At the height of lockdowns in the U.S., experts estimated that around 40% of the workforce had switched to remote work.
In March 2020, average daily in-home data use in the U.S. was 16.6GB, a nearly 40% increase from March 2019.
In just a single day during the pandemic—April 4, 2020—Americans streamed the equivalent of 50,000 years of digital media.
In 2020, over three-quarters of global internet traffic was dedicated to streaming video (57%), social networking (11%), messaging (5%), and gaming (4%).
All around the world, businesses, institutions, schools and hospitals quickly adopted technological solutions to lockdown restrictions. But what does this new virtual world mean for our humanity? How do we warm-blooded creatures make our way in a world that’s increasingly mediated through pixels and screens?
The goal of the toolbox is to ease stress on healthcare systems by empowering more healthcare professionals to deliver telehealth, while ultimately reducing unnecessary hospital visits and improving patient well-being overall. The Telehealth Toolbox was conceived as a multi-disciplinary, grassroots effort by frog designers, strategists, program managers and technologists. It offered immediate value to doctors and patients during the height of pandemic lockdowns, while also providing lasting benefits for the healthcare system going forward by making telehealth easy and accessible to more patients.
When the UNICEF-AstraZeneca Young Health Programme Global Planning Meeting could not meet in person due to COVID-19, they enlisted frog to help design a new kind of virtual conference with collaboration, creativity and inclusion at the forefront. The resulting 3-day virtual conference, made up of participants from more than 15 countries, proved that human-centered design is crucial for uncovering true value. For UNICEF, the goal was not simply using tech to recreate the event as it had always been, but rather demonstrating that the key to success is human collaboration—whether we’re together in one room or connected virtually across continents.
After first conceiving of the idea during the 2014 Ebola epidemic, Burnett realized frontline workers were in need of a better kind of mask—one that would not only keep them and those around them safe, but also let them connect on a human level. Joining forces with frog, the team set out to design a comfortable HEPA-filtered mask that would be the safest in the world. By shrinking the filter and air circulation components into a small module that sits behind the wearer’s head, JustAir is as comfortable as it is effective, enabling connection through important visual and emotional cues.
Early during the initial shutdowns, frogs started exploring and implementing new tools to help us transition into our new remote work environment. Building on their experience, we also began crafting workshops featuring methods and tools that anyone could implement for more human-centered remote work experiences. Additionally, we created digital events to bring our communities together—on both the public and internal sides. We gathered experts in the fields of product design, remote work, and media for public panels, and we created a new internal award ceremony to recognize a year of unprecedented work.