smoothly and effectively online.