Great design is no longer just about how a product looks and feels, but how a company understands and listens to its customers, how it hires and organizes its teams, and how it anticipates and accounts for change. No one is more aware of this than Irene Au, Design Partner at Khosla Ventures.

Design is one of those things that can be delightful when it’s well executed but absolutely infuriating when it’s badly done. The unfortunate reality is that we’re living in a world with bad design all around us. Just think of incomprehensible airport layouts or blister packaging.

With the growing trend of remote work, especially in digital industries, UX managers are faced with the necessity of managing distributed teams, adding to the already complex challenges of maintaining efficient development, selling the UX vision to the entire company and studying mysterious customers.

The only constant is change. These words are as true now as they were when the Greek philosopher Heraclitus spoke them more than 2,500 years ago. For all we know, change might even be accelerating; after all, technology is improving at a rate unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.

The #1 visual collaboration platform, RealtimeBoard, now supports the automated creation of mind maps.

When we think of effective collaboration, we know that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In other words, when you align your efforts, you can reach amazing results. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done, and collaboration has always been surrounded with enormous obstacles, one of the biggest being organizational silos.

Working with distributed teams adds an additional layer of complexity for a manager. Keeping your remote team involved can be challenging. To be successful, many of us are constantly looking for new ways to engage remote employees. One of the best solutions? Try introducing team-building activities.