We are a multicultural team coming from different parts of the world with a lot of patience, empathy and desire to provide a 5 star service.

What you are doing at Badi

I coordinate the customer support team, making sure that we provide fast, accurate and reliable support to all our users.

What is it like for you to work at Badi?

Working at Badi is an enriching experience full of challenges and learnings. In the past 2 ½ years I have worked within different departments. From being part of the UK Sales team, to presently leading the Customer Support team, I’ve gained a lot of knowledge in the Real Estate industry. As we are still a start-up, I feel that I’m able to share my ideas and most importantly that they will be taken into consideration in our product developments. I really feel and embrace the Badi mission to become the new generation rental marketplace.

Something you’re really passionate about?

Football ! More specifically everything related to FC Barcelona. Secretly, I think it’s one if not the main reason why I am living in Barcelona.

A day in your life

Morning

· I Wake up at 7:30, stretch a little bit and take the dog out for a walk.
· I check the volume of customer support tickets generated overnight in order to identify and address possible bugs and/or issues with the platform.

· I help our team clean the list of tickets we have (mornings tend to be very hectic for our team)

Afternoon

· I have meetings with the head of CX and other departments involved with the Support Team. We discuss strategies, actions plans and any other relevant topics.

· I work towards improving our customer support team efficiency. The goal is to one day have 0 tickets to handle

Evening

· Doing Crossfit! Its my new preferable sport activity

· Having dinner or hanging out with my wife and dog

· Watching series, movies or of course football games

Your favourite task

Having meetings with my team. Now that we are mostly working from home it is the best time to see each other, share news, concerns, discuss different cases and overall share ideas that will help improve our service.

How would you describe your team?

We are a multicultural team coming from different parts of the world with a lot of patience, empathy and desire to provide a 5 star service.

Meet our Badi Team was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What you are doing at Badi

I’m in charge of creating content for our social media platforms and transforming data into appealing design creatives.

What is it like for you to work at Badi?

Badi for me is a challenge. You really don’t know how your day is going to be until you open your computer. Everyday is different, you never get bored!

Badi has helped me grow personally and professionally during my career. It’s the best school for learning by doing. I’ve done crazy things that I’ve never learned in college!

Something you’re really passionate about?

Healthy lifestyle! I crave for healthy desserts! I can’t imagine my life without a sweet bite after every meal.

A day in your life

Morning

• I like to start my day early (6:30) with a stretching session and a nutritious breakfast.
• I check my emails and private messages to organize my agenda for the day.
• I take advantage of the energy I have in the mornings to develop all the graphic design assets we need.

Afternoon

• We have marketing weekly meetings to organise priorities and do brainstorming sessions to create new ideas.
• Check our social media channels to bring and suggest improvement.

Evening

• I go to the gym to do an hour session of strength training.
• My husband and I cook dinner together and watch an episode of a funny TV serie.

Your favourite task

Transforming simple data into graphics that communicate information in a condensed and highly visual way so it’s easier to understand.

How would you describe your team?

A very talented team always eager to find the best solution for any challenge.

Something crazy you did at Badi?

A rebranding to do in only 1 month with the team. It was stressful but an exciting challenge to take on! I’ve been working at Badi for over 5 years now and I know that other challenges are coming ahead :)

Badi is the best school for learning by doing was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We just went through a major refactor in our payments system to better our integration with three providers: Stripe, Google Play, and Apple’s App Store. We had a working integration for years, however we were lacking some visibility in our full user journey due to a combination of offline/online interactions with the providers after the payment hands-off.

We share here four axioms that have proven key during the development.

Be server based

Any client logic (web, mobile, desktop, etc) will eventually be tempered with; intentionally or not. For example, a user could clear their local storage half-way through a payment, lose their internet connection, have a months old app version, intentionally change your beloved js, create & distribute a fake version of your app, etc. Therefore, relying on any client sensitive logic is detrimental for your monitoring, auditing, security, & business needs.

Strive for server-based solutions that are resilient to unexpected client behaviour whenever possible. It’s ok for a payment solution to rely heavily on the server. In turn, this has other benefits for our users, for example, seamless experience when moving between platforms or devices.

It’s not about efficiency, it’s about security for you and your user.

Be explicit

Your source of truth is always the bank account, i.e. the providers. Any other value should be considered an “educated guess” until explicitly matched with a final invoice… and even in those cases the value could still be inaccurate, e.g. a purchase could be refunded offline months later. Thus, we explicitly state at which degree we are estimating all values.

This further expands to complex topics like: currency exchange rates, tax regulations, delayed payments, etc.

Empower your finance team, they have the final call.

Store all results

Let’s say we have a record in our DB indicating a user purchased product Y at $100 with 21% value added tax (VAT). How much was the VAT amount?… If you said $17.3553719008, you are right! See how confusing it could be? That $100 is actually 121% of the tag price. How would you round it? Are you considering your provider fees?

Yes, there are industry standards on how to calculate VAT, how to round, and how to handle invoices with several items that avoid these issues. The question I pose is: how reliable of a system are you building if you assume everyone in your organisation is familiar with those standards?

Finally, another very common mistake in computer science is to assume that math is perfect; it’s not. Numerical errors cost money. I propose two rules aimed to reduce those:

1. Store every calculation result (including intermediate results).
2. Use integers instead of floats (floats/doubles could be affordable).

The example above will look like this: we actually store those five values separately [21%,1736, 8264, 10000, USD]. This allows us to track and correct errors (rounding, wrong VAT applied, wrong exchange rate, etc.) and debug old purchases, even when the faulty code is long gone.

Audit everything

The history of a purchase is as important as the purchase itself when improving a users’ journey. For example, we need to:

• Store the historic tier payments (Apple’s App Store) whenever they change, in a very lean manner. We use tier payments in Apple’s App Store.
• Know how long it took a user to go from “start pay” to “ received good”, or “ refund payment”.
• Track who introduced changes to our system, authorised exceptions, change prices, etc.

