Building My Design Career in A Logistics Tech Startup
Two years ago, I quit my job at one of the most innovation-driven NGO. I had been working there for three years. During this time, I finished my bachelor’s degree, involved in the national strategic policy making process, involved in national disaster management, introduced and learned human-centred design. Then, I shifted my career into a new field, designing a product for a business that I never knew before. Here are my thoughts
My Past Life
I was 21 years old when I started working at UNICEF. In the first week, I was assigned to handle the national scout event and represent UNICEF Innovation team. The innovation team is using an agile workflow, as a fresh graduate I was struggling with the pace at first. However, I can manage the situation quite well. More projects and research coming from across Indonesia. One of the most ambitious projects I’ve been involved in was U-Report Indonesia. U-Report Indonesia is a chat-bot that can help adolescents deliver their voices to the policy making process in Indonesia. I also got the chance to visit many areas of Indonesia and learn about their unique problems and challenges. These problems and challenges were captured by quantitative and qualitative research.
In my second year, my supervisor introduced me to design thinking and human-centered design by asking me to join a focus group discussion session for user research about “How Tech Impacts Innovation in South East Asian Countries”. That was my first experience with a proper design workshop handled by professionals. I was inspired to learn more about design thinking after the session then I decided to join an online design thinking course from Designlab. From this course, I learned how design thinking can boost my work as an Innovation team member to find solutions for our stakeholders with a structured way of thinking.
Implementing design thinking practice was not an easy task. Start from small changes and slow processes to make sure stakeholders can understand what I was proposing. Some of them might already know about this but the majority still don’t know about design thinking. I started by preparing a small workshop to introduce them to how design thinking might work on UNICEF flagship project. I asked for an opportunity to do a pilot project. In my last year, I used design thinking to build the first-ever MVP for an anti-bullying campaign and prevention program in Central Java and South Sulawesi.
Shifting Career
After one-year practicing design thinking on pilot projects, I want to learn more about how design thinking is implemented in a real business environment. I thought this would challenge me to the next level on how problem-solving works. One of my best friends introduced me to Rangga, Head of Product at Kargo Technologies. When I got the chance to talk with him about how he sees product development in Kargo, he convinced me that joining his team would provide me with a ton of challenges. Logistics business in Indonesia is worth about US$250 billion, and logistics costs account for around 25% of Indonesia’s GDP. It means that there are still inefficient processes and business flow that need to be optimized.
I was the third designer who joined the Kargo Product Design team. For the first three months, I learned foundational understanding of user research and communicating design. I got a responsibility to develop the first MVP for Driver app. This product was developed to help Kargo’s truck drivers to do their job from Kargo’s marketplace. Previously, I never interacted with any truck driver in my life, the first interaction was after I joined driver research, it changed my life. The deeper the research went, I got a better understanding of how they struggle on a daily basis. Due to cluttered processes and unexpected events in their work.
While developing a driver app, my main focus is to maximize the mobile design and use the correct interaction for my users. Our driver has a limitation on handling a lot of information at the same time. They also have limitations to operate their mobile phone, these challenges are top priority to provide a smooth experience. If the driver can operate the driver app easily, that means the business can run smoothly.
Important Projects
In the next quarter, Kargo has a big project called “The Big Bang”. This project is basically migrating a legacy system into a new system. As we grew our business and company in general, we needed a better and more streamlined system. In the previous system, Kargo had two different systems to handle the business. In terms of scalability and user experience, this could lead to bigger problems in the future. I asked my mentor if I can take more challenges to learn more new stuff. My mentor gave me responsibilities to handle the design development of our internal product. Compared to the driver app, this product is a website to handle the business process called Panthera.
I started this project by observing the previous design and detecting design debts. By using this approach, I learned information architecture and managing complex business flow into the design. Another challenge that I found was how to handle stakeholders for internal products is totally different from handling end-users like drivers. Communication with internal users needs more consideration and optimization. As a designer, I should position myself as an advocate when it comes to understanding business flow and optimizing it.
During the Big Bang, I handled both Panthera and Driver App for design delivery. By handling multiple projects at the same time with two different goals and users, it enhanced my soft skills such as project management, communication, and lobbying. Running two sprints in parallel was not an easy task to do. However, I learned a lot of things in a short time until the Big Bang was released.
In my second year, I got promoted to be a mid-level product designer. My responsibilities included leading design projects and helping junior product designers to deliver design. I want to be a specialized designer who also can handle user research independently. My mentor decided to place me as a user researcher to handle some user research. During the first quarter, I finished research called Driver Resource Flow. This research aims to understand the behaviour of drivers managing their income and finding opportunities for future product development. During this time, I learned a new perspective on how researchers prepare a research plan, do the research and analyze post research data. As a designer and researcher, communicating the research result is important. Learning from this experience I can get both perspectives on how research and design could be a complete package when presenting opportunities and proposing ideas.
Struggles and Challenges
Working in a fast-growing start-up like Kargo, I found that the way we work is very agile. Changing priorities and business goals can happen within the quarter timeline. This brings many challenges to the design team to focus on preparing research, design prioritization, and communicating with stakeholders. When everything is important, sometimes we need to push some agenda if that’s not fit with the business goal or priorities. Extra communication is needed to make sure both business and design teams have similar goals.
If I asked what’s the most difficult thing to manage in multi-design projects, I would say context changing. Design development is a continuous process, one step might have dependencies from the previous processes. When you work on different projects and have a lot of contexts, proper documentation and timeline would help the most. Many discussions might occur in a similar timeline and I need to make sure meeting notes from previous discussions can be found easily then we can have meaningful discussions with stakeholders.
Learning and Opportunities
Kargo as the biggest logistic startup in Indonesia provides me with many interesting problems. The problem space about logistics is so unique and the experience that I get every day is always different. I feel like every day is a continuous learning process. Tight schedule and agile development trained me to be resilient and a thoughtful designer when it comes to preparing a project.
For designers who want to sharpen their skills in understanding users, proposing ideas, and making a real impact, Kargo can provide all of that, and also you can create your design journey if you want. I believe that my experience is still on the surface level, a lot of opportunities still can be dug deeper and you may be the first designer to do that.
About The Author
Mohammad Ilham Akbar Junior is a Product Designer at Kargo, managing the research and design development of Kargo’s external and internal products in the mission of developing Indonesia’s biggest and most trusted logistic platform.
