A recent Statista report indicates that seven countries, including the U.S., have an OTT household subscription penetration rate of over 20%. Globally, a PWC Report states that India is now the world’s fastest-growing OTT market. 

If you are an OTT provider wondering how to generate more subscription growth and are looking to take your app overseas, you’ll want to know how to cater to these growing markets. However, launching an app in a new culture involves planning to meet audience expectations, so a global user experience (UX) and localization strategy are essential to mass adoption. 

Let’s look at important considerations for global UX as it applies to launching OTT apps for different cultures by first starting with localization principles.

What is Localization?

A localization strategy entails building a tailored approach for your product to address: 

• Purchasing habits
• Customer preferences and behaviors
• Cultural differences in the targeted countries

Some examples of localization (as they apply to UX) include: translating content, changing currency, adjusting pricing, and providing customer service to meet the linguistic and legal requirements of a culture different from your own. Your goal with your localization strategy should be to develop a product that feels as it has been developed within the local culture.

Let’s take a look at some of the considerations of transcending OTT streaming across multiple cultures with an excellent example of a company that has localized its OTT app for global adoption:

The Rapid Global Expansion of Netflix

Netflix, which operates in over 190 countries, was able to amass an almost total global-reach in just seven years. Harvard Business Review’s analysis of Netflix’s extensive reach is based on its ability to leverage “country-specific knowledge” as a critical factor for local regions’ success. 

Netflix has gained relevance in so many global markets, but it did not attempt to enter all markets simultaneously. This cautious approach entailed partnering with many local media providers and cultural UX experts. These careful efforts lead to an increase in international revenue that surpassed US domestic numbers in 2018. 

“Great storytelling transcends borders.” Ted Sarandos, Netflix, Chief Content Officer.

Getting Started with Global UX: Utilize a Culture Expert

When demographic-specific insights are difficult to gather from research alone, hiring an authentic cultural expert can be a win for your design strategy. 

In the United States, this person would be equivalent to a digital anthropologist, or someone who studies the relationship between humans and digital-era technology. With this partnership, you can analyze different aspects of your target audience so that you achieve mass appeal across all of your designs.

Cultural UX Review

When working with your digital anthropologist or setting out to the research on your own, here are some areas where you should seek to meet cultural or local norms in your design:

• Color: UX/UI designers often use color to drive emotion within their design. Different cultures often interpret colors differently, so the psychological effects you are looking to achieve may work well in one country and not in another. For example, the Western world associates white with purity and red with passion and danger. Conversely, in India, white is associated with morbidity and red with purity.
• Graphics: UX designers often tinker with the previews in thumbnails to test engagement. A dog’s use in imagery may depict our connection with our furry friends in Western countries. However, in Islamic culture, where dogs are considered dirty or dangerous, the image may not result in the desired engagement.
• Navigation: Some cultures read left to right, while others read right to left
• Forms: When letters take up more space than initially designed for, this can result in an unpleasant UX when not appropriately addressed.
• Holidays: Be familiar with local holidays to utilize personalization or recommendations.

Bad Translation Can Be Costly (And Embarrassing) 

As content has become more international and big brands increasingly have to identify global scaling considerations, building apps for different cultures and languages is not always as simple as changing the menus’ language. 

For example, when the food chain KFC made the move to the far east, its campaign slogan, “Finger-Licking Good,” was not well received by the Chinese population. The mandarin translation of the infamous slogan read: “We’ll Eat Your Fingers Off”—far from appetizing. 

Language is perhaps one of the most obvious yet underemphasized aspects of recognizing the need to move toward an accurate, “culture-first” strategy to maintain the relevance of content internationally. 

Maintaining the authenticity of idioms and metaphors while considering cultural preferences in the content is the key to achieving amplification on a global scale. OTT providers who are keen on expanding their reach outside of the United States need to keep in mind that accurate translation and accessibility, via subtitles and proper dubbing, can determine a platform’s success overseas.

Subtitle Considerations

By and large, consumers in different countries follow several trends in the kinds of content they want to view. For example, 44% of Mexicans surveyed reported that they watched a foreign-language title with subtitles. 

The research suggests that the Mexican population depends, and expects, access to subtitled content. This common localization practice is one of the factors that OTT providers will have to consider when applying a content strategy within the Mexican market; and beyond. 

To avoid coming up short when trying to captivate global audiences, OTT providers should: 

• Focus on UX for different cultures, and languages
• Empathize with the people who you are designing products for
• Purposely re-use code but always revamp UX

The point is to accurately convey your content in a way that is impactful but is in no way unintentionally offensive or confusing.

How To Make the Most of Your Content Overseas

The complexities of launching your OTT service internationally cannot be underestimated. While globalization has ushered in a slew of significant challenges, the rewards of a global localization strategy can pay off for forward-thinking content providers. 

Just like you need to account for the native nuances between Roku and Apple TV, you need to have the same considerations for your international expansion. What works in the United States may not transcend internationally.

The OTT market expansion has left many new up-and-coming providers looking for the right software and infrastructure to leverage.  At Zemoga, we’ve been changing the lives and businesses of Fortune 500 companies for over 18 years, helping content providers reach audiences globally and domestically. 

Our group of experts are agile and flexible; to help strategize with your internal team to determine what localization approach will work best to achieve your content’s goals. We can help you solve big or small problems from scratch. 

