Polluted Products 🕸️
Around 4 months ago I started what you can call my first job experience. Noooot really, because I had freelanced before, but it was definitely my first time as Product Designer in a team. It was an interesting ride, with pumps and dumps along the way.
I joined this startup on August 2017 as the only designer, working with other five people.
I set expectations for myself concerning what I was looking for in this experience. Because there would not be a more expertised designer working with me, I was not expecting to learn much about technical skills, design processes and such. On the other hand, I was expecting to learn more about the startup environment, how to communicate with other people and how to properly discuss design, as well as gather some bucks.
But if I had to take one major learning from the last four months, it would be in a form of a soft voice, whispering: do not polute your product.
Time and time again I found myself in a position where assumptions, stereotypes and preconceptions could battle their way through into our work — and, in some, they did in fact.
It requires a constant exercise of questioning what you and your team know and how you can back that up with arguments and validated data.
Consequently, only a solid process of understanding the users of the product will provide the necessary information you need to coordinate both user and business needs in a balanced way.
Considering a range that goes from “I should’ve closed this tab 5 minutes ago” to “Where can I hire this guy?”, I hope this helped you in some way. By the way, the hiring thing would be on juauz.com — thank you! 👊
