Coalesse Director of Global Design, John Hamilton, and Coalesse Industrial Designer, Markus Marschaell, came together (virtually) to answer questions about the way work and workplace are changing. The series will continue with new questions from the design community and answers from the Munich Design Studio on the Coalesse Instagram channel @coalesse. Here is the transcript from their most recent Q+A on virtual working and creative collaboration:

How has working remotely affected how the Munich Design Studio works together?

Markus Marschaell: Well, we have already worked remotely mostly before, as the team has worked a lot from different locations. So we were constantly dependent on cloud-based communication. From that point of view the way we work has not changed fundamentally, we use our tools more intensively now. 

John Hamilton: It's now the ability to be able to truly understand what it's like to be that remote person that makes the collaboration easier and more fluid. It has forced us to, at the same time, capture our ideas and share them in new ways and be more transparent digitally.

How will the current changes to virtual collaboration inform how we work together when we return to in-office work?

John Hamilton: I think when we come back there is going to be greater diversity to our daily routines. I think we're going to work from more places, we’re going to use more tools, and we’re going to share in more ways. We’re going to be more collaborative than ever and our thinking is going to be more transparent than ever.

Markus Marschaell: Now, we are used to the digital office. We can work better from anywhere with the laptop and smartphone than before. Suddenly, we prefer to work on a sofa instead of spending the whole day at our desk. We will become more open to new possibilities, digitally and in our life.