Contact us today to figure out how we streamline your OTT app’s global UX.

In 2021, digital users will need flexibility and support to adapt to changing circumstances and protect what matters most to them. Some users will be ready reclaim their freedom as soon as lockdowns loosen; others will double down on measures to keep themselves safe. To help businesses navigate these changing attitudes, we’ve broken down the 3 new realities about interacting with digital users in the coming year.

1. Audiences are getting even more diverse

When social distancing interrupted the physical world, digital experiences became crucial for users from all walks of life. As a result, users who were once hesitant to embrace technology have found themselves using new digital tools to connect with the people and things they love most.

In the coming year, businesses must consider how they attract, engage, monetize and retain these new, diverse audiences. Take note of how these new users find and interact with your products — is it different than what you expected? The same?

To ensure that digital natives and recent adopters alike have the same great experience, you may need to incorporate product features like:

• Additional support touchpoints, such as floating chatbots
• Clearer on-page navigation, such as anchored toolbars
• Shortcuts to accelerate the user journey, such as one-click ordering

Ultimately, digital experiences have always been about the users; the difference now is that these users span a wide variety of needs and comfort levels in our new digital-first world.

2. Digitization is more mission-critical than ever

If one thing is certain this year, it’s that digital experiences are here to stay. With many users unable or unwilling to venture into the physical world in 2021, businesses no longer have a choice to embrace digitization if they want to stay competitive.

To be certain, some things will always need to be done the old-fashioned way (you can’t recreate the full restaurant experience from home). However, it’s possible to augment offline experiences with digital support like:

• Online reservations and ordering
• Virtual content (live and on-demand)
• Contactless mobile payments

Now is the chance to examine your products and services and develop integrated, digitally-driven ways to delight customers — or risk being left behind.

3. Consumer journeys are even harder to predict

With more diverse audiences comes more diverse digital journeys. Today’s users have more digital devices at their disposal than ever before — and they depend on frictionless digital experiences to help them stay safe and get the job done.

Businesses will need to be conscious of these fragmented user journeys in 2021, supporting users as they seamlessly switch which from device to device. For example, a user could build their grocery list with Alexa, review that list on their phone and place their grocery order using their computer. In contrast, some users might complete the entire purchase with their Alexa device, while others will venture into the physical store to complete their purchase.

We know it’s difficult to predict every possible user journey; the key is to give users the flexibility to craft an experience that works best for them by offering seamless, integrated products across multiple devices (phones, computers, voice assistants, smart TVs, etc.).

The new normal

Much of what we’ve learned from 2020 simply emphasized what we already knew about the future of digital experiences:

• More users are engaging in digital experiences
• More devices are joining the digital journey
• More experiences can be enhanced with digital products

As you navigate the challenges and opportunities of the upcoming year, keep your eye on the prize: delivering consistent, compelling digital experiences that help users achieve their goals as easily (and safely) as possible. You can learn more about our thoughts on collaborative design in a remote world here. Want to discuss how you can build your next great digital product? Our sales team would love to hear from you.

However, even high-performance teams come across their own difficulties, but they face them with an “I can solve anything” mindset, they learn from their mistakes, do their best to stick to the plan but are prepared in advance to negotiate when the expected outcome is at risk. They collaborate, innovate, and fiercely pursue excellence by shared goals, shared leadership, open and honest communication, operating rules, transparent conflict resolution, and strong and shared accountability of a project’s objectives.

It’s hard, but not impossible, to be part of a high-performance team. In the first place, you want to be sure you are working with a “real team” and not just a group of people following orders; a cohesive unit that works towards achieving the same goals. If any doubt about what a “team” is, you can find a fine description in Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith’s book, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization: “A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed in a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”

The “use” and capabilities of teams within organizations has expanded exponentially in recent years due to competitive changes and technological updates. A team allows to apply multiple skills to one single product and leverage different expertise and points of view to foster agility, make better decisions, solve more problems, enhance creativity, and increase productivity and morale – much more than a single individual working alone.

There are three key reasons why teams work:

1. A group of individuals brings skills and experience that exceed the abilities of a single person
2. They can be more flexible and responsive to changing demands and ongoing changes
3. People can have more fun at work than working individually

So, what are the main characteristics of a high-performance team?

Although there is no simple way to measure performance and effectiveness for teams, and no team is identical, there is a shared understanding of what makes an effective group work. High-performance work teams are generally compounded by a combination of missions and goals, human talent/performance skills, safe and trustful environments, rules and standards, a success-driven mindset, empowerment to make decisions, conflict resolution, good communication, and people-centered leadership.

What distinguishes high-performance teams from other groups is that high-performance teams are more than a collection of people simply following orders. To function effectively, they also need:

Self-organization

High-performance teams are considerably more ambitious than the average team. They plan to achieve high-impact goals and big milestones that represent high value for their clients, and they decide who does what in the project. Once a big deliverable is broken into smaller tasks, the team should be able to choose which tasks each person will take, and they do it according to their strengths and specialties, making sure they have the required skills to complete them and keep in mind all the dependencies that could affect others, which means considering needing inputs and delivering outputs to each other. And once they are chosen, they are capable of organizing their time, reporting and working through obstacles, and making sure their plans aim to achieve the established goals on time.