Logging is not enough. We need to be able to go back years, store transactions synchronously, ensure we record all, etc. Bear in mind, this also could provide information to reconstruct a whole user’s journey when necessary.

As you may see, these principles could be applied broadly. My advice, you should only enforce it when it pays off ;)

4 axioms for any payment system was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Roughly two months ago, our lives were collectively turned upside down. What was initially described as “just another type of flu” quickly became a global enemy we greatly fear and know little about. Our collective response to the global pandemic has gone through many stages, from disbelief, to alarm, resistance, and ultimately exhaustion. We started off determined to stay productive in the face of adversity, but as time goes by, we’re getting tired, and we realise that this is bigger than we thought.

What does this mean for our psyche? Leticia Castro, a certified psychologist and current VP of People at Badi, answers some of the questions we have probably asked ourselves over the course of the past few months. The hope is that a raw look at what troubles us and an honest conversation about it can bring us one step closer to a place of emotional rest and growth.

We’ll be discussing a feeling of grief we may be experiencing, how to find room for joy and dreams amidst uncertainty and threat, and why developing psychological resilience may be the answer to many of our present doubts and fears.

At the beginning of all of this, when we entered the lockdown, there seemed to be a certain widespread determination to be hyper-productive and make the most of this newfound time on our hands. Home exercise routines, healthy recipes, online learning… The internet is replete with advice on “how to do confinement the right way”. Is this the right way? Or rather, is there a right way?

The only “right way” to cope with any uncertain times is your way. This is such an exceptional experience for everybody, no one could possibly prepare for it.

We couldn’t even imagine something like this would ever happen. So when we found ourselves in this new and unfamiliar situation, we felt the need to control our emotional response to it by controlling our time, the only thing within our area of influence.But it is important to remember that there is no one right way to spend your time, especially not during a crisis.

You’re not worse at coping if you don’t try every recipe in your grandma’s cookbook or you don’t develop that sixpack promised by the free fitness programme you signed up for.

The right way is whatever it is that allows you to maintain a balanced state of mind, whether it is taking a nap or writing a book.

So rather than looking outside at what others are doing, we should try to listen to our body and our mind for what they need. That’s where we will find the right way.

As confinement measures are slowly lifted and we start to venture outside, the new social pressure seems to be on getting up before dawn, going for a run, and admiring the sunrise from a nearby park. But what if we’re not feeling the “carpe diem”? What if going outside into the world equipped with a surgical mask is still too strong of a reminder that it is not, and perhaps never will be, the world we knew only a few months ago?

There’s bound to be a lot of mixed feelings as we enter this new phase of slowly getting back to “normal”. But as much as we want it to, we know that life won’t actually be “normal” for quite some time. There won’t be a day when we just go out, have a drink with a bunch of friends, laugh and hug, and celebrate that it’s all over. That’s not going to happen, things will look different for a while, so we need to adapt to this new normal. And this is, once again, where we all differ in terms of how we do that.

The anxiety and stress we may feel when going out for the first time after a long period of confinement are perfectly normal. Over the past two months we have learnt that home means safety, so naturally, now that we venture outside again, fears arise, especially as we feel that the situation out there hasn’t really changed much, the virus has not disappeared.

But I think it’s important to learn to reconnect with the outdoors. There is a healthy and safe environment out there, but we first need to accept that it’s going to be a new experience. Similarly to when you move to a new city and find yourself in an unfamiliar neighbourhood surrounded by people you don’t know. If you compare it to your hometown and expect it to be the same, you will suffer anxiety and disappointment. But if you take it as a totally new experience (which it is), you will be able to discover it, learn about it, adapt to it, and maybe eventually get to really enjoy it.

So don’t feel pressured to go outside because that’s “what we do now”, but do give yourself the opportunity to explore the new world out there, at your own pace. Don’t compare it to how it was before the confinement, practise curiosity and compassion — towards the world, and towards yourself.

Is it an exaggeration to say that some of the feelings we’re experiencing are very similar to grief? Grief over a life that no longer is, at least not for the foreseeable future.

Absolutely not. Grief is a feeling we experience in more ways than we’re aware of, and this is certainly one of them. We know that “the new normal” will be a lot different to how we lived only two months ago. How we interact with other people, the new routines we’ll have to incorporate into our daily lives, new ways of working… Nothing is going to be the same, at least not for the foreseeable future, so it’s only natural that we feel that sense of loss. It is important to acknowledge this reality and this feeling in order to be able to process them and move on.

But what’s exceptional in this situation is that we’re not experiencing this sense of loss and grief alone. Literally all of humanity is going through the same thing, and this feeling of a shared experience can help us. Just knowing that we’re not alone is sometimes all we need.

What do we do about this uncomfortable feeling? Especially if it’s accompanied by guilt for having the feeling in the first place (the mental script usually goes along the lines of “I have a roof over my head, my family is safe and healthy, I shouldn’t feel sad!”).

First of all, accept that it’s absolutely normal to feel sadness in this extraordinary situation. For most of us, being faced with this global health crisis has meant shifting our focus from the top of Maslow’s pyramid of needs to the very bottom. Where a few months ago our problems and challenges revolved around self-actualisation or love and belonging, we’re now concerned about some of the more basic needs, such as security and safety. This is a big shift, no one is prepared to lose their sense of wellbeing overnight. So even when our basic needs (such as food and shelter) are met, we’ll still feel this sense of loss, and this is where your uncomfortable feelings stem from.

So my advice here is to turn the guilt into gratitude. Gratitude will help you focus on what you already have, rather than what you’ll need to rebuild or regain.

