My First Paid Project Experience as UI/UX Designer
How did I get this job
OK, before I tell the story about my experience with working on my first paid project, maybe one of you would ask me “How can you get this job?”
I get this job because I join a group of people named Codepanda. Codepanda is an IT freelance team based at IPB University, Bogor.
First Offer
First offer? let me remember that day. Oh, I see. Friday night, we gather on our campus. We discuss the client’s request for several projects. One of them is the one that I choose.
But, before I join that project, I was confused because this is gonna be my first paid project. It would bring a different feel and responsibility. At that time, I was also busy with my college project (Yeah 4th semester is the busiest time I’d ever had).
After that group discussion, I and one of my friend discuss that project. After a long discussion, I decided to take that project as a UI/UX Designer.
First using the Design System
Finally, I joined the team. Surprisingly, in my team, I know several people, like my PM, who is the leader of Codepanda, the Front-end Dev, who is one of the seniors that I know and working together with several times, and the Back-end Dev that has a last name same as me (LOL) (Honestly, I don’t know him, but I’ve heard of his name and he’s known as someone who is good at Back End Dev).
After reading the PRD and the sprint began, I have to make the design system for the UI/UX Design.
And the funny thing is, I didn’t have any experience building a design system, at all.
So, I go to youtube and watch every video about Design Systems (I have several favorite videos and I will tell you after you read this). I also ask my friend who is good at this.
How I get this job done
This project took 2 months to be done. In the first week of the sprint, The UI/UX Designer had to be done the exploration of style and the design system. Before that, I had to know what product I want to develop. I had to know who is the user of the product. In this project, I design a Travel Umrah and Hajj Website. So, I did some research and make a User Criteria. After I have a User Criteria, I make a style and components for the design.
In the second week of the sprint, I have to finish the landing page design, so I can continue to design the other pages and the front-end developer can do his job to convert my design into code and so did the back-end developer.
There are so many revisions we got from the client. In several features, we got a different idea between me and the client. The color, the design style, the size of the card, and also API (from the client to Backend and Frontend Devs), and many more. We face it seriously every night a little bit tired and stressed (of course).
2 months after a long story and many revisions, the project was done.
What I learned from this project
- Communication is a must
in case you get sick in the middle of your project, you have to tell your teammate your condition, so that your teammate can
do other things that don’t involve you. - Don't be scared to explore
In this project, there are lots of fear to explore design styles. I had this fear because this is my first paid project and I’d never
made a complex design in a ‘real’ project (‘real’ means a project that coded). I always thought “Can be my design converted to a code? Huh”.
My advice is, just try your exploration design and communicate with your front-end and ask him “Can this design be converted to a code?” if
can, it’s good for you, but if it can’t, it’s okay, at least you try and get a new design style. - Attention to detail
In the middle of the sprint, there is always a progress report that is done every day. Tells your progress in an honest and specific,
so your teammate doesn’t confused if there are changes in your designs - Don’t stop learning
Maybe because I just have one week to explore the style design and I also have not mastered the design system, I am little a bit panicked and confused and just learn from a little number of videos. Maybe, if I explore many videos about design systems, style, and also components,
I can work on this project more neatly and it would be less revisions.