Closely-tracked Performance

As a high-performance leader, you will want to measure performance, progress, and team effectiveness. This is the opposite of having messy information with which we cannot analyze data and make decisions accordingly. For example, if a high-performance team is working on creating a t-shirt sizing guide, past performance measures and tracks would be a great input to identify and log the actual time taken to complete past features in order to estimate how long the creation of future ones would take.

Also, giving visibility to the team of their progress and how much remains to complete their current work fosters collaborative success by providing clarity and building trust within the team, unified goals, and shared accountability.

Here’s another example: to ensure construction is heading in the right way, an architect has to take small breaks to check the work of a house frequently, and the same happens within any high-performance team after every major milestone/deliverable. Why is that? Because this review can provide realistic effort and completion time, as well as an opportunity to foresee blockers that might hinder a project. This exercise also allows to strategically group pending tasks so the team is able to deliver high-value ones in the first place.

In the end, job satisfaction goes up as the progress of completed work is seen regularly. This prompts a sense of completion, team members stay engaged in their tasks, and finally, everybody wins both teamwork and clients.

Trust in one another

It’s important that each team member knows how to value the work of their team and recognize their contributions to the final product. Feedback is wholeheartedly accepted because they feel they’re in a trusting environment in which they can work or fail safely, knowing they will learn from mistakes and improve their methods for future delivery. The team members know they are a diverse team, and each one of them can contribute with a personal touch based on their experiences; they understand that there will always be interdependence among them, and they pursue the best way to handle it.

Rules and Standards

Rules, norms, and standards make up the foundation upon which the team is built. Every team needs rules that support good relationships and guide group behavior. Norms are helpful to improve team performance, but why is that? The main reason is that ineffective or inconsistent processes can cause obstacles with gathering, organizing, and assessing information, which is the raw material of high-performance teamwork.

Norms could include:

• Open lines of communication so everyone knows when, how, and to what extent they should communicate
• Fostering early conflict resolution so there is no wasted time on this later on
• Regular evaluation enables finding improvement opportunities faster
• Encouraging respect among team members, which build a cohesive and supportive environment to grow in
• A strong work ethic focused on results and a shared recognition of success

The key is to establish the rules as a team during an open and honest dialogue in which everyone can feel heard and valued. The team determines the standards under which everyone should perform, and consequently, they will be accountable for them.

An “I can solve anything” Mindset

As if they have superpowers, high-performance team members are aware of challenges and are ready to deal with them, always willing to prove themselves and overcome their limitations. Part of team identity is to be committed to success together, and this shared feeling creates synergy among the team members when working towards the achievement of a common goal. Within this kind of environment, people know how to do their jobs and why they are doing them, which is imperative in motivating them to give their best, understanding that each of their contributions is a valuable asset for the team’s meaning, mission, and vision.

It’s key that everyone is aware of the purpose of each new feature, giving everyone a clear perspective of the big picture and what to do and knowing that each part is important and required.

Empowerment to make decisions

Making decisions makes you naturally accountable for them, which is why involving everyone as part of the decision-making process is a must within high-performance teams. Being part of the planning and strategy ideation can boost interest in the project, provide an opportunity to develop and demonstrate new skills of any team member, and lately reinforces team empowerment. Individuals feel safe to innovate, aware that they can learn from their mistakes, and the team benefits from it by having robust, scalable, innovative, and up-to-date solutions for their clients.

Conflict Resolution and Communication

Individuals in high-performance teams don’t let themselves get frustrated when conflict arises, let alone compromise team goals because of it. They know that conflict is natural – it allows us to create unthinkable solutions, to solve differences, and understand that the main benefit of working in a team is that each issue is reviewed and fixed by different people with different perspectives who can contribute to a high-value way.

Conflict management is an inherent part of high-performance teams. Since leaders are not directing and controlling the team, but coaching them toward their best version, discussions are on the agenda and the team is open to it since this is the most suitable way to focus on issues’ solutions, providing motivation, maintaining interest, and finally promoting cooperation. Communication aims for group decisions.

Leadership

Leaders of a high-performance team have a clear mindset of servant leadership, which allows them to accompany the team throughout the project. They are responsible for:

• Making sure everyone is aligned on purpose, goals, and delivering meaningful and valuable results to the client
• Keeping the team motivated by encouraging them to learn from mistakes and manage outer and inner relationships
• Not struggling with power, but encouraging team members to become emergent leaders for the initiatives they can add high value to, according to their strengths
• Being a company in their growth path, by creating environments and giving them the right tools so they can enhance their skills, both hard and soft
• Highlighting the opportunities that others can focus on, and doing so without seeking credit for it

Why would we want to become a high-performance team?

It’s known that motivated and happy people are more productive, avoid procrastination, and deliver better products. Being part of a high-performance team is one really good reason to be motivated within an organization. Most members of high-performing teams claim that it’s exciting and fulfilling to work in collaborative environments because they are challenged to contribute to their highest potential while they learn a lot from their teammates.