Allow yourself to feel sad for the loss, but also be grateful for what’s still there, and be ready to recover what you’ve lost.

A sense of threat, danger, and uncertainty are the most likely causes of anxiety and stress right now. How can we best deal with them? Not necessarily resist them, but find a way not to be consumed by them?

That is a great question, and although I’m nowhere near an expert on the complex subject of anxiety, I find that some of these tips may help:

• Try to recognise where the anxiety comes from. This can be very difficult, but if we take the time to observe ourselves and our thoughts and feelings, we could start to spot patterns. We could notice that anxiety tends to arise from specific things, like watching TV, talking to a particular person, wondering what will happen with our jobs… Just recognising each source of anxiety is a crucial first step to overcoming it.
• Once you know what causes your anxiety, evaluate whether this is something you can control or not. Letting go of situations we cannot control and focusing our efforts on behaviours that can make a difference will help us feel safer and calmer. For example, you can’t control the content of the news, but you are in control of how much of it you consume, so that’s where you should act.
• It is also important to put our fears and anxieties into words. We fear the unknown, and there’s plenty of it around us at the moment. These are unprecedented times so we’re afraid because we don’t know what to expect. But we should try to articulate our fears — what is it that I am afraid of? Getting infected by the virus? Losing my job? When we name our fears, we take away some of their power, because we start to get to know them. And then we can start to think of what to do to either prevent those things from happening or how to deal with them if they do. This gives us a sense of control, and consequently eases the anxiety caused by the fear.
• And lastly, take some time just for yourself. Even if you’re a parent or you care for another family member — put your oxygen mask first. Remember or learn what small pleasures you enjoy, and allow yourself the space and the time to experience them. This is a conscious effort, but a very important one if we want to maintain our wellbeing and also be able to help others.

When the world around us changes so drastically and so quickly, and it leaves this big question mark about when and if “things are going to go back to normal”, it’s easy to feel stuck. It’s as if somebody has pressed “pause” on our lives and we’re waiting for them to click the “resume” button. But this is our job, isn’t it? How do we do that?

This is what we call psychological resilience. It’s the ability to adapt well to adversity or threat, and to bounce back from challenging experiences. Every individual has the power to develop resilience that will help them recover from difficult situations, both physically and mentally.

Building resilience is a result of intentional practise, just like exercising your muscles — the more you practise, the stronger you become.

Focusing on connections with other people, prioritising your wellness, developing healthy thinking habits, and finding a sense of purpose and meaning are some of the core elements of building psychological resilience. I invite you to learn more about it, it’s a very powerful tool to possess.

Focusing on the present and taking it one day at a time is a good coping strategy, it helps us avoid unproductive worrying or even panicking about the future which is still very uncertain. But an important part of what makes us human is the ability to dream and look ahead into the future. How can we still dream while facing so much uncertainty and an inevitable sense of threat?

As humans, we are motivated and pulled forward by a sense of purpose. It’s what gives meaning to our existence and what consequently leads to what we call happiness. We’ve just seen how aligning our thoughts and actions with a purposeful goal helps us build psychological resilience, a powerful tool to have in the face of adversity.

So we shouldn’t give up or hit “pause” on our dreams, hopes, and plans right now. But to avoid a feeling of frustration, we do need to adapt them to the new reality. If we adjust our expectations and desired outcomes, we’ll still be able to make progress and reach milestones, which is what gives us that invigorating sense of accomplishment.

Let’s discuss confinement a bit more, because we’re bound to continue spending more time at home than what we’re used to. It can become challenging if you’re confined with somebody whose way of coping is widely opposite to yours, especially if it’s a partner who’s inevitably an intimate part of your life as well. Frictions can occur. How can we best colive in such situations?

I think that the key to any healthy relationship, regardless of external circumstances, is mutual respect and personal space. So allowing everybody in your household, yourself included, a space and a time to be on their own, is very important. When we respect each other’s needs and the different pace at which we deal with difficulties, we often find that the bond we build when we do spend time together is much stronger. Respecting each other’s needs without judgement is crucial for successful coliving at any time, and especially now.

Some studies show that responding to a crisis collectively helps us process stress more successfully and come out stronger. How can we “tend and befriend” at a time where social distancing is what’s keeping us safe?

Staying connected to others in a crisis helps foster empathy and compassion, so it is important to keep this connection with other people. Luckily, we’re as prepared as ever to stay in touch with our friends and family regardless of where they are, thanks to our technology and how accessible it is. Some people may find that they’re even socialising more than ever. Yes, it’s not the same as seeing your best friend in person and giving them a big hug, but this is similar to what we discussed earlier, about not comparing things to how they used to be.

Building your connections to others is another crucial element to developing psychological resilience, as well. So don’t succumb to isolation, use technology to your advantage, find online activities and groups of people that keep you most engaged, and work on maintaining those relationships.

Sharing our thoughts and feelings with others in the same circumstances helps us see things from a different perspective and reminds us that we’re not alone.

Any final advice?

We are all in this together, but the paths we use to navigate this situation are highly personal and unique. So use this time to learn about yourself and how you respond to stress. Resilience is forged through exposure to challenging circumstances, so take all learnings from this exceptional time as an invaluable investment into a stronger and happier you.

Dealing with uncertainty in the face of a global pandemic was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

COVID-19 quarantine initially stranded our team. We consider ourselves a big family and, as such, spending time with each other is a core value. During normal circumstances, we invest several hours a week in leisure collocated activities with other Badizens (that’s what we call our fellow badi employees). Hence, this forced distancing threatened to make a dent in our close relationships.

Initially we fought it fiercely with the passion that characterises our team: we developed guidelines to keep connected constantly, we promoted impromptu video-calls, and we purposely increased synchronous interactions to keep reminding each other that we weren’t alone. It was a success, for two straight weeks the team felt nothing had changed. And then, week three.

