3 reasons why I am starting my design career at a startup.
Life comes at you fast. When I haven’t figured out what was going on in this already weird 2020, I am sitting in front of my laptop in my newly moved in flat in East London.
Today I am going to talk about my current status and explain why this summer, I have decided to work in a startup over a big company to embark my career.
So, My version of this weird 2020
For those who don’t know me, this is Tsz Hoi and I am a designer (/student). I will be soon graduating in MA: User Experience at the University of the Arts London. Because of the global pandemic, I went back to Hong Kong this summer and met up with Harris and Jerome, my former bosses who founded a startup as a freelance platform. Two years ago, I was working for them as a design intern playing with web design and social media graphics. It was also the time that I got to know startup and decided to be a UX/Digital designer.
Harris and Jerome talked me into an exciting new project called Jupitrr, a matchmaking app for business networking. Despite I am going back to London for a bit to finish off my degree, they have invited me to take up the role as a product designer/design lead/UX designer for this new project where it also means that this is going to be the first full-time job in my life.
After a moment of thoughts, I took the offer with 3 reasons.
1. Flexibility Over Systemical working
As my previous work experience tells me, being an in-house designer of some big companies isn’t interesting at all. Especially for a junior-level position, they usually just perform as a part of the big system, do things by orders or routine without much freedom and flexibility. I don’t think this is the right way to develop a UX/Product Design career. Instead, designers should always be able to rethink and reflect the context, problem, solution, and challenge the present way. A good designer should always ask WHY.
Even in innovative design agencies like IBM ix or Accenture (where I both worked with as a student), with a more innovative and creative mindset, there are still sets of systemic tools and methods of conducting design research. (Yet, It would still be a great opportunity to join them, but considering there are a very limited number of those firms in Hong Kong.)
Working in a startup gives freedom and room for us to explore, conduct and design what we find most suitable for the company. Yet, we don’t have the resources like those big companies, but as a designer who wishes to perform at any level, the room to perform is the key.
2. Living on the edge
In a startup, I have to perform in different roles from taking care of those graphic design for social media, the user experience of the product to the user-growth and business side of the company. It is an extremely challenging and unsecured setting.
Being such fresh blood in the team taking up such a responsibility definitely put pressures on me. However, people don’t improve in comfy places. Taking on those pressures not only increase my width of experiences but also keep us reflecting on how we should do things better, and make myself a better designer.
3. Once-in-a-lifetime moment
Creating artefacts that would launch into the real world and get thousands and thousands of people to use it is like winning the World Cup for designers. If there’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build my own product and grow with the company, it would simply be the remarkable and biggest achievement in my life. I am not saying we will become those tech giants stories, but in terms of life, why don’t we all do something that we would be proud of no matter where we end up? Amor fati (the love of fate), they said.
Why are we writing?
Besides working hard on the product, we believe that documentation of our journey gives us space to reflect, receive feedback and learn through the process. Our team has learnt a lot from many quality blogs on Medium, where we want to become one of them to share about progress, strategies, insights and decisions, perhaps someone could benefit from it! (We would be so glad)
No one has ever become poor by giving — Anne Frank
Through Jupitrr’s medium publication, Harris, Jerome and I will talk about stuff that we want to express around the startup and our fields respectively (Business, Tech, Design). This is just the start of the journey, we intend to build the product to make this world a better place. Don’t hesitate if you have anything in mind for us.
Lastly, if you are curious about Jupitrr!
Meanwhile, we have just launched jupitrr.com for early access! If you are interested in our concept, I kindly invite you to sign up to join one of us! Don’t forget to give us a follow on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as well!