Other benefits of having high-performance teams in your organization are:

• Team members are clear on how, when, and where to work and deliver their results due to open and transparent communication
• Everyone is working towards the same goal, which allows improving delivery cadence
• Freedom to express feelings and ideas is valued, which encourages the ideation process and continuous improvement
• Everyone gets a chance to contribute to encouraging shared accountability
• Everyone has a solid and deep trust in one another and in the team’s purpose
• Conflict and disagreement are natural; criticism is seen as a good thing that helps improve the performance of the team
• Decisions are made by the whole team so everyone knows they can collaborate on every deliverable together
• The leadership of the team varies according to team initiatives; there is no struggle for power and everyone understands that leaders can emerge according to the team’s activities
• Team and individual performance is understood by everyone and expectations of the team are known among all
• Each member of the team respects the process and other team members

In addition to that, and for planning purposes, having a high-performance team is a great advantage when it comes to predicting velocity and defining goals/milestones more accurately. Emphasis is made on collective team performance. And because above-average team performance is highly valued, these kinds of teams frequently evaluate and assess when individuals underperform in their contribution so they can together find the root cause and encourage them to get up to speed with the rest of the team.

Now it is clear, but how can we get there?

Pay close attention to the mistakes you and your team make, and acknowledge them so they teach you how to improve upon them next and each time. This is paramount in shaping high-performance teams, and each member must be resilient and not allow themselves to be defeated by mistakes but own them and collect lessons from them for the next time they get involved in similar situations.

Frustration is normal when something goes wrong, but the idea is to learn lessons to improve upon weaknesses in forthcoming efforts. We may take down the wrong walls once, but the key is not to do it again. This entails continuous improvements to your processes and the way things are done.

This is closely related to adaptability to changes. Projects are constantly changing and evolving, and when we talk about embracing and implementing changes, high-performance teams don’t get self-pity and give up – they analyze, adapt, and finally perform, always aware that they will go through the same situation throughout any project lifecycle.

Because working within a team is a constant flow of information, the combination of learning from mistakes and practicing effective communication will strengthen team cohesion in such a way that teams can work as a unit towards the same goals because they are clear, socialized, and well-understood by everyone. High-performance teams set up communication rules from the beginning: everyone should know when, how, how frequently, and with whom to share which information in order to keep the team on the same page. If noticeable effective processes and successful results are the foundation of a house, then communication becomes the structure: scope, goals, constraints, limits, and all vital information should be available, centralized, socialized, and known by everyone.

Last but not least, motivation becomes the trigger of high-performance teams. Intrinsic motivation such as rewards, recognition, and a safe environment to innovate, foster personal satisfaction at work, which leads the people to feel engaged and this impacts positively their performance. Preparing the way to become a high-performance team.

High-performance teams are not superheroes, they are humans who never stop learning and improving their skills, both hard and soft.

We don’t need to be bitten by a spider or even gather all the infinity stones to become a high-performance team. Just keep in mind and practice:

• Recognizing and leveraging your mistakes to learn how to make them better next time
• Taking the time to think and analyze your performance as a team and make sure you find improvement opportunities
• Encouraging yourselves to keep a “we can do it” mindset
• Documenting your lessons learned from every complete milestone, you might use them for the future
• Embracing and leverage conflict, making sure you always get a new idea from i
• Ensuring the whole team has the opportunity to participate in the decision-making process so they can feel accountable for them, keep in mind all of you have shared goals

I want to highlight that none of these characteristics are exclusive for software development teams; any team can be a high-performing one. After reading this article, what do you think should be the first step your team takes to become a high-performance one?

The company has grown both in size and strength, and it’s from our resilience and tenacity that we’ve been able to gain new partnerships and virtually onboard over 170 new team members.

To peek into the year we’ve had at Zemoga, our leadership team gives their perspectives on 2020, how we faced adversity with optimism, and how we look ahead to start a new year strong with a ‘new normal’.

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Betting on Talent and Staying True to Our Roots by Carlos Pardo, VP, Finance
Leading up the Administrative teams, Carlos Pardo gives his perspective and experience in how the HR team shifted their strategy in growing our company while keeping people at the center of it all.

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Building Better Relationships by Carlos Ferro, VP, Operations
From an Operations point of view, Carlos Ferro reiterates the importance of open and strong relationships, and how having them creates the best digital products; the best output is delivered by teams that work well and collaborate together.

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Collaborative Design: Before, During and After the Pandemic by Juan Diego Velasco, VP, Design
Juan Diego gives his perspective on how the Creative and Design teams made a shift to ensure the design process never suffered when losing whiteboards and going 100% digital.

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Redefining the Rules of Teamwork and Project Executions by Katherine Renteria, VP, Delivery
Read how Katie Renteria, VP of Delivery, lead her teams in redefining the rules of project executions and all the details that make up and ensure smooth deliveries for our clients when moving to virtual-only management and team integration.

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Connecting Through Remote Spaces by Andrés García, VP, Technology
We’ve always taken advantage of technology to aid in our virtual connections, but 2020 brought us to a new level. Andrés takes a deeper look into how companies can continue making use of these spaces to keep learning from one another.

Finally, there are other companies like Zemoga, which for years have implemented a working-from-home strategy with a solid foundation to do so in a way that guarantees that quality of life, objectives, and career paths are prioritized, no matter the location from which team members are working from.

For companies that had to adjust and shift to a 100% remote-working with secure environments, it wasn’t just about purchasing video conference software licenses. There is a complete process chain covering important aspects like security, IT support, electric and internet backups, and so much more, but there are even more important challenges like ensuring the team – though remote – continue creating human connections and interactions together.

Virtual spaces as the new norm

As a technology team, we work in an environment where we don’t just support the growth of individual ‘rockstars’; we are all rockstars as an entire team. We make it a priority to constantly foster our growth together, and we do so by always referring back to one of our mottos: “there is always something to learn, but there is also always something to be shared”.