It might have been that the government extended the quarantine indefinitely, or the newscasts announcements about similar measures taken around the world, or maybe simply that the measures we initially implemented were meant for a “remote sprint”, not a “remote epic” — at Badi we work in cross-functional squads that follow two-week sprints, hence the Agile terms — . It was clear by week three that a few team-members had made big efforts during those early first weeks. They were now suffering unexpected consequences: parents had their energy and available hours shifting frequently, the same for team members with partners in the health workforce and/or those that have families abroad. On top of that, we were rushing on delivering features that would make the difference to our users, and we were paying a toll. In short, we weren’t prepared for a remote marathon, we thought a short burst of energy would solve the issue.

Our management team worked hard those days to figure out a plan that would keep us centred and positive reflecting the Badi spirit. We came up with two golden rules: Strive For Async, and Keep The Candor.

Strive for async

If you ever worked on a remote first company, you probably know what I’m going to say: We try to heavily rely on offline, asynchronous, communication mechanisms that ensure our efforts don’t get lost in isolated conversations. For that, we have a well-defined tool set, that assigns a clear scope and responsibility, with a response time expectation associated for each. This company-wide working agreements and separation of concerns allows us to keep focus, and provides an opportunity to structure our day (e.g. “I check emails early morning, read till noon, and code is what happens while not in meetings”). So, what’s the toolset?

At Engineering, we have:

1. Tickets when we need to code
   We create them early and they work as logs for the issues. Helpful to prioritise, only the highest priority requires immediate attention, and it rarely happens. We remind everyone that a chat message won’t make it happen faster, in fact it will result in someone creating a ticket for you.
2. Email more, chat less.
   We use emails for important critical communications that are not time sensitive. This should be the tool of choice if you have specific questions to ask, and other tasks at hand while waiting.
3. Documents and Spreadsheets
   When collaborating in more long-term projects we usually write one-pagers or design documents. Those foster async and sync team collaboration: you can comment, edit, suggest, chat, see history.
4. Instant messaging is instant, hence avoid it :)
   We have some team channels that are mostly fun, and we chat a lot… however we avoid handlers :).
   If they include your handler, we ask you to please acknowledge messages. You are expected to respond shortly. Before including a handler, we also ask the sender to gracefully challenge themselves three times:
    — Do I really need the answer to this now?
    — Really?
    — Really? Really?
5. Video-calls are majorly scheduled in advance
   We have written a meeting manifesto in the past. We shared it broadly, and at certain point-in-time we had a printed copy in most of our meeting rooms. Nowadays, we simply link it in most meeting invitations.

It is out of respect for our colleagues that we avoid meetings, so they can have breakfast with their children, go to the supermarket when no-one is there, or maybe phone their parents across the world at 3am to make sure they are also taken care of. Because we love our team, our main principle is actually…

Keep the candor

We are in quarantine, we are isolated and we are prevented from doing our usual leisure activities. To fight this auto-imposed social distancing, we are making these efforts

1. Shorter & Frequent 1<>1s
   We have a minimum 10 minutes check-point weekly. It’s a simple “how’s everything going” chitchat. They are optional, and shop-talk is not allowed. Once every month, we still have our traditional 1<>1s.
2. Encourage prompt escalation
   We make sure to escalate promptly any challenges we are facing. No-one will see your face staring worried at a monitor, let your manager know!
3. Plan a team video-call once a day
   It could be the daily stand-up, sprint planning, or a “tea o’clock”. It’s good to see each other’s faces for a change; there’s a good chance this will be the only time in the day you will all see each other.
4. Trivia nights, lunch roulette, and more
   We have many activities guided by our amazing team aimed to keep us connected. From a beer o’clock to groups to share parental tips, these have helped us keep our beloved sense of community.

Hope this helps you better understand how to improve remote work during this quarantine period. Let us know your advice too, we are all together in this fight for survival!

Becoming remote in times of COVID-19 was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Back to my roots

I have had many homes. My father is a diplomat, so I have lived in 9 cities in 7 countries, and I have shared houses and apartments along the way. Although I have been sharing a flat with my wife for the past 6 years, I do not consider myself as a flatmate anymore.

I fondly remember my flat sharing experiences. I still miss it sometimes as a vivid reminder of my younger years, when life was easier and I had few problems to worry about. But the reality was very different.

Being the elder of two siblings, sharing with somebody else other than my brother was an enriching experience that taught me valuable life skills, such as tolerance, patience, and discipline. It opened my mind and I learnt cuisine from all over the world.

Despite my mind embellishing the memories of my 20’s, I still acknowledge the pains I went through when I was searching for a room in NY. It was a big hassle! I couldn’t find anything, I met thousands of landlords and the only thing they were telling me was: “This room has already been rented out, sorry”. I had to sleep on a friend’s couch for two weeks until I found a French student from my uni (that loved doing push ups in the living room) to share a two-bedroom apartment in East Village.

Luxembourg: The Long Wait

Then, I moved to Luxembourg where I worked for Amazon. I packed all my things into my car and drove more than 1500km from the comfort of Madrid to the suburbs, where I stayed in a hotel for three weeks, frantically searching for a place on my scarce free time.

I was so desperate at that time that I was even considering living in Belgium and commuting two hours a day. I had to pay 5 euros for each message I wanted to send out to prospective roommates, with no response guarantee. I finally moved into a house with three Italian guys that weren’t fond of washing-up and where I encountered spiders in my window bigger than a baseball.

Paris: The Dodgy Landlord

There was also Paris, where I had wonderful — although messy — roommates in a flat just two minutes away from uni. And it would have been a fond memory if it weren’t for the landlord, who scammed us with the security deposit and some questionable charges when we had all left the country and were too far away to dispute them.

