‘Social distancing’ has become the new norm across the globe when we leave our houses but virtually, quite the opposite of being more distanced from each other, how many of us have had our colleagues virtually joining us in our living rooms (and even bedrooms) in these recent, surreal weeks? We’ve got to know each other’s private living spaces and had each other’s kids in the background during work meetings. With the closure of schools, many of us are part- or even full-time amateur teachers and nursery workers, alongside full-time jobs. Where family life ends, and the working day begins is becoming increasingly blurred.

So the question isn’t just how we enact and cope with social distancing; it’s how we maintain privacy and boundaries while pretty much the only place we’ve got for all of our activities, both work and social, is our homes. For those of us involved in virtual meeting organization, we can embed this awareness into our product development process by making small but impactful changes. For example, when setting up a virtual meeting for customers and/or employees, consider using a standard background for all attendees. Not only are you ensuring their privacy, you are utilizing another opportunity to reinforce the key messages that your meeting is driving.

‘Virtual distancing’ can also be considered in the User Experience design phase of product development. In 2014, Google ended its use of the ‘infinite scroll’ and moved on to numbered pages. This relatively small UX change freed its users from the curse of endless scrolling (many of us still experience this with Facebook and LinkedIn). Consider limiting the hours of service of your live sites according to region or alternating available content as opposed to creating vast libraries of collaterals.

The Tamooz team has adjusted to this new reality, where the lifeblood of our work can no longer be in-person meetings clearly separated from home and family life. Our role is to enable you to come together with your colleagues and customers, for networking and professional development, whether you are still encountering each other on the frontline or not. Having jumped into action to expand our digital offer as smoothly and quickly as possible, we are now at a point where we can begin to refine this vastly expanded digital user experience that we are offering.

We want to hear from you with your ideas: How has the adjustment to working from home been for you? Have the services we have been delivering been enabling you to maintain privacy and boundaries? What more can we do? And how can all of us, health care providers, digital service deliverers and workers, adjust to this new way of life, to develop new social etiquette and allow each other space and boundaries while avoiding losing scope for cooperation and teamwork? Contact us today.