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In order to create articles for our "Work in Flow" series which explores better ways of working, Morning Wire used Dropbox Paper to revolutionise an established approach by using this tool to introduce a new kind of collaboration during the creative process between editors, writers and designers, some of whom were not present in the London office.

Despite apprehension about changing our approach to ideation, Paper enabled us to work collaboratively and remain in sync even though our team members were in different offices. Below we provide a preview into our process and how integrating Paper allowed us to work more efficiently and creatively.

Text features

Dropbox Paper allows users to easily add text as a team which has enabled us to brainstorm ideas and share inspiration for each of these articles. Creating timelines and bulleted to-do lists that can be ticked off in real-time really helped to keep our goals at the forefront of the team’s collective mind while coordinating the remaining tasks. We were also able to add tables of additional information and comment on each other’s suggestions in an easily identifiable format. In case you were wondering, emojis are indeed available to express your pleasure and dismay. If you’re feeling brave you can even write code.

Dropbox Paper has automatic language detection and syntax highlighting so that more digitally-minded users can give their input too.

Adding media

Selecting images in Paper is extremely intuitive. You can either choose to align your images however you see fit or paste images right next to each other and add captions. There’s even an option to see a full-screen gallery, which negated the need to send every collaborator large files via email, and instead allowed us to keep all of our potential article images in one single place where we could then discuss captions directly underneath. It’s also very simple to add media from apps such as YouTube, Vimeo, or Adobe. As a result, we ended up sharing some inspirational online videos focusing on companies that were using Dropbox Paper to alter their working practices. It’s as easy as dropping in a link.

Paper enabled us to work collaboratively and remain in sync even though our team members were in different offices."

Collaborate with people

It’s possible to invite anyone to see your doc on Dropbox Paper, whether it’s your team, stakeholders, freelancers or agencies. You can either make your project accessible to your team by adding them to shared folders, or create more privacy by adding them to invite-only folders. Invitees can view, edit or comment on your work and it’s easy to draw someone’s attention to a specific element by simply adding an @ and the person’s name. Downloading the Dropbox Paper apps for iOS and Android meant that our collaborators could access, edit, create and share Paper docs on their mobiles, anytime, anywhere, without having to worry about whether they were seeing the latest version of a doc. Using Dropbox Paper for the first time has resulted in a creative and fruitful collaboration between Morning Wire editors, writers and designers. Despite some initial resistance to changing our way of working, we managed to come together quickly and efficiently to share ideas, decide on concepts and assign tasks.

Using Dropbox Paper for the first time has resulted in a creative and fruitful collaboration.

Morning Wire and our partner Dropbox have collaborated on an editorial series which explores better ways of working. Read more at: morningwire.eu/workinflow.