Barcelona: Sofa Surfing

I arrived in Barcelona in 2014, after accepting an offer from Airbnb, with just a 2-night booking in late August and nothing like a plan for where I was going to stay. I was left speechless by an old acquaintance’s generosity when — by chance — I bumped into him one day and he immediately took me in and allowed me to crash in a small, dark bedroom, in one of his tourist apartments while I searched for a flat.

Barcelona became my home for the next five years. I was working at a fantastic startup job but suffering with burnout when, one humid August day, I decided it was time to give notice to my boss. That’s when the founders of Badi — who had already shaken-up the room rental process — approached me with an irresistible offer to help change the way people live in a shared house. I didn’t even think twice before accepting.

A New Chapter: Badi Homes

And thus, together, we set out to create Badi Homes. The name was the first sign that something new was coming. Because we want to offer the chance for people to feel at home wherever they live. Badi made finding a room easy, safe, fast, and even pleasant if you are like me and appreciate a good UX/UI.

Living in a shared home should be an equally pleasant experience. Our aim is that people never have the issues that we have all encountered when flat-sharing across the world.

Why do we do it?

We started with that question. And we could write pages on the business opportunity, giving professional landlords the chance to rent by rooms, or adding supply to constrained markets, which helps contain escalating prices.

But, although those are all valid reasons, the truth is that everybody at Badi has gone through the struggles inherent to room sharing and we’ve all seen an opportunity to make a big impact on the lives of the people that are leaving home for the first time, arriving to a new city to start a new job, or simply starting a new chapter in life.

So we aim for operational excellence. We care for every little detail, holding our tenants’ hands through every step, because signing contracts (sometimes for the first time) can be confusing and scary. Because being far from your friends and family does not mean you can’t make yourself at home, and because roommates should be more than facebook acquaintances. With Badi Homes, you can make them lifelong friends.

Start With Why was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Just like the rest of the world I would like this crisis to end rather today than tomorrow. But besides all the up and down in private and professional life, I’m a firm believer in positive thinking. That’s why I decided to draft my article around stability, hopes and the joy of being a researcher.

As a UX researcher at Badi I’m in the lucky position that I can do my job from home. Yes, the new situation is challenging, we’re still learning how to best work together in times of quarantine and are adjusting to the new circumstances, but there are also a lot of things that still remain the same:

1. No users, no future

More than 2M users worldwide have used Badi to find their flatmates and our community keeps growing every day. At Badi, we are truly grateful for the trust people have placed in us. We are aware that this trust and faith go hand in hand with the mission of making our product better for our community every single day.

Every day we get up full of motivation and passion to make Badi a little better than it was the day before. What motivates us to leave our bed and move over to a desk, a kitchen table, a sofa or wherever our work space might be at the moment, is the shared belief that we are building a product that improves people’s lives.

When I first started learning about Badi I got really excited about the mission of making flat sharing easier and more enjoyable than ever before. In a global world centring more and more around metropolitan areas with living space being a limited resource, I believe the future lies in sharing spaces and moving closer together.

2. In-depth Interviews: Understanding users’ needs is the basis of innovation

Delivering the best product for our community is our top priority. The only way to understand our users is to listen to them carefully and understand what the process of renting out a room or looking for a new place means for them. And it’s only after having understood their needs that we will be able to centrate our efforts on developing new product features or services, which are meaningful for them.

Qualitative research methods such as ethnography, observations, contextual interviews or diary studies are typically applied to get an holistic understanding of the users’ context, their behaviours, attitudes, needs and pain points all along the user journey.

I joined Badi in January this year, but I was lucky enough to have already met more than 20 users in their homes. Contextual interviews have helped me out a lot — and thus the rest of the Badi family — to feel what it means to share flats in Barcelona.

Due to the serious situation caused by the COVID-19 virus, we had to stop visiting users but it doesn’t mean that we stopped talking and learning from them. In the past 2 weeks of Spanish quarantine, I had long chats with more than 15 people about their experience sharing their homes, looking for a room to live or a new flatmate.

I’m truly impressed by how supportive our users are, how happy they are to help us improve our platform, even in times where many of them probably face personal insecurities and fears much bigger than this.

3. Usability Tests: User testing before implementation saves time & money

We all know that our users have different concerns than moving to a new apartment right now. But we hope — no, we’re convinced — that better times are waiting just around the corner. And we want to be prepared for that. So our product teams, and especially our UX writers and designers, are putting all their energy into drafting new features and improved flows with a clearer storytelling and a nicer look and feel.

To ensure that what they come up with will work for our users as they hope, we’re busy now testing prototypes remotely. Last week we tested a new flow for listers publishing their rooms to rent and detected 3 severe misunderstandings that needed a copy change and 2 usability issues where interaction models where not clear — imagine we would have developed our best guess right away!

Whenever COVID-19 allows us to move back into our offices, we’ll invite users to our lab again, a comfy little living room like space where users come to test our prototypes and share their feedback. Meanwhile, we show them the prototypes digitally and discuss in a video call. And by the way, this has plenty of benefits as well: While we would typically focus more on the local customers that having an easy time visiting us in the center of beautiful Barcelona, we’re now inviting customers from all around the globe equally.

4. Online Surveys: User feedback helps us navigate

Different research methodologies serve different needs. For some research questions an in-depth conversation is needed and others require larger samples. In normal times Badi would rely heavily on behavioural data, such as AB tests, click data and conversion analysis. One of the things I learnt during my psychology studies and never forgot is that “past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour”. But when the world is in an exceptionally new and different situation, we cannot even rely on statistical rules like this. The best we can do now is rely on various different sources and ask many people how they feel, how they react and adjust to the situation and what they foresee for their near and far future. Getting this input from as many users as possible will help us understand the situation better and base our decisions on more than just our own good feeling.

