1 Year Designing At Social Tables

Woah! A lot can happen in a year. It’s pretty incredible how quickly time flies. I still remember stepping foot into the Social Tables office and thinking “Am I ready for this?” I’d be their first designer. I’d have an incredibly long commute from Baltimore. I’d have to completely shift my life and dive into the world of fast-paced product development.

I can safely say that a year later, I’ve learned a lot owning design for one of the fastest growing tech companies in Washington, D.C. Relocating to a city where I had to start from scratch has allowed me to develop both personally and professionally.

1 year later — what did I learn, and where can I go from here?

Everything you do matters.

I’m most proud of the fact that I’ve had the opportunity to design such a wide range of projects. In a year, I’ve achieved more career goals than I’ve ever been able to in all of my previous jobs combined. Having the ability to establish brand guidelines and create my own design playground says it all.

In almost every opportunity I’ve had before this, ranging from print to web, I rarely ever saw a design see the light of day. They were destined from the start to live as screenshots in my portfolio. This happens to a lot of designers for reasons that mostly boil down to companies failing to prioritize design initiatives in their business models.

At a startup, especially at Social Tables, every single step in the process has an impact on the final outcome. In a society that finds it easier and easier to cut corners, the repercussions of taking the easy route in this industry are expensive and time-consuming. Every step in the process matters — from ideation to execution.

Don’t get me wrong — there are plenty of products I’ve designed that will never be fully realized. Still, that never means the idea is dead. Directions change all the time, but everything I’ve designed had a purpose long before I touched a design program.

Cool, we have a brand. So what?

One of the questions I get asked most frequently is “How did you come up with the brand guidelines?”

When I started, one of my first tasks was developing a mobile version of our primary desktop app. This required a process unlike anything I had experienced. I had to get to know my peers — their day-to-day, their struggles, and their personalities. Who are our customers? What do they like? What are they like? Why is this product valuable to them?

What can I do to make it valuable?

Our brand comes from the realization that our customers want to have fun! Lucky for them, so does everyone in this company! We want to interact with things that make our lives a little bit easier, and much more enjoyable. We’re all young innovators who have the opportunity to introduce something unlike anything anyone has ever seen. Why not make it as approachable as possible, both internally and externally? I want us to be recognized. I want future hires to have just as much fun playing with these guidelines as I do, whether it’s specifically design related or not.

To everyone who walks by me and yells our primary hex code — thank you! That’s the kind of validation that keeps designers at companies.

I broke from the norm, and it paid off.

I’ve never been a fan of designing in Photoshop, which was the industry standard for product/web designers. It never made sense to develop a product in a program constructed to edit photography. That’s a simplistic way of looking at it, but I know I’m not alone.

A few weeks before starting, I discovered a tool called Sketch that proposed a much faster workflow and fostered collaboration between designers and engineers. Was it scalable? Would it improve the communication between designer and engineer? I honestly had no idea, but the suggested benefits made it worth the try.

To this day (unless I’m working on print) I do everything in Sketch. I can copy CSS attributes and answer any design questions during development. Exporting assets is a breeze. On top of that, valuable prototyping tools such as Invision have solid integrations with Sketch that significantly increase the speed of my workflow.

I appreciate you, Photoshop. I do. But 75 projects later, Sketch is still winning at product development.

Trust in your peers. They’re leaders, too.

Collaboration is everything. Let me repeat this — collaboration is everything. It’s creativity’s dose of caffeine.

I was expected to step up and be a leader from the start. Because of that, I have very high expectations of the people I work with. All of our success falls on us and our decisions moving forward. To craft your path to success, you are ideally surrounded by people trying to do the same thing. There’s a lot of trust involved in that. Our customers aren’t the only ones who should be happy with our products. I want my coworkers to be excited about working on something cool!

When I interview new hires, I always tell them this kind of freedom is difficult to grasp. Being asked to join a startup isn’t a game — it’s a lot of work. I depend on everyone’s drive, support, and encouragement to consistently achieve great outcomes.

Your gut isn’t always right.

I’m not the only one here who carries the responsibility of a very specific aspect in the company’s growth. In fact, one of my biggest growing pains was accepting the fact that I was essentially starting from scratch. It’s an exhilarating yet daunting feeling.

I look back on designs I did a year ago and laugh. I’m very passionate, so I always fight for “good” design, which arguably changes every day. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean I always do “good” design. Sometimes they’re pretty bad. I’ve tried to go against industry standards and take risks to achieve a better user experience and have failed countless times. Nevertheless, I’m proud of those risks because they’ve shaped the direction of our brand.

Your gut becomes a valuable thing when you feed it with inspiration. To my fellow designers — NEVER stop looking. Ever. Don’t stop meeting people at other companies who are doing what you’re doing. Look for mentors who deeply encourage innovation. And, above all else, keep listening. One valuable piece of knowledge can craft a game-changing idea.

What comes next?

So, after all of this learning and growing, what does this next year hold?

I have no idea, and I’m okay with that.

We hired a UX designer who has been helpful in making our process a lot more streamlined. Our company’s growth rate isn’t slowing down. I’m still surprised every day. This year, all I can promise is that I won’t stop doing what I’m here to do as best as I can do it.

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Here’s to another year.