At times, our working life before Covid-19 seems a distant memory and our new now is a world of working spaces nudged into living rooms and bedrooms, stunted conversations on Skype and Zoom, technological discoveries and frustrations, the joy of shorter commutes from bedroom to kitchen and feelings of loneliness due to minimal face-to-face human interactions. On top of this, add in job losses, redundancies, furloughing, work frustrations and financial woes and it really has been a challenging old time for many of us.
Through the varying shades of dark, there have also been many wonderful stories of light giving hope, change, adaption, support and love here in Cambridge and beyond. The Cambridge Fruit Co. is a brilliant example of a company who successfully pivoted their business to online sales and deliveries at the start of lockdown. Working with other independent traders, they created a one-stop shop to deliver the finest locally sourced and produced foods. They have also spent their time supporting the local community with hundreds of customer donated fruit boxes being given to The Red Hen Project which supports children and their families in North Cambridge.
Cambridge Sustainable Food, Cambridge Food Poverty Alliance, other voluntary groups and the City Council collaborated to ensure that thousands of fresh meals were cooked and delivered to those in need during the Covid-19 crisis – with so many individuals volunteering their time and their skills to feed the vulnerable in Cambridge. Many restaurants, cafes and bars started exceptional quality takeaway and delivery services so their customers could still enjoy them at home – there are too many to mention all but examples include Vanderlyle, Stir Cambridge, La Raza home delivery cocktails, DoppleGanger and Thirsty Cambridge. Food trucks, Guerrilla Kitchen and Fired Up Pizza created kits so their customers could cook their own versions of their delicious creations at home.
Here at Dovetailed, we have been thinking about how we might be able to help in our own small way. We are a boutique UX design studio with a team of people who have a wealth of experience in design, technology, human behaviour, strategy and communications. We are able to offer our ears, our design know-how, our business insights and our time. So we have decided to launch Business Chatter – our informal, approachable, virtual sessions where you can chat to us about anything relating to your business. These sessions are free and 100% confidential. Have you been working alone for the last 3 months and need to let off steam? Have you been thinking of ways to pivot your business but need a fresh pair of eyes to give you some objective feedback? Do you want to inject some creativity into your work plans? Are you not sure if you are talking to the right customers? Do you want to talk about the design of your products? Do you just want to have a friendly natter about your business and meet some new people also working in Cambridge / East of England? Whatever it might be – we really hope that our sessions might offer some help and support.
Our original idea was to offer these sessions face-to-face and just before lockdown, we tried out the format. However, given the current situation, we decided to adapt these sessions so they would work in a virtual space but still retain the same guiding principles of listening, understanding, talking and independent feedback. This all remains integral to our Business Chatter approach!
Leading the sessions will be Lele Saa, our Creative Director and a visual artist. She began her career as an Art Director and has worked for global companies such as Apple and Sony, she was Artist in Residence at the Perse school during 2018/2019. Lele joined Dovetailed in January 2019. As well as Victoria Willis, our Communications Manager. Victoria has worked at consumer PR agencies in London for most of her career before moving to Cambridge and joining Dovetailed in September 2019. Our other team members Vaiva, Tom and Vicky will join in when their expertise in UX design, research and human behaviour can lend a fresh perspective to a session.
Sounds of interest - fancy a virtual natter? Then please do check out our dedicated Business Chatter page on our website and fill in our briefing form so we can find out a bit about you and your business in advance of our session – it will help us prepare so we are ready to start chatting and focusing on you. Our 45 minute sessions are available on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 8.30am – 4.30pm.