5. Collaboration: Everyone can contribute to good user research

User research is a team sport. Even during normal times I happily rely on the support from designers, product managers, content specialists and marketing experts to shape and conduct research activities with me. So it’s only logical to involve more colleagues now. In some parts of the Badi business workload is reducing, e.g. fewer customer support calls are coming in, so more colleagues can get involved in customer research. They are programming the surveys into typeform, analyse survey data, create presentations for that, help recruiting users, take notes during interview sessions, and much more. That’s a great opportunity for establishing a truly customer centric organisation!

6. Morning Routine: I want to look nice for our users

I live alone, I haven’t had any direct contact with human beings for more than 2 weeks now. I don’t leave the house, but still continue my morning routine. I have a shower, do my hair, put some make-up and dress up professionally (weeeeell, at least the part that’s going to be seen in a video call ;-)).

Are you flat sharing or renting out rooms? Would you be up for a chat? Contact me via research@badi.com.

Don’t stop me now! was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What it’s like to be a writer in tech

Including content in sprints

Having ownership of product content goes far beyond writing copies, managing translations, and uploading them to a CMS. It means providing the team with a content process -a whole strategy- that fits within the fast decision cycles of the sprints. Is it possible to do so? How to avoid clashing priorities? Can we skip obstacles and drive progress? Here’s what works for me: get involved in the overall process, build consensus, and make decisions.

Even though writing may actually be the most important part of our tasks, it only takes up a small percentage of our time. Besides the word choice, we take care of content handoff in a method that was first conceived for software development, and that’s not always easy. After more than 5 years of working in cross-functional teams, I find the following very helpful.

1. Control the content process from beginning to end

As a UX writer, you can be asked about any copy, in any language, in any placement of the user journey, at any time. Either in production or in progress, or maybe for an a/b test. And you have to be ready to answer. This is only possible if you control the process. That will also mean you’ll have to take responsibility for every last detail but, wasn’t this what we wanted? Now that said, how exactly can we manage to do that?

Murder lorem ipsum

The first step of the content process should be, of course, developing the source content. When it comes to product writing, the content-first approach brings (besides all the benefits we already know) the opportunity to control the content from scratch. It will always be easier to follow -up on something that came from you and your team in the first place.

This stage should ideally take place before the sprint is planned, so when the time comes for the team to evaluate and estimate efforts, they can do so having the final design and content and, in if any changes are needed, they can adapt better.

2. Provide the identifiers and be a part of the naming convention

Once the source content is decided, the second step is the handoff. Each small part of the content has its identifiers or, in other words, the way this content is going to be called from the code. If we want to be a real part of the process, we cannot confine ourselves to words. And at the end of the day, isn’t code a language?

While waiting for the translations to be ready, providing the team with the names of identifiers (also called keys or strings) -it will help them save time in development. This should be ready by the time they start coding and ideally left in the user story along with the rest of the requirements: technical documentation, source content, design and assets, workflow diagrams, etc. While this is something useful for the team in general, it also allows us writers to keep track of our content once it becomes code.

I find this naming convention part especially helpful. Since each platform usually follows its own rules, most of the times the same content has a different string for each of the platforms. However, when UX writers provide the strings, there is one single source of truth for all platforms, which reduces the effort needed to find content in the product, enable easier code reviews, helps to fix issues, avoids naming collisions, etc.

3. Move fast and test things

Whether you are using an in-house team of translators or you work with a translations software, upload the languages as soon as you get them. This stage also needs to take place during the development part of the sprint so the testing can be properly done. The QA team can even look for misplaced languages, spelling mistakes -if they speak the language, of course- or untranslated strings. Why lose the opportunity to test the content along with the functionality? We can even test the content ourselves, depending on the resources of the team. This way, by the time the release candidates are made we can be sure there won’t be any last-minute changes that will delay the process.

After that, the only thing left in the process is to start all over again (aka iterate). And each time it should get easier to find what to change and how, since we have being part of the process.

Consider problems from multiple angles

I warned about it at the beginning of this article: all these things go far beyond writing. Writing in tech means working in cross-functional teams. As UX writers and Content Strategists, we have to be aware of the needs that everyone has and work with them. Designers cannot start from a blank space and fill the prototypes with lorem ipsum. Developers need to have everything clear and decided by the time they start coding. QA teams need to have enough time to test the release candidate, especially for apps that have to be sent to the stores.

On the other hand, it is also necessary to promote an understanding of our discipline among the different profiles of the team. Having the ability to mentor others in the work we deliver can be as important as doing our work. Issues will arise but with empathy and communication, all of them can be easily solved.

Putting yourself in other people’s shoes requires being able to set aside the time and space to learn from other disciplines -and be willing to do so! The benefit that awaits is priceless, though. You’ll earn the respect of your teammates and you’ll grow as a professional along the way.

Integrating UX writing with the Agile Methodology was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The journey from a Project Manager to a Product Manager

I will always remember my first interview at Badi. The Management team told me “We aren’t sure about the difference between a Project Manager and a Product Manager but all we need is a person that helps us get things done.” And this is when I came in.

Badi was at an early stage with a workforce of around 20 people, 10 of them developers, 3 designers, a couple of data scientists and the founders.

Back then, the stakeholders were super involved in the product definition and pushing hard to deliver complete features. Since the functionalities were predefined and designed according to what we thought was “the right thing to do”, there was no “need” to validate them and all company energy was focused on shipping.

THE CONCEPT OF PRODUCT

At that time, the concept of “Product” was understood as an execution and process improvement profile. All of the tech team, including me, spent several months defining and iterating the full development lifecycle, from the branching and releasing strategy to what Agile development meant to us. Those months were all about setting up our playground rules while developing what stakeholders thought were our key features, designing, defining and testing user stories and trying to have more than a couple of days of visibility on what’s coming next.