We promote that ideology as something that applies to every single person within the team. We have always had open-mics, workshops, technology ‘brown-bag’ speeches, some of them from our offices and other ones carried out remotely. But this year, with the pandemic and a 100% pure remote work model, our challenge has been to continue what we do to enhance the same motivation of knowledge sharing. Granted, some of the interaction is not the same as when we have the advantage of using our physical spaces like Zemoga Academy within our Bogota office, we strongly believe that having remote spaces – whether for learning or just talking and catching up – create a lot of motivation and a team connection.

On top of those sessions within our own technical teams, when you have an HR team that also promotes remote spaces company-wide that support other people-centered activities like art, culinary improvement, quality life-style sessions, and so much more – then the perfect balance starts to appear.

Stay hungry to learn

My advice for those navigating these strange times, for other companies, and even for our own team, is to continue to foster knowledge-transfer spaces no matter if they are directly related to the work or not, and seize the opportunity to always share what you know and at the same time learn from others.

If your workforce is located over different places around the world, this is the perfect time to not only gain knowledge from different ways of working but also to also understand other cultures and how getting the best of those cultures will enrich the way we are, the way we work, and the way we live.

We were forced (yes, forced) to adapt to a virtual work-environment that no one saw coming or was prepared for. Our team dynamics changed, and while we’ve always had a mantra around the principles of collaboration, self-organization and trust were put to the test with the reality that we were obliged to face earlier this year. On top of those new challenges, thankfully our business grew and we doubled our staff throughout the pandemic, we gained new and exciting clients, and we kicked off new projects. Crazy, right? And all of this while working remotely from multiple cities throughout Colombia and different countries over different time zones.

Granted, we’ve had a strong working-from-home policy before all of this and we were well-prepared to deal with a WFH scenario for a short-period of time with staggered volumes, but thinking about staying home for months, onboarding new employees and kicking off big projects from home for an unforeseen time period, was never heard off.

What were the key challenges we went through this year? I definitely say, creating meaningful work relationships with our clients and with our team members, maintaining a positive and productive work environment for all of our employees, and revisiting our structure to support the ongoing influx of new team members joining the company.

Building better relationships… virtually.

Creating meaningful work relationships was one of the biggest challenges we had to face, both with the individuals that make up our team (new and existing) and with our clients.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we realized team dynamics were greatly affected when trying to align everyone around day-to-day executions; we had to tackle many different fronts. The first was related to the daily interactions amongst project teams, like how we would be able to guarantee important discussions about scope, tech definitions and project day-to-day tasks, making sure nothing was not lost in our new virtual environment. We had to make sure we could communicate in an effective way what needed to be shared and understood by everyone, and without physical presence we had to be more creative

We’ve been fortunate to be able to grow our team during a time when so many companies had to let go of theirs, but this also posed the challenge of integrating new individuals virtually. Since many team members were new, they didn’t have the opportunity to meet before the pandemic, and we had to rely on different activities and games to get to know and understand each individual background with the ability to align with the project’s own set of rules and processes during the so-called, ‘new normal’.

Not only did it help to align the ground rules for each project, but getting to know each other (including our clients) helped a lot in the project’s day-to-day – from asking questions to understanding requirements to managing difficult situations within this new environment.

At the end of the day, we are human beings, and we base all of our work relationships in trust and empathy, believing that all of our employees are doing everything in their power to successfully deliver on their tasks while understanding that the new situation posed challenges onto every single individual working from home. That hasn’t been present before.

Connecting with our clients

We also have the blessing of having the best clients, not only because of the brands we work for, but because the great empathic human beings we’ve been able to connect with and who share our same values.

Approaching new clients and gaining their trust to work with them is usually a process itself. We used to visit our clients in their offices to establish a work-relationship based on knowing them in person, sort of doing the ‘put a face to the name’ kind of tactic, and within the visit we align on requirements, scope, technology, methodology, roles and responsibilities. You name it, we did it all during our face-to-face visits. So changing from an in-person kick-off to a fully remote kick-off and discovery phase execution was a challenge, but what really made it happen was the fact that we were all in the same unchangeable situation, and we (our clients and ourselves) had to make it work no matter what. With that premise, we worked together on finding and exploring tools to again, make things work and ensure we could still create the important and meaningful connections in which our relationships and partnerships rely on.

The road ahead

This new year will bring a different set of challenges. During 2020, we had to make it work during a new time where there were no other options, but with the vaccine coming up and people eventually returning to the office, the new challenge will be how to maintain the same cohesiveness and quality of engagements both within our teams and our clients, both offline and online. How to keep the momentum going and bring the team together regardless of their location, so that in-person discussions don’t leave out any of the team working remotely.

We are redefining the rules of overall communication in project executions, and will test it out when it’s possible next year to adapt to yet another ‘new normal’ that will definitely include more people working remotely but also a handful that have the option and prefer to work from the office once this stage of 100% remote working is behind us.

We have an advantage. Zemoga’s model is based on remote collaboration and we’ve been refining the balance between remote and on-site for almost 18 years. We’ve been strategic when it comes to deciding which moments in a project require a team to get on a plane and spend a few weeks working kneecap to kneecap with clients, building the foundations for a product at their headquarters. But most of the time we function as a highly performing distributed team. There’s always a physical distance between us and clients. And, since we’ve been remote-friendly for years, there’s always a chance some team members are in our Medellín office, others in our Bogotá office, and others maybe chose to work from home that day. Thanks to our culture, based on ownership and trust, the system has worked very well for years.

