How D-LABS is experiencing the Corona crisis

Remote workshops & focusing digitalization: The D-LABS team reports on the challenges it is facing and what new ideas evolved through the corona situation.
Actually, we all had something else in mind, didn’t we?
… Instead of visiting our customers regularly and conducting great workshops in a face to face manner, they have been postponed indefinitely in turn.
… Instead of employees who after their holidays, are freshly recoverd and full of zest for action, you can only see yawning emptiness at their desks, not only because of the required home office, but also because they couldn’t return to Germany.
No one knows how the Corona crisis will expand, but we can use the opportunity to make the best out of the situation at this stage. So, the D-LABS team started the Corona era with some new ideas.

Digital is the motto

This may have been a challenge for many companies, but for D-LABS it has been an often tried and tested working routine. All our employees (except those who are still stuck in their holiday paradise) were sent to home office from one day to the other. Ultimately, it is essential for our profession that we work efficiently, organized and collaboratively with our teammates outside the office. For years now, whether within our team or together with our customers, we have been working across various locations. But we changed one thing at this special time: In order not to lose our beloved office small talk completely, we quickly transferred lunch breaks and after-hours activities to the digital. Now our joint lunch sessions and the entertaining evening rounds are also held via Microsoft Teams.

Unfortunately, our customer workshops could no longer take place on site and were carried out remotely whenever possible. Due to that our enabling & coaching team has been working on online trainings, e.g. at our workshop on creativity techniques and our visualization training. Our knowledge about digital collaboration and mobile work was also poured into a webinar to make it available to those for whom the new work situation and processes are a challenge.

With new ideas against the Corona virus: #nohandsland

Especially in these times, it’s important to develop digital products and services that are prepared for the new challenges people are facing. That is why Sebastian Rauer from our digital experience designer team submitted a project proposal as part of the hackathon #WirVsVirus, which was also finally taken and developed further. With the help of many volunteers all over Germany, this hackathon was about developing, testing and improving solutions for the emerging challenges. The team around Sebastian Rauer dealt with the problem of infection with the coronavirus by touching contaminated areas with their project #nohandsland. Because touching the face increases the risk of infections Sebastian had the idea to develop an app, which tracks hands movements in front of the computer through the integrated webcam. The app notifies the user with a visual and audible alarm that he or she is in danger of grabbing his or her face. Pretty smart, isn’t it?

What we should not lose sight of at this difficult time

This hackathon shows us the importance of identifying people’s new challenges and needs in order to develop user-centric solutions. Therefore, our user research experts have developed an online training. It shows how to really understand users and how to validate solutions together with them. One thing has not changed for the D-LABS team even during Corona crisis: the belief that digital products and services tailored to people’s needs are most valuable. Especially in these difficult times, digitalization that focuses on people, can make a huge difference.