As crazy as it might sound, the Product Roadmap was a black hole at that time. We were pivoting between what was needed/what was broken with almost no data apart for the number of users that was (amazingly for us) constantly growing. Functionalities were prioritised based on the latest requests and user needs identified and literally taken from user reviews. We didn’t have the time to analyse, research or iterate. We needed to move super fast.

One year later, the development and data team expanded, about 15 people joined the boat. We realised that we couldn’t continue to work all together in the same functionalities, so we decided to transition to a squad structure and this is when we entered in an area of “big evolution”.

With two full autonomous squads, brand new data profiles and PO’s, we were ready to transition from a feature squad to the much wanted “Product squads”.

Although our first 3 months roadmap was still based on stakeholder’s requests — the solution of these was no longer predefined. Developers, UI/ UX designers, and data experts now had the last call on the “How”. (spoiler: tracking came into place).

Although the push for a fast development still came up some time, we succeeded in putting the required tracking in place and MVP’s started to sound familiar and well perceived internally. We were no longer blind! After all, the first data visualizations came into place and as PO’s, it became easier to set up priorities. We were backed up by metrics and quantitative insights that allowed us to spread the word on how our users were acting.

Furthermore, this helped us start thinking in terms ROI, impact, effort… thinking about the goals we wanted to achieve rather than the functionalities we used to be requested to ship. This is how the product mindset started spreading around, slow but steady.

LEARNINGS AND IMPLEMENTATION

Six more months had passed but we had defined the 3 KPI’s we wanted to impact, set OKR’s as company goals and even defined our North Star Metric.

We developed a product methodology and started following the so called Product lifecycle.

1. Prioritize

With the experience of 3 more PO’s coming into stage, a brand new User Research, and clear definition of what we wanted to achieve based on our brand new OKR’s, we were ready to set priorities based on impact analysis. The product team was not only responsible for the deliveries but mainly for the value delivered.

1. Validate

Product focused on getting valuable insights from our users and stakeholders, validating them with the corresponding data and early and leaner implementations. MVP’s mindset was set as part of our DNA and with the corresponding A/B test setup, we never again considered a hypothesis that has not been proved.

Once we are certain we have understood our users, squads are the owners of the solution.

1. Iterate

Once the early validation shows us the light, we take the learnings, we iterate on them and we improve the solution further.

And this is how, after two years of adventure, I’ve transitioned from being a Project Manager (getting things done) to a Product Manager (getting the right things done). I can see we are now one step closer to a product-centered organization, with a clearer idea of what product management means and the real value of a Product Manager.

However, each day is still a challenge and as moving fast implies breaking things, Badi and I will keep on trying, breaking, learning and iterating further. I’ll keep you posted!

Btw, To answer these and other challenges, we want to build an audacious team of Product members with the grit to put our users first, join us!

Written by Elena Gonzalez

FLASHBACK TO OCTOBER 2017 was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Urbanization on The Rise

The cities of the future will be bigger, smarter, and more sustainable. It’s no surprise they’ll be bigger, as today, there are over 4 billion people around the world and more than half the global population lives in major cities. In June, the latest projections of world population growth the planet will add another 2 billion people over the next 30 years across the world and the U.N. predicts the world will have 10 new megacities by 2030. Our global economic engine relies on urban living, too — as more than 80% of the global GDP is generated in cities. Naturally we tend to romanticize the past and future, as in the 1950’s it was predicted that we’d have nuclear reactors in our homes and flying cars to zip us around town. Yet as we’ve moved from an agrarian society to industrial and now informational, we’ve seen the strains that change put on society. The next 20 years will see more growth, which means more strain, and thus sustainability will become a cornerstone of future urban development.

Sustainability: The most important pillar for city living in the future

Urbanization can contribute to sustainable growth if managed well by increasing productivity, allowing innovation and new ideas to emerge. What does that mean? Not so much a radical rethinking of how we use resources, but a more efficient deployment of resources overall. It will take government, business, and citizens working together to achieve these efficiencies. The fact remains that to sustain 3 billion new lives, food and energy production will need to increase dramatically — sustainability will be the single most important pillar that the future of cities will be built upon. So what does this look like?

In 2040, new buildings will be made of sustainable, easily degradable materials and likely built with the assistance of a variety of robots. More buildings will become hybrid work+live as remote work becomes more mainstream. As energy needs will increase, solar panels will be a standard part of all future buildings, and added in other spaces like parks in creative ways. More efficient buildings and living spaces will likely also produce more green spaces, reservations, parks, outdoor recreation areas, like New York’s Highline, a repurposed train line that is now a greenspace within the city.

Continued urbanization should be seen as a challenge and an opportunity for innovation. With urbanization on the rise, it puts extra pressure on our climate, health, and infrastructure. Yet it is truly a major opportunity for change that could sustain growth well beyond 2040. For example, food supplies are expected to be strained with additional populations and the logistics of feeding the world’s megacities are increasingly complex. Future buildings can incorporate small farms and greenspaces within them, reducing pollution and costs while providing necessary supply for the increased demand. It won’t be the death of rural farming, but a necessary complement.

Connected Living

Another trend that’s expected to get better: Smart homes. Currently, the smart home market is highly fragmented. It’s not dissimilar to the condition of the computer industry in the mid-to-late 70’s, when each manufacturer had its proprietary operating system and language. A startup called Microsoft realized that a common system would increase efficiency, and it successfully sold DOS to a number of clients. Even Apple licensed a version of BASIC for its Apple II series computers. BASIC worked across systems like the Commodore 64, TRS-80, and others. What’s needed today will be standard tomorrow, and that’s a standard across smart home devices. Google and Apple and other industry giants have agreed that there needs to be a commonality between systems or customers will simply give up over time, or switch ecosystems entirely.

