Teamwork at the Extremes: WordPress.com and UX for Good
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This document describes Davide Casali's experience leading remote teams at Automattic to develop projects like Calypso and the WordPress.com Theme Showcase. It discusses how the teams prioritized face-to-face meetings, clear communication, transparency, focusing on one feature at a time, and testing with internal and external groups. The document also outlines Casali's work on UX for Good projects that apply design to social issues and his principles for effective remote and local teamwork which include balancing remote and in-person work and ensuring all work is useful.
Teamwork at the Extremes: WordPress.com and UX for Good
- 1. Davide ‘Folletto’ Casali TEAMWORK AT THE EXTREMES WORDPRESS·COM & UX FOR GOOD
- 2. Manifesto Ibridi F E L L O W UX REDIRECTOR NIGHT.EU ADVISOR
- 3. @Folletto
- 6. 2015
- 9. WHAT IS CALYPSO? Modern foundation for WordPress.com NODE.JS · REACT · REST API OPEN SOURCE SINCE NOVEMBER 2015
- 10. 127 Contributors 26,030 Commits 6,915 Reviews March 2014 → November 2015 (20 months) 20 Months to v1
- 11. …how did you do that? You’re fully distributed…
- 14. HYPERION
- 15. THE PROBLEM
- 16. Themes
- 17. v2.0
- 18. THX
- 19. v4.0v4.0
- 20. 3 codebases DIFFICULT TO MAINTAIN 3 designs PAINFUL FOR USERS
- 21. Create one single Theme Showcase for WordPress.com
- 22. STEP 1: PLANNING
- 23. Meetups: face time is important Know your people
- 24. VIENNA MEETUP 14 April 2015
- 25. Epic Milestone Model Only user-facing features One major feature Many smaller details & fixes
- 27. “ ” Steve Seear, Hyperion I found this session really valuable. It was intense, challenging, and led on to a lot more discussions.
- 28. “ ” Miguel Fonseca, Hyperion +1000 on the value and ROI of our meetup exercises.
- 30. Clear Communication Spaces Communication is Oxygen
- 32. If it’s not communicated transparently, it doesn’t exist Everything is treated as remote
- 33. INITIAL ROADMAP POSTED ON TEAM P2
- 34. MASTER THREAD POSTED ON TEAM P2
- 36. DESIGNITERATION1
- 37. DESIGNITERATION2
- 38. DESIGNITERATION3
- 39. DESIGNITERATION4
- 40. DESIGNITERATION5
- 41. ITERATIONS POSTED ON P2
- 43. Horizon External Testing JULY 21JULY 15 Automattic Internal Testing
- 44. M1 LAUNCHED 3 August 2015
- 45. THEME SHOWCASE M1 IN NUMBERS 5 Design Iterations 11 Horizon Testers 6 Automattic Testers 100+ Feedbacks & Comments 124 GitHub Tickets 85 GitHub Pull Requests
- 46. THEME SHOWCASE M1 TIMELINE LIVE ~3.5 months Meetup 4 days
- 47. THEME SHOWCASE M1 SALES CHECK
- 48. UX FOR GOOD PART II
- 49. “Apply UX design to the most important problems in the world” Jason Ulaszek Jeff Leitner
- 50. Focus on one thing Communicate it well
- 51. ONE NO·PROFIT PARTNER TO SPONSOR THE CAUSE
- 52. Highly independent individuals Initiative and motivation
- 53. 10 DESIGNERS FROM ALL AROUND THE WORLD
- 55. + FULL IMMERSION 2-3 DAYS 2-3 DAYS GROUP SYNTHESIS 4 5 61 2 3
- 56. Zero waste No bureaucracy, everything useful
- 57. “ ” Jason Kunesh, Obama For America We came together as a team in a way that I haven’t experienced anywhere else.
- 58. “ ” Marianne Prins, Van Horne Elementary School I just witnessed an absolute explosion of ideas.
- 59. CAN WE DESIGN THE COMMON GOOD? 2011 Chicago StreetWise · Adler School · The Third Teacher · Cease Fire · Global Lives Project
- 60. CAN WE ENRICH LIVES OF WORKING MUSICIANS? 2012 New Orleans Grammy Foundation · New Orleans Jazz Heritage F. & F. · Clinton Global Initiative · MusiCares
- 61. CAN WE GROW MINDFULNESS IN SCHOOLS? 2013 Vancouver The Dalai Lama Center for Peace + Education
- 62. CAN WE HARNESS FEELINGS TO END GENOCIDE? 2014 Kigali & London Aegis Trust
- 63. 2014 Kigali
- 64. 500,000–1,000,000 RWANDANS KILLED 70% TUTSI 20% OF POPULATION 100 DAYS 1994
- 65. “In my family, we never talked about the genocide It was too fresh in my parents’ mind”
- 66. And you saved the life of the people I was planning on killing” “You saved my life. - Child of victims to teacher of mobile education
- 67. “I came back and my grandmother says, I hope you got that Africa out of your system. But at that moment, I realized it was there and growing. So I moved my family here and opened a school” - KGM Visitor
- 68. “Users go through the hard part, but then also the uplifting part realizing some of the possibilities that are there” - Morley Hanson, Aegis Trust
- 69. UX FOR GOOD 2014 IN NUMBERS 40+ Interviews with staff and locals 90 Flights worldwide 15 People forever changed 3,124 Post-its and flip-charts 500+ Hours of research 96 Servings of french fries
- 70. INZOVU CURVE
- 72. Pain
- 73. Reflection
- 74. Hope
- 75. Action
- 76. “ ” Prof. Dr. Tania Singer People with a lot of empathy want to change that to compassion so they don't get overwhelmed when confronted with suffering.
- 78. The Inzovu Curve maps a prototypical journey of a person going through a transformative experience reaching a state of motivation and action.
- 79. The word Inzovu means Elephant in Kinyarwanda, the native language of Rwanda.
- 84. inzovucurve.org
- 86. Remote Local Months of Work Days of Work Know each other First time meeting Smaller group Larger group No client Has client
- 87. BOTH WORK.
- 89. A separate floor, office, city, country… MAKES THE COMPANY ALREADY REMOTE
- 90. Meet in person Communication spaces Transparency
- 91. Focus on one thing Independent individuals Zero waste
- 92. Pick whatever works… then improve it.
- 93. automattic.com/jobs Happiness Engineer JavaScript Engineer Mobile Developer Product Designer Code Wrangler Theme Wrangler Enterprise Growth Engineer Technical Account Engineer Performance Marketing Marketing Designer Events Wrangler