So when the pandemic became a pandemic at the beginning of March, closing our offices and sending everyone home felt like a very obvious and natural move. But we’d be lying if we said it’s been all straightforward for us as designers.

Designing digital products has always been a highly collaborative type of work. Designers are all about communicating, whiteboarding, asking questions and bouncing off ideas. You cut those connections and the quality of the work is affected. Losing our shared physical spaces forced us to be resourceful and find ways to ensure remote work doesn’t mean sacrificing the touch points that allow us to learn from each other and do great work. The same applies to our collaborative partnerships with peers on the client side.

We’ve gotten smarter about how we use technology to stay more connected and respect everyone’s boundaries. We had been using Dropbox, Slack, Confluence, Invision and Zeplin as our main collaboration tools for years and we’ve relied on them more than ever for the past eight or nine months.

But when you eliminate the possibility of gathering around a whiteboard to sketch ideas, design suffers. We could share and version files, have a quick chat, jump on a video-call and share our screens. But the lack of a shared canvas was heavily impacting our ability to function as visual communicators.
That’s where tools like Miro have made a difference. It’s empowered us with collaborative boards that allow for sticky notes, sketches and emoji to exist in a shared space that participants around the globe can join at the same time. Combine that with Zoom (and Zoom breakout rooms) and that starts to feel like a decent way to replicate some of our traditionally analog collaborative dynamics. Between March and December we’ve had countless casual sketching sessions between team members and more structured workshops with clients. We’ve missed the irreplaceable benefits of an actual room and a real whiteboard, but we’ve also learned to value the digital alternatives we have at hand these days.
We can sketch user flows quickly and duplicate to explore variations on the fly. We can ask people to write ideas in stickies and then cluster them all together to identify themes. We can use emoji to introduce ice-breaking activities at the beginning of a workshop or to vote and prioritize the ideas the group likes the most at the end of a session. We can save and continue after lunch or maybe a couple of weeks later. We can take boards on the go and, asynchronously, keep evolving the team’s thinking on an iPad.

We’re not trying to replace our traditional ways of doing design thinking, but we’re finding ways to do amazing work in more ways than we were familiar with before. We’re learning the best of both worlds and we’re preparing for a post-Covid future in which analog and digital collaboration can not only coexist but complement each other.

We know we all have changed. We know some will decide to spend more time at home and use our offices when they need the resources they can only find in our physical spaces. That’s why we’re adapting to embrace a hybrid model that guarantees that people working remotely can join a meeting or a workshop and collaborate without feeling excluded, just because they’re in a different place. We’re rethinking our meeting rooms so that they’re better at including remote participants. We’re adapting the rules so that we can go from remote-friendly to remote-first, and technology will be key to democratize collaboration.

The design team at Zemoga is an incredibly warm and friendly group of talented people. We value eating lunch together, we love having fun as a team and god knows we miss sharing unsolicited design feedback as we walk by someone else’s desk. It’s been tough times for us as professionals and it’s been even harder for us as humans. But this has been a learning experience and we’re certain we’re now better prepared for whatever comes next.

There are many offerings out there both in the talent market for our teams as well as in the services industry for our clients that make it very easy for there to lack connection and passion for the work and how it’s carried out. I am a firm believer that the best digital products are created by teams that work together under friendly and open collaboration. These teams care more about crossing the finish line together with the satisfaction of having grown stronger together for the challenges to come, than hyper-focused on each individual’s “sprint” metrics. This is not to say that metrics are disregarded but more that they are a byproduct of planning and executing the work as a unit and not around a “rockstar dev” in the group.

Bringing this into the current times, we see digital development teams that are not collocated and spread all over the world even and at the same time companies hiring/contracting offshore individuals directly (not seeing the need to rely on a service provider like us) as they see no restriction in having to have team members in an office (and in doing so, offering higher than ever salaries). This, in my opinion, only reiterates the importance and need for the relationships between us and our teams to be stronger than ever so they perceive a value to belonging to our organization and to my original point, a responsibility of the client as well to reinforce the importance of generating a working environment that lets team members feel their contribution is valued and that growth is shared, no matter “from which team you are” as the team is just one.

The winds of time will again sway the industry’s priorities in terms of capabilities to offer and restrictions of the environment, but believing in and investing in building better relationships will always be the foundation over which we will continue to overdeliver.

It sounds simpler than it is. I’ve had to reinvent myself more times than I can even remember, and the more it happens, the more confident I become when facing new challenges.

Mastering this was key into approaching all the different challenges that 2020 brought at a global level, at a corporate level and at an individual level. Although challenges were posed across the entire company, including the admin teams that I lead, I would like to focus and share my experience of resilience, reinvention, adaptation and reaction within the Human Resources team.

As a people-oriented and people-driven company, a global pandemic landing with very short notice right at the moment Zemoga was experiencing its greatest expansion meant that we needed to act and react fast, and to be able to do so, it was fundamental to stop and think.

