Industry Experience: One with the ‘Masala Design’
🚀 Highlights from my product design internship with the Innovaccer design team
Winter was coming ❄️
It was that time of the college year when campus intern hiring was at its peak. Before the intern rush started to get to my head, I decided to get things done my way — it was time to hone some skills…
Sneaking in 👀
Decided then, I went on an intern hunt for the coming winter. Jotted down a couple of organizations of interest. Simultaneously I started drafting cold email templates and began sending ’em off (the first time I ever used the scheduling feature too efficiently :P)
Soon enough I got a reply for further discussion from our very own celeb :P — Varun Dhawan, Head of Design at Innovaccer. Our conversation rather turned out unexpectedly fun! — about an hour over life, design, and journey been so far. After few days of which, I was scheduled for another interview round with Sayyam Sachdev — Designer Manager, wherein after an hour of discussion (portfolio+basics) and further with a couple of calls they invited me in for 10 weeks 🎉
I was more than interested in working with a fully-fledged design team and learning to collaborate with others. Also, to gather insights on how design is incorporated in the B2B industry and it had already begun — would have been much more fun if it weren’t for WFH. But for sure, this was going to be fun — new tasks, new talent, new exposure, and a new team!
As much unexpected was this gift, it was super thrilling at the moment back then! Thanks Innovaccer \(^️-^)/
Working in business 🤓
It was lucky enough for my mac to arrive beforehand the intern period, as I could not afford more time to sweep by — provided there was so much to learn and as much to understand about how the design team incorporated within a business sector of the industry. In these 10 weeks, I worked with one of the most amazing design teams formed of high-spirited hooomans out there!
I have always had the mindset that B2B products must be boring for they have to design for other business individuals and “everything firm management-related” — nothing like that, for what it’s worth I am thankful to the design team to assign me the task of re-creating the HIMSS 2021 presentation for global. This made me realize that in any B2B product several conflicting user personas exist within a single product, each having its managers, clients, permission, and user base which makes it harder to design for as there are fewer overlapping things to be discovered (worst case scenario)
While this was the first time I was working on a design system, I noticed certain things — maintaining integrity across the different sections of a product is important for it to easily incorporate with the customer’s modal of features.
“While designing for B2B product — one must think of the product users through the perception of your business customers mindset”
Once while working with the Senior Product Manager, I noticed that business products are constantly required to catch up with the market trend. They care less about the UX unless it is a do or die situation, and AFA they are getting their desired output and staying in the competition 💪
It is amazing to see how the team coordinated with the aspects of each sub-product while carrying out quarterly sprints to achieve their goals with the minimum deviation and astounding results in such a short period. I was shocked to see myself using calendar and notes so frequently, I’ve never done before! Meanwhile, some of the major tasks that I pulled out:
- HIMMS 2021 Refining & Prototyping — Deciding and creating user flow for different user types about services provided by Incare Care Management under Innovaccer
- Worklist Calendar Week View UI — A brand new calendar vision i.e week view for the enhancing staff experience with complex data in hand, I worked with the team on enhancing the interface UI
- Pdf printing UI enhancement — The most challenging task of all, which I enjoyed working on the most. Responsible for improving pdf layout for better readability and appearance. I faced difficulties in collecting details on the UI and specifics and hence, started to jot down things that will be framed in an article soon, stay tuned!
Apart from these, I was also allowed to attend remote user interviews for feature introduction and improvement — I observed, took notes, and analyzed the things for further discussion in the panel, which was super fun!
