Different communication methods are required as we make progress with our research project. Of course, it’s always best to meet and talk with each other face-to-face, but in this case, our two directors are constantly traveling both inside Japan and overseas throughout the year, and our members too are often traveling to different places and working on different projects, making it very difficult for everyone to come together at one specific place at the same time. Because of this, the most frequent way of communicating with each other is through holding meetings online.
Most of the final output materials that we produced for this project include long texts, and it was obvious that the easiest way to edit these text was to use online tools. Not only can other members in the group edit and re-edit all the text easily, it is also extremely convenient when we have to work in different time zones when someone is traveling abroad, making it more difficult to work together at the same time. Sometimes we might find another member working online when we log in – unexpected conversations are initiated, which is another opportunity for us to discuss and create new ideas together.
“What was that website”? “Could you please send me that text again”? “How does the budget look like now”? These are some very common questions we often ask each other when we run a project together, and the time to wait for someone to reply can be wasteful. To save time, we have been using the cloud service on Google, and utilising the tab function so that we can easily add different sheets onto the same Google Sheet document. For text data as well, we usually upload it on Google in manage the link of all the different files in a list so that anyone can access and edit the files whenever they want. For example, there are times when we spontaneously copy and paste different website links that are related to the topic that we are talking about during an online meeting, and instead of looking back at our chat history, it is extremely useful if we paste and compile important links in one single file, and share that master document with involved parties. By doing so, we can also save and stock up on the original sources for our inspirations (sometimes weird unrelated links are left behind in the document… for example in our links file for 2017-2018 there is a link for the concert schedule of Masashi Sada, a Japanese singer). Cloud storage services also work very well with online meetings – it is also common for all the team members to work on one document during our meetings.
This text almost sounds like I’m doing a promotion for cloud storage services, but it really feels like that we have finally acquired an important skill or an achievement, over the past three years. Even though the meetings are held online, at times it feels like a real laboratory space exist when we access the same chat room and look at the same documents by clicking on the same link. However, there are both people who are more engaged in utilizing different tools and others who are not as good at working on computers and online all the time, and it is obvious to say that the best way of working depends on the people in the team. The communication tools used in each project may not completely shape how the team works together, but it is definitely a large influential factor.