HR’s goals were totally clear: We needed to recruit, onboard, retain and grow talent while connecting them all with the uniqueness of our very own culture that we’ve been collectively building throughout these years. We had our ducks in a row, we had the strategy, the plan, the team and the budgets allocated, and right when we were building up and gaining traction, COVID-19 exploded to our faces. The goal didn’t change, but we needed to figure out how to achieve it, all while working remotely and facing the level of uncertainty COVID-19 came with. No company had a clear protocol on how to react to a global pandemic and we were not the exception, although I’m proud to confess we were somehow prepared to face some of the challenges.

Let’s start by saying that working from home came very natural to us. Zemoga implemented working-from-home policies over 12 years ago, and during this time we have experienced many different types of situations that we have learned from. Telling a 200+ team to work from home was something familiar to everyone. All of us had our routines, communication channels, protocols in place and guaranteed connectivity to continue delivering for our clients, but the one difference this time was that we were not working from home because we wanted to, but because we had to, and we didn’t know for how long it would last.

Back to my earlier point, a moment when a quick reaction is needed, it is critical that we stop, think and then act. When there is no clarity on what to do, we need to revisit the why, and it is there where you will find the answers.

We went to the core, to the most intimate values, to the heart and the roots of this company, regardless of the fears and uncertainty of the global situation. It took us little time to understand what we needed to do at that moment, and it was taking care of what matters most: the people.

Despite the lack of clarity these times came with, visiting our core provided us with a roadmap; we had a guideline and most importantly, we had a purpose: the safety of the team. We were going to get through this and we were going to do it together. This is not a strategy, this is not a mandate, this is a feeling. You can’t fake it, you can’t force it and you can’t impose it. It is only when this feeling is genuine and real that it works and you can act upon it.

From CEO down we all started thinking about ideas, plans and tactics to ensure the team was safe, healthy (both physically and mentally), empowered with the tools to continue working and supported even under vulnerability. To illustrate some of the initiatives we put in place through our People Care programs, we hired some of the nation’s most renowned and experienced psychologists and therapists to have at the disposal of the staff and their extended families to help them out through such difficult times. We quickly understood the different profiles and individual situations our staff was facing – some of them live by themselves, some of them have children, some of them live far away from their families. This allowed us to implement activities to support everyone. Virtual yoga and meditation, cooking lessons, special activities for children, art and online music classes, virtual get togethers, talent shows, and happy hours amongst other activities became part of our collective COVID-19 reality. This brought the team together in the most special bond; we were all surviving the global pandemic and we were doing it together.

While HR’s People Care team was successfully retaining the team engaged and bringing everyone together, the recruitment team had to overcome the challenge of bringing in new joiners and adding them to the team without having the ability to physically bring them to our architect award-winning office or being able to sit across the table to conduct interviews Instead, the way of doing it was by virtually connecting with individuals and sharing the feeling of what we are building here, illustrating our loving and trusting culture, allowing them to truly understand the opportunity of working with the most amazing clients, and being part of a rockstar team.

It is human nature to stay put during times of uncertainty, so despite our renowned reputation, it was challenging to recruit during Covid times. We learned that there was a new ‘fear factor’ among potential candidates – that the concept of real work stability for employees had changed – and so we needed to empower the candidates with enough confidence to make a career change in choosing Zemoga, which is exactly what we did. In what can safely be seen as the most challenging year, we’re proud to say that throughout 2020, Zemoga has successfully recruited and onboarded over 170 people.

One of the most important factors to retain and attract talent is giving the opportunity to grow – this is everyone’s individual goal. Our People Development team had the challenge to ensure consistency in our plan despite everyone working and connecting remotely. This required an orchestration between directors, managers and leaders to come together in putting in place initiatives to continue without interruption to our career plan programs. Everything from online conferences, tech content, brown bags, design share outs, open mics for both hard and soft skills were put in place in record time and our KPIs of growing the team are now off the charts.

All of this was possible by betting on talent, trusting the team and staying true to our roots and values. Understanding WHY are we in business, and always thinking about people first.

A glance to the near future

One of the most recurrent conversations worldwide has been focused around the challenges of COVID-19 that will be here to stay, and which are just temporary during the course of the pandemic. Understanding this will allow companies to adapt as we all reach an inflection point. Only the companies that are able to reinvent and adjust to this reality while taking care of the staff and the clients are the ones that will thrive and continue to be relevant.

Even with the light at the end of the tunnel provided by science via Pfizer, Astrazeneca and Moderna amongst others, the truth is that the world has changed, society has changed and therefore companies must change. Teleworking is here to stay, talent will prevail, and only companies who are able to understand and adapt to talent, their needs, their desires, their lifestyle will be successful. Today’s world is more than timesheets and billings, today’s world is about empathy, about trust, about flexibility. This is why companies need to stay true to their vision, their values, and the people.

For years we have been talking about the advantages and characteristics of nearshore, and the importance of nearshore vs off-shore. But the truth is that the post-pandemic world has no borders. As a company, Zemoga has been able to prove this even pre-Covid. For almost 20 years we have been working kneecap to kneecap with clients while physically being thousands of miles away, connected through technology and being able to export high-end digital services by the reach of a click. We are more than ready for the post-Covid world. Without knowing it we have been preparing for years, and through whatever new challenges that may come, Zemoga will continue to connect clients with their customers by providing them with the most engaged, passionate and talented teams.

Now our routine is a bit more normal, but rewind back to March and recall the time when everything was shaken up.