By 2040, the smart home market will hit the mainstream because these wrinkles will largely be ironed out and the “connected home” will be as standard as a home with electricity. Smart locks, temperature control, automatic lighting, and smart refrigerators become the new UI for food purchasing. Automatic cleaning systems will be more common, and you won’t have to manually initiate your robotic vacuums. However, space will also be at a premium. Rooms will get smaller as spaces become more scarce, this could reimagine how we utilize and define “space,” “personal space,” and “communal space.” The need to fit more people in a given area will require innovations in architecture and design, likely shifting personal spaces to smaller form factors and increasing the size of communal spaces.

Hyper Transportation

Once you leave your “space” you’ll find numerous transportation options that should be faster than what we routinely see today. Cars, planes, even trains will seem slow by comparison if governments invest in the infrastructure for “hyperloops,” moving people between cities in pods or capsules traveling on magnetized tracks in vacuum tubes running above or below ground. These are more affordable, much more convenient and far less stressful than many forms of existing travel. They would also bring jobs and economic benefits to linked cities, perhaps even altering when and why people travel. Someone could more easily live in one city and work in another, for example. Because hyperloop vehicles will travel in tubes, weather delays would be avoided, increasing productivity even more.

Cars are expected to change dramatically in the next 20 years, and we’re just now seeing the beginning of some important trends. In particular, fossil fuel-based vehicles will be phased out for electric vehicles. Roads may even become charging pads and serve the same purpose as train tracks, with special lanes dedicated to self-driving cars that link up like a train and use LIDAR and other technologies to keep passengers safe. In fact, people may not even own a car or drive it as public transportation will also become obsolete once autonomous public transportation becomes a cheaper and more pleasant option. This will result in less congestion, reduced fumes, more sidewalks, bike lanes or hover pads, plus more green space as fewer cars could be on the roads. It’s possible that only self-driving, zero-emissions vehicles will be allowed to drive on the main roads, especially in densely populated urban centers.

Co-Living and Communal spaces

Because of population growth co-living and communal spaces are expected to grow in popularity. We’re seeing this trend ramping up in earnest recently, as in Los Angeles and San Francisco residents can rent a pod with Podshare which gives them a bed in a bunk, a locker, access to Wi-Fi and some staple foods and toiletries. There are several models of communal compounds developing, however, ranging from the “boarding house” model from the late 19th century to these micro-living pods. Communal living goes back to before recorded history, as American Indian tribes frequently shared a large building for meetings, food preparation, and other activities that could be done by the community. We’re already seeing communal spaces pop up in major cities, sometimes built around affinity groups like recent college graduates or new citizens to the city.

Property technology, or prop-tech, will further streamline a variety of real estate functions like buying and selling homes, or finding roommates and rentals. Blockchain, a universal digital ledger, may also play an important role in real estate innovation. Ethereum blockchain could work as the base of a platform that acts as a single digital location for buyers, sellers, and their agents to transfer properties via smart contracts. Virtual reality would allow residents to tour spaces without actually visiting them. And artificial intelligence could help match people with properties based on a wide variety of factors beyond mere credit scores.

Big data will create opportunities for deeper knowledge. Commercial real estate developers and owners need information on how their properties are performing on a variety of levels. What if rental rates were tied to energy efficiency, for example? This would only be possible when utility meters have an API, and that data becomes accessible. In the future, this data will be gathered, tabulated, and turned into actionable insights. Buildings can also use data gathered through smart technology to automatically adjust to the number of people in the building, the weather, and other factors that maximize tenant comfort while minimizing energy costs. The combination of technologies that can talk to each other, like HVAC units and elevators, to data-driven decisions powered by AI will utterly transform the day-to-day experiences of those living in “smart spaces.”

Smart-er Cities

Meanwhile, cities are getting smarter as well. Tech we see in homes and buildings are spreading into public life, with smarter street lights using efficient LED lights and intelligent traffic light systems that can talk to cars and other elements of infrastructure, like trash trucks and emergency services. Many companies are starting this new way of life as we move into 2020, with giants like Siemens and GE and others selling cities on connected solutions. Conveniences will abound, like tap-and-pay systems that are likely to become ubiquitous. Public WiFI and 5G technologies will provide connections to citizens throughout the city, although planners are already bracing for the scaling that will be required as populations increase. The idea of a “smart city” isn’t new, but it’s only now that the tech is catching up to the vision. Self-driving cars will rely on this infrastructure, so it’s not surprising that companies like Toyota are leading the way in innovation. With its Woven City, the company is building a 175-acre smart city at the base of Japan’s Mount Fuji, about 62 miles from Tokyo. The company announced earlier this month at CES, the biggest tech trade show of the year, and says 2,000 Toyota employees and their families, retired couples, retailers, and scientists will live there in the beginning.

Trends that we’ve seen over the past 30 years will become more pervasive and effective in the next 20. Those include: simplicity, personalization, and convenience. Better user design will make complex systems seem easy to manage. Big data will inform systems and provide personalization on a level we’re only now beginning to see with virtual assistants on our phones. And of course convenience will remain a factor, as we lessen our work burdens with robots for chores and shared resources like transportation and even living spaces. Urban efficiency shines the light on the possibilities of our major cities to solve the current challenges of major cities into new opportunities for the future. We’re just now seeing the beginning of several pioneering technologies, like Roombas on our floors, smart thermostats, programmable lights, and low-latency 5G wireless. Sustainability and infrastructure concerns notwithstanding, we expect demand for these areas to apply pressure to public and private sectors for better results. With the evolution of new technologies, we will have what it takes to harvest the benefits of urbanization.

Major City Living Around the Globe in 2040 was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.