Trying to make more of a case for WFH flexibility and modernize our workflow at my small company - I come from the digital advertising background where we utilized in office messaging and now tools like Slack etc.
Has any design teams benefited from using Slack or can suggest other digital collaboration/project management tools?
Would love to hear about your workflow from Ideation through production. Currently, my company does not have the budget to invest in a PLM type software so free/inexpensive tools would be the most realistic to implement for us!
Right now, we use Google sheets for style and costing management, trim and artwork logging but would like to utilize another tool for the more creative initial design development tasks.
We use slack at my company, but itās mostly used as a chat function. We have channels for things like āproduct developmentā etc, but but it;s used mostly as a question/statement that others can then comment on/provide answers.
We actually use google docs for all our design/development: Google sheets (excel) for all costing, calendars, etc, and Google slides for all linesheets/concept/presentation decks. I could do probably 80% of my work from home using these tools. (Instead we are all in office, sitting side by side, commenting on things via slack or google doc (sigh))
@twirlgirl thanks for your input! We actually print out our CADs and pin them on a shared foam board when we design and utilize Adobe bridge to review tear sheet notes but I think maybe google slides could be a great/live alternative. I think that if we were able to use more digital collab tools, I can prove to management that we should be able to WFH more regularly (currently only on fridays for 2 months in the summer or if someone is sick etc.)
What is your companyās attitude towards WFH? I am guessing that if you guys are FT in office, they donāt believe it works/donāt trust employees.
Do your teams tend to skew more Millennial, Gen X or Boomer? I donāt mean to be ageist, but my immediate colleagues seem to be majority Boomer/Gen X and they are not really in the mindset to learn new tools and struggle with email, google shared drives and folder management.
My company is weird in that it is run like a tech company startup, rather than a fashion company. (ecom business). Iām one of only 3 people here that actually has apparel industry experience, and Iāve got 20 years in apparel. This company skews very Millennial/Gen Z, and utilizes dozens of different programs/collab tools.
Iām actually Gen X/Millennial, and probably the most old school, as what I do is entirely around product development/fit/design, doing techpacks/linesheets/etc. Still, I find slack useful for chat; emails with vendors; and google slides are actually great for linesheets/design decks because itās easy to collaborate & comment on things. (though I like a good foam board!) Especially for visual stuff, I prefer google slides and being able to update in real time.
With all the technology and sharing, employees here have proven that we can be successful working remotely (during Covid) but our owner is a control freak, so we are back in the office 4 days a week. He doesnāt trust his employees, which is probably why- in a company of 65 people- weāve had 97 people leave in the 4 years Iāve been here. The turnover is crazy.
I worked in a fully remote situation for a company in LA, where we had team members from east to west coast and in between. We used Dropbox to upload images - you can comment back and forth on Dropbox to each other and tag each round of approvals. You do have to be very disciplined how you name things so everybody keeps the same nomenclature across teams. We also used a GoogleSheet to track approvals with what was in the DropBox, so anyone could go in the Google sheet and scan the lineplan like a WIP report. We also used Miro for Design boards that buyers + merch could write notes back and forth to our team or exchange images for mood boards or trend.
I used SLACK, Gsuite, Aurtable back in 2019 at small dress company- which I loved a lot-
So during Covid, next job I introduced SLACK just for the team(free version) everyone loved it (mix of millennial & genZ) when WFH or in-office day-
later company they had MS Teams with Sharepoint, so it worked as well-
Now Iām in a much bigger company(very copprate) with too many āseniorsā plus very old school management- so obviously no SLACK or TEAMS we have to group text within the team (big eye rolls) I dont get it-
A full discloser, Iām a late GenX, but all for learning the new tech, since adobe era(Im definitely not a common type as I encountered many coworkers in similar/older group not interested as much as I am/was)
Check CANVA & MIRO, its also good tool for visual working and share on top of chat system-