When the world entered lockdown, we saw a global increase in the participation of baking banana bread, solving puzzles, and trying our hand in tie-dye or a new craft, but individuals at Zemoga were looking for new ways to fill their newly mandated free time. So what happens when you have a team hungry to learn, who get along well, rely on each other, and have a bit of quarantine space on their hands?

Individuals from our technical teams came together to create a space where they could connect and learn different topics of interest – and from this was born the Zemoga Study Group – a space created to provide an opportunity for learning and growth in both technical and soft skills that seek to generate value in the life and career of its participants.

The beginning of something new

For the first three Saturdays at the start of the lockdown, a small group would log on and connect into a video call to watch and learn from a presentation prepared by a team member.

The group began with these initially three scheduled sessions and the idea of diving into the fundamentals of Javascript. The initial launch was a success to say the least, so after seeing a desire for more, the group continued to evolve and since March has been dedicated to the learning and improvement of a multitude of different topics like programming essentials, approaches to computer science problems, and more.

And it’s not just one person giving a presentation – it’s an extremely collaborative group that’s maintained an openness to welcome new ideas and share peer feedback on how one presents, reports, and expresses the material in which they’ve chosen their focus.

Some more objectives of this dedicated space include:

• A goal of improving both professional and personal development
• Writing and sharing written articles on different topics, which include contributions from individuals who want to explain technical matters in their own word
• A video library of all recorded sessions for peers to review and reference

The above are part of the group’s goals, but in both the articles and video presentation, peers are welcome to give feedback or comments with a goal of reaching an optimal final output.

The focus of the feedback of the articles, which is done during early stages of drafts, is given on how they’re read and are comprehended, lending an opportunity for the original author to improve on the topic’s clarity and explanation via their writing skills. With videos, having the sessions recorded provides not only a space to refer to each session, but allows opportunities for group members to suggest areas for improvement within the presentations given. Both parties get to work on their communication both in giving and receiving constructive criticism, and everyone’s a winner!

Since March, the sessions have continued to transform and evolve with the participation of all, continuously addressing the feedback and tailoring the sessions from what the team members collectively suggest and want to see, since each session’s topic is proposed by any member and decided on by many.

More than just the ‘teachable’ stuff

The original purpose of the group was to create a space to learn technical skills, but during its evolution, team members discovered that the group’s existence had been proving itself more than just a learning group – it had also become a workshop – one that was also improving a different set of skills.

The nature of the group’s openness and collaboration was improving soft skills in this aspect – something that we’ve learned has gained a whole new level of importance and relevance during a time when everything is transmitted virtually. We’re no longer connected in-person to get that deeper feeling of human energy or to understand the nuances in our expressions. Skills such as communication, teamwork, adaptability, and critical thinking have been developing to a deeper level through virtual meetings, and the invitation for peers to effectively and proactively provide and receive feedback has given new meaning to collaboration – especially since the study group is made up of self-motivated volunteers. Though we wish we thought of it first, this by no means was a top-level organized initiative.

A small sprout in the growth of Colombian talent

At Zemoga, the most important aspect of our company has always been our people. A people-centric company that’s done everything possible to create an environment conducive to learn together, trust one other, and make sure every individual feels safe and valued. If you put people first, everything else that’s good will follow. And we’re proud to say that this view has not only helped in the well-being of our people and the success of our partnerships, but it continues to allow us to be part of the bigger picture in growing talent here in Colombia and becoming one of the top locations for sourcing talent.

Over the past decade, Colombia has quickly become one of the fastest-growing regions in LatAm with its technology industry leading up this growth, and there are no signs of slowing down. In fact, Colombia’s Ministry of Information Technology recently announced that $1bn USD would be invested to develop smart cities and construct educational centres in a bid to spur the country’s digital transformation. It will be the largest project in the ministry’s history, which is evidence of the country’s unbounded talent within the technology sector.

Zemoga is proud to have been the first company in Colombia to provide digital outsourcing technology services to companies within the US, and as pioneers, it fills us with joy to see the industry progressing as it is. We’ve worked hard, but in giving credit where credit is due, it’s the raw talent and drive to make a difference that every individual within Zemoga carries. We learned this early on and have since been putting our people first, which has been paramount to our success and a value we’ve found to be imperative in scaling our operation. Throughout the course of the pandemic alone, we’ve been able to grow our team by just over 10% each month and have plans to continue expanding within the region as the demand for Colombian talent increases.

Evolving as individuals, a team, and as a family

The study group was born out of the restrictions the pandemic forced upon us all, but rather than see this as an obstacle, our team created an opportunity, and it was an initiative completely created by peers as a voluntary group to better a variety of aspects within us.

And there are bigger plans for the future! What started as a session on functional programming ended up evolving with the most recent topics having a focus around Frontend development processes. Recently, to expand the learnings even wider from the originally set goal, the group will begin to touch on topics outside of their main focus, like UX and other areas that are useful to become knowledgeable in with relation to the work they do.

A way to share knowledge was founded and created as a space for learning, and we hope to continue fostering a culture that allows for spaces like this to be born. Not only does it help our company, it develops the professional and personal growth of the individuals that make up the booming digital industry in Colombia.

Zemoga thrives because we live out our passions but we push each other to succeed. We lift each other up and naturally motivate one another, naturally giving benefit and paving the way in the work we deliver for our clients.

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Zemoga always has an eye out for talent and drive that can join our team. If you’re interested in working with us, apply today for a position within our jobs page on Linkedin.