The Best Communication Tool You Can Buy as a Remote Worker
About a month ago, I decided I needed an iPad. It was a want, not a need. It was a splurge. A treat for living in lockdown. Two months ago, I would have laughed at you if you told me I needed one. Now I can’t live without it.
Why, you ask?
Because the iPad and Apple Pencil combo is the best communication tool for remote workers since Zoom. And we’re all remote workers now.
If you’re like me, you love whiteboards. I have a huge one behind my desk back at my office that I haven’t been able to use in almost a year. I love the collaborative nature of whiteboards. I love talking with a dry-erase marker in my hand. I love that others can grab a market and add their thoughts. After one of these conversations, I often take a picture of the whiteboard and save it to have a record of the ideas we came up with.
The pandemic killed those interactions. Sure we can video call and share our screens and present, but we lost that interactive nature of whiteboard talks. Sure, I take notes, and we can even create a Google Doc, but it’s not the same. Shared documents are too linear. They’re too stuffy. They’re not great for brainstorming. They’re wonderful when ideas are hashed out and you need to document them, but they don’t work in those early, collaborative, creative problem-solving conversations.
Enter the iPad.
Now when I join meetings, I often join twice. Once for me and once for my iPad. It can be confusing for the other participants at first, but they quickly get over it.
Now when I need that whiteboard, I share my iPad screen and open a drawing app. Zoom has a whiteboard option, but I find it a bit too limiting. This way, I can have something prepped ahead of time, or I can sketch something out impromptu. I love it.
When our UX team is presenting wireframes and I have questions or suggestions, I don’t have to use my words. I can draw on the screen. I can circle. I can draw arrows. If during the conversation, they have new ideas and I don’t quite follow, I can draw on the screen on top of their wireframes and say “Is this what you’re talking about?”
I’m jealous of the fluidity of your markup on the screen. I feel left out.
Before I was relegated to drawing with a mouse or my finger on a trackpad. I’m no artist, but I definitely stretched the limits of other participants' imaginations using those tools. Now, I can grab my Apple Pencil and quickly sketch something out.
At first, I thought I thought I had a solution looking for a problem, but I felt validated when our Director of Product Design reached out to me to ask what I was using in meetings because “I’m jealous of the fluidity of your markup on the screen. I feel left out.”
I think he’s going to get one soon.
There’s plenty of videos and articles about the iPad being a phenomenal productivity tool, but I never realized it can be a fantastic communication tool as well.
If you’d like to spruce up your virtual meetings and replicate your office whiteboards, get yourself an iPad and Apple Pencil. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
It’s done wonders for me.
