Reflecting on My Time As A Remote Product Design Intern At OVO
In a quiet bedroom accompanied only by the low humming of my laptop fan, I sat before a Google Hangouts meeting, and got to know my colleagues for the first time, unaware of the joy of a ride that was waiting for me at OVO Design.
I was anticipating to work alongside the people behind the sensational digital wallet app, the lunch breaks with intern friends, the wild ideations with post-its on the glass windows, and taking on exciting projects onsite at the South Jakarta office.
But that was quickly shot down within the course of a few weeks. And the same with the rest of the world, scrambling hard and fast to adopt the new #StayAtHome norm.
Even so, the uncertainties, my introversion and an occasionally glitchy internet connection didn’t make the WFH internship experience any less enjoyable.
Now, onto my internship experience…
Only after I started my internship as a product designer did I finally confirm that designing or creating a product is not just about designing itself.
Much like cooking the perfect dish, there’s more to the story than just the chefs picking the right combination of ingredients. We have the farmers (business managers), who handpick their crops to sell; the middlemen (product managers) in charge of the logistics; the chefs (designers & developers), and the servers (QA), whose role is to make sure the food (the product!) and satisfaction are delivered to the customers.
Behind every product, the interests and the works of different stakeholders are involved.
At OVO, I found that the roles of these stakeholders are rarely mutually exclusive to one another. Everyone has a say in how the product will grow, from start to release. OVO designers do not simply nod and do what is asked of them. Putting users’ needs as the cornerstone, designers fight relentlessly for their judgements and even if there are technical limitations, they don’t just compromise. They work around the clock to find the best alternative solution. In the same way designers give feedback, developers would sometimes voice out their concerns over certain user experiences.
That visibility of the process and being included in every step of the product development — even the interns! — are some of the many reasons why I enjoy working at OVO so much.
But at times, working from home makes it very hard to maintain that visibility and feedback system. You can no longer roll your chair towards a colleague’s table to peek at what they are doing, or tap your mentor’s shoulders to ask amateur questions. Developers cannot just walk to the designer and ask whether the placement of an element should be more to the left or to the right. Product managers are no longer able to stand around a designer’s table to discuss a viable user journey for a new feature.
Everyone is working alone, except they are not. Nor should they be.
In response to the impact of COVID-19, the design team was quick to take up new collaboration measures and even team restructuring in order to make the work-from-home experience a smoother one.
And to sum it all up, these are the discoveries and experiences I have gained from my time as a remote intern at OVO:
1. Check-ins and alignments are vital, especially in these times
It’s hard to keep track of what my teammates are doing, especially since we don’t work together in person. To keep everyone in check, the design team would have daily stand-ups online. Our team leader, Stevanus Christopel, would start the day with three questions:
What did you do yesterday? What will you do today? Any blockers?
…and end the day with one….
What have you achieved?
We too have daily and weekly check-ins with product managers and the tech team working on each product. Here, the developers have the chance to raise any concerns to the designers and PMs, and vice versa. This makes the progress of a project more transparent. Sprints and deliverables are planned and scheduled better!
But these meetings are so much more than the team leader collecting to-do lists from each member. It’s more about making a commitment to each other — that this is what I will do and can finish by today, like a finish line to run towards at the end of every day. It’s also a fuel that motivates you to finish as much work as you can, especially now that your workspace is also your resting place. (I know how hard it is to resist the bed!)
2. Document everything: every design changes, every decision made
One call after another, important ideas replaced by a choppy voice quality, discussions being drowned by a tsunami of more discussions in lengthy Slack threads…
It is easy to lose track of everything and spiral into a tangled mess of information.
In moments of stress and confusion like that, I found documentation an extremely useful tool. For every Sprint, the team documents every design that needs to be tweaked, every feature that needs to be explored in a Google Sheet. During design reviews and QA, we not only document the designs that require fixing, but also the reasons behind the critiques.
Documenting will not only ensure that we don’t miss any items on a current Sprint’s agenda, but also helps us keep track of decisions taken. In times of doubt where someone asks about a design change, we can now reply with ease, “I have tried this design, but it does not work because ____.”
3. The importance of sharing your work when you’re stuck
Sometimes we work on a design for too long, we get caught up in our own web of wild design ideas and assumptions. Getting a fresh pair of eyes to look at the work I’m doing helps me gain an insight on the things that I may have missed — whether it is the pixel-perfectness of a design or in the user experience side. Online collaboration tools such as Figma, Slack and Google Docs make it easy and quick to get input and suggestions from others.
As an intern, sharing and presenting my work gives me the opportunity to learn from the people who have been longer in the industry than I have. When else is the perfect time to learn, if not from the product designers themselves? From real people, not just from the textbooks or Medium articles! 😱
Harsh, but honest critiques used to be my biggest foe, but it is now my climbing stone to being a better designer and collaborator during my internship.
4. How to ideate remotely, but together as a team?
In our brainstorming sessions, the team I worked with would make use of Whimsical to map out user journeys, list down our ideas, benchmarking and even wireframing. But once we were met with a tricky design problem, I found that simply turning my best idea into mockups and hoping one solution would work wasn’t enough.
Endless discussions on Slack threads, team calls without a conclusion, a deadline looming over our heads but no progress… We were always running in circles, running into dead-ends.
It was then I was introduced to the whiteboard exercise. Before, we were always asking the wrong questions, each of us trying to solve different problems. But during the whiteboarding session, we were forced to condense the bundle of issues into one mutual goal we’re trying to reach. We identified the user, their needs, highlighted the technical and behavioural constraints they may meet on their way of achieving a certain task.
Then, instead of diving right into the wireframes and the design deets, we fill in the solution space with our ideas — in bullet points. This is the time where we think out loud. Rather than keeping the ‘what-if’s and ‘what-about’s in our heads, each of us was encouraged to share them and challenge any idea that came up. With a Whimsical page full of questions, assumptions and ideas to explore, our team was better aligned over design decisions to make and where to go next.
It’s a magical problem solving framework that I will definitely use in my future projects!
5. And lastly, team bonding!
WFH makes it easy to lose that human connection we usually get from working together in the office. With the absence of human interaction, it’s easy to lose track of time, losing ourselves in our own personal bubbles of work: sitting in front of the computer, typing up messages, and staring at Sketch artboards all day long.
But it does not have to be work, work, work all the time.
Occasionally, the design team would set aside some time to talk and do about anything unrelated to work. We would have virtual team-building activities through Google Hangouts, like having dinners together, scribbling away on Gartic.io, and simply to sit together in front of a camera to joke around.
It is through casual conversations and activities like those I feel the most grateful to be a part of the OVO Design team, where the culture does not only revolve around work, but the wellbeing of its people — and the users. Although separated by computer screens and the social distancing norms, the design team still feels very much together.
Working at OVO gave me more insights than just the workings of the FinTech industry or how complex, but exciting ideas are turned into an impactful app. The experience has broadened my visions as a designer and helped me grow as a person.
During my internship, I was given the opportunity to work on actual projects instead of an intern project that I have to complete by the end of my internship term. Such faith and confidence that were trusted to me has definitely shaped me into a better designer, thinker and collaborator than I was five months ago.
And working with professional, passionate and open-minded designers has given me the image of the designer that I aspire to be.
I don’t know where I will be five years from now. But to have had an impact — regardless of how significant — on a product that is helping to promote financial literacy and a cashless future in Indonesia will forever be an experience that I will never forget.
If you are interested in doing an internship, we’re currently accepting interns with very limited slots. To apply, send your profile & portfolio to design@ovo.id.
