When you’re developing a product or establishing a brand, there are few meetings more important than a design and innovation meeting. As the name suggests, this kind of conference is held to give a team the tools they need to build on new ideas by leveraging innovative tech. Without a specific agenda and clearly defined roles, though, a conference like this can quickly go off the rails. Planning is the main difference between an effective design and innovation meeting and 30 minutes of wasted time. If you’re holding the meeting virtually, there may be even more challenges, but you can rise to the occasion. Before the meeting, you should look over the Zoom virtual background requirements to ensure your computer will comply.
Human Interactivity
Planning is important, but it’s not the only consideration when coordinating a meeting. You need to invest in the human element it contains, too, and provide a venue for interaction between participants. In a virtual space, this may look like some pre-meeting time allotted for socialization, sharing news, and connecting with colleagues. It’s never a bad idea to throw out some icebreakers or engage in a team-building activity. You can facilitate connections, too, with Zoom immersive view templates that feature your logo.
A custom background is sure to be a conversation piece, and you can even design your template to look like a professional office. This can be conducive to productivity when you’re diving into a design and innovation meeting. In addition to prompting socialization, human interaction is essential to the innovation process because it allows for the exchange of ideas, exploration of debate, and consideration of critique. Without these elements, there can be no design or innovation, so it’s imperative that you foster interaction in a virtual setting. Participants should be encouraged to talk freely and the meeting should be a nonjudgmental space.
Effective Discussion
Generating discussion is important, but not all discussion is important. If the talk strays off-topic and the whole team is discussing homesteading with chickens, it’s safe to say you aren’t making much headway in the design and innovation departments. The key, then, is to foster effective discussion that will ultimately result in actionable ideas. To this end, you should provide specific discussion prompts that are open-ended but invite differing opinions. As your team begins to respond, you can moderate the discussion by asking clarifying questions and redirecting any talk that may veer off-topic.
You should ensure you know how to use virtual background in Teams so that you maintain a professional appearance throughout the meeting. No matter where you’re hosting the meeting from, you need to have a clean, neutral backdrop behind you. This can be hard if you are working from home, but luckily, a virtual background allows you to place any image behind you in video conference calls. The next time you have a design and innovation meeting on the schedule, you can create a custom background that’s unique to your team. Personal touches like this often help to keep staff members engaged.
