How carwow fuelled my first 30 days as a Junior Product Designer
(🚘 car pun alert 🚨)
Hey, I’m Callum 👋, and I’ve recently transmissioned into design after going through a tech bootcamp programme. I’m new to the industry, and last year I landed a role as a Junior Product Designer at carwow.
What’s carwow?
Back at the end of July 2019, I accepted a job offer to become a Junior Product Designer at scale-up carwow.
I had recently left my first design job at a small startup, and so this was my first experience joining a bigger company. Aside from assuming that there was going to be more structure and processes in place, I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that I was really excited to put the pedal to the metal and get started.
Soon after I accepted the offer from the hiring manager, I received a congratulatory email from Gareth, the head of design. This made me feel welcome and the positive feelings that I had from the entire hiring process continued.
To go alongside the congratulations in the email, Gareth said that we’d meet with some of the other designers and product managers the week before my first day. This was a great way to get to know the people that I would be working with, in a casual setting, and definitely made the first day feel less daunting. It made it clear that they care about new starters and providing the best first-day experience and beyond.
Two more emails from IT support and the people team kicked off the onboarding process and got the engines started for my life at carwow.
(okay, time to put my foot down 🛑)
Day 1
Nervous? Yeah, kind of.
I arrived at the office at 10am to meet with Mike on the people team. I was greeted and taken through the onboarding process to cover what I would be experiencing over my first month. I had been into the office a couple of times before, but now I would actually be working there. It felt great!
After being handed a computer, I was shown my desk where a welcome pack full of carwow swag and design materials were waiting for me. This was a really nice touch. I met more of the greater product team along with saying hi to those that I met for lunch the week previously.
The nerves started to disappear and I felt part of the team straight away.
I logged in and set up my accounts to get started. I instantly felt overwhelmed. I had tens and tens of emails along with a diary full of meetings to attend and people to meet. I had lots of new software to learn, and their names all seemed confusingly similar. What’s the difference between Abstract and Amplitude? How do I approach this? And what’s kanban?
I had unlimited questions and confused feelings.
I didn’t panic though (or I tried not to). The culture at carwow is very supportive, and I felt instantly comfortable asking senior members how to tackle getting set up and familiar with everything. I had been told multiple times that if I ever felt overwhelmed or unsure, don’t be afraid to ask. Nice one research & design team!
After navigating the new software, calendar schedule and finding my way to the coffee machine (all hail carwow’s espresso machine) I was introduced to what I would be doing over the next month to get me up to speed with everything. The design team had prepared a Trello board for me containing tasks to complete, people to meet and general tips and information.
This was really great, and it helped answer any questions I had. I felt right at home.
The board highlighted two main tasks that I needed to complete over my first month at carwow. I needed to meet 28 people in 28 days and buy a car using carwow! (up until the transaction, obviously). I’ll explain more about these shortly.
Day 2–7
One of my goals while at carwow was to learn as much as possible. I’m eager to better myself and soak up as much knowledge as I can, and I wanted to hit the ground running with this in my first week.
To help facilitate this, I was paired with a senior designer, essentially a mentor and an experienced designer who can help guide and support me through problems and someone to be there when I had any queries. This was exciting, something I was looking for and a way for me to learn and grow.
I met Amardeep during the interview process, and I was paired with him. He’s a lead designer at carwow, and we had our first 1–2–1 (another new term for me) during the first week along with numerous training sessions to get me up to speed with different rituals, software and agile techniques. This was a perfect way to really start getting to grips with what product design is at carwow and having a mentor has continued to help my development since.
Meet 28 people in 28 days
carwow has many different teams covering a vast range of skillsets, from commercial to editorial and marketing to finance. Product has specific goals and areas of focus, but before I got my teeth stuck into designing anything product-side, it was essential to learn how these different business areas interact with one another and what makes carwow tick.
This is where the value of meeting 28 people in 28 days was: it was a great opportunity to meet lots of different people from different areas of the business and learn a bit more about what they do at carwow and how the company operates. This accelerated my learning and made me feel comfortable early on as I felt like I already knew a load of people.
Car buying challenge
For the car buying challenge, I was tasked with using carwow to buy a car, to document my experience and present my findings to the team at the end of the week. This was a great way to get familiar with the product straight away.
I’m interested in electric vehicles (EVs), and so I used carwow to choose an EV that would suit me, got in touch with a dealer and found one to test drive. The challenge uncovered the positives and negatives of the carwow experience and highlighted problem areas that needed to be solved. I appreciated being allowed time to really use the product and think critically about it before I was required to design anything. Plus, test driving an electric car was great fun!
Day 7–30
Hack week
Hack week took place during my second week at carwow. Hack week allows developers and designers to collaborate and commit an entire week to work on a project that they desire. There were only two requirements:
- The project needs to benefit carwow in some way
- It needs to be live at the end of the week
I worked in a team of four with three developers, and aside from working on a cool project, it gave me the opportunity to see what was possible to be built in a week. It was really tough at times, but I felt like I got a lot out of it.
Check out one of the hack week projects that is now live: the carwow 404 page https://www.carwow.co.uk/404
Shadowing teams
I spent my first four weeks at carwow shadowing different product teams. I sat in on all their meetings and rituals and was added to their Slack channels. It was a great way to learn more about product at carwow but also to see the nuances of each team and how they operate differently.
There are many rituals that the product and design teams use at carwow, and I was unfamiliar with most. I’ll give you 3 guesses to tell me what Design Glue is. There was a learning curve getting to grips with these, but now they’re habitual and are a solid foundation to the week. By the end of the first month, I felt comfortable and confident with the carwow environment and way of working.
Where am I now?
I joined the app team on week five, and we’ve been working on the carwow app together since. When I joined the team, the app had recently been released, and so I was really excited by the prospect of working on a new section of the company so early on. We have taken the app from inception to becoming a highly rated and reviewed app that has a decent proportion of the carwow user base.
Six months in and I’ve grown a huge amount as a designer and an individual. carwow has set me up for success, and I feel like I am gaining all the tools and skills required for me to excel as a product designer. I’ve completed numerous projects end to end, and the experiences I’ve designed are being used by thousands of consumers.
I look forward to the future!
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