You know that it is hard to get everything in such a short period, yet you manage to get hands-on things that interest you the most and make it to the finale…
Challenges and Cheatsheet 🔥
Everything around was moving so quickly at such a pace — Immediate joining the same day getting accepted, a blink of an eye, and onboarding has started already! These people use a bunch of amazing tools and technology to work seamlessly — Sketch, Abstract, Miro, Confluence, and whatnot. I had to onboard the same train too and it better be fast as there was no time left. Hence, one of the major challenges was getting used to mac after shifting from windows 👩🏻💻
Challenging days were kicking in, and WFH was something very new and unexpected, but to my surprise when I look back, I learned a lot of things from my experience of exposure here —
📌 Time management
One thing that drastically changed — my sleeping schedule. Easier at earlier sessions but soon I was allotted work to do and, I realized that everyday-everything has to be scheduled from minute to minute, or else I’ll never get self-time but be trapped in the monotone cycle. Had it been an onsite intern — would have made things a lot easier with dedicated work slots and no scheduling or extra distractions to take care of.
Had to shift schedule sleep hours from 2–10 AM to 12–8 AM or else I would lag behind everyone with the work assigned — not impressive at all.
Point being, have a control on your time — it’s damn precious!
📌 No work is small
In this short period of 10 weeks, it was hard to grasp every little detail on every sub-product, so I decided to stay put on only one i.e Incare Care Management.
Thanks to Vishal Jain👏 to carry me to every sprint discussions taking place — helped me to get how big tasks are carried out in quarters with teams and distributed responsibilities and I was shocked to learn how little things matter and I begun accounting for those.
Rather than swimming in shallow waters, try diving into the specifics — for you might find pearls!
📌 Speak out loud
If you’re not confident, that’s okay — happens with most of us, and hence one should try preparing for the same beforehand so that you don’t miss out on the essentials, that’s important. Also, try to call out for opportunities as soon as you see one — for second chances do not exist.
Being a super-enthusiast person, I once pitched an idea and was too busy to work on it — sadly I had to leave it unfinished (regret the most). But the best part is that the idea is still alive and if that could be persued in the future🤞
Speak! for your idea, for your reasoning — no matter how silly they might be, they are not nothing.
📌 Connect out there
When working as an intern, try to build as many connections as possible — reach out to everyone regarding the simplest of things. WFH has made it a lot harder, yet you are there for short period so, even though people are busy, leave no chance- ask them for help, book slots from their schedule to connect.
I tried to reach out to everyone on the design team during the period and also booked one-on-one sessions with some of them, had chit chat on life and everything — felt good really!
📌 Retrospect honey, Retrospect!
Whenever facing imposter syndrome, try looking back at your younger self and think of how far you have come and how far there is to go 🕊
I never believed in “Believe in yourself”, kind of garbage advice — if put it in Peralta’s words, lol. But the thing is for real if you see through it clearly.
Just believe you can do it, you are more than you anticipate ;)
To the team 🥂
A bunch of fantastic folks, everyone with their unique spirited personality make this marvelous team🔥 Mostly I worked closely with Vishal Jain and Varun Masheshwari the whole time, a perfect combo to battle any hurdle that came across! I remember how Varun Maheshwari used to mention two questions in almost every discussion—
“What is the outcome? What will we achieve?”
Such questions would make everyone pause for a while xD and think about it. From him, I learned to mention every little detail you encounter while deriving solutions before concluding, for it becomes handy in presenting things.
They have this cool thing named ‘UX Friyays’ every Friday for week-long discussions and topics that needed review.
We also started Among us and Scribble for a few weeks — perfect stress-relieving way to end your weekend 🤝
Thanks to the entertainment management team for organizing Secret Santa to lighten up our moods and for this beautiful gift!
These 10 weeks had been remarkable. I’m looking forward to greeting the team in person one day, until then I’m thankful to all for giving me a memorable experience! Even in these worst conditions, the coolest design team made it so easy and fun to work with. The best thing that happened in the end was —
Innovaccer turned into a unicorn this year 🚀
Special thanks to Sayyam Sachdev, Anant Garg, and Vishal Jain to keep me pushing beyond my limit by never diminishing expectations and keeping in check so that I keep moving ahead ❤
In case you wish to learn more about the how/what work I did, please get in touch with me via Twitter or linkedin
They also have an interesting story behind the NaamKaran (naming) of their ‘Masala Design System’ :0
Wanna know more? Apply here at Innovaccer!
