10 Principles to Guide Designers at Early-stage Startups
“Principles are ways of successfully dealing with reality to get what you want out of life.” — Ray Dalio
For designers, joining an early-stage startup can be both an exhilarating and stressful experience. The excitement of leading high-impact work can quickly fade away in the daily grind if you don’t develop a set of principles to guide you through the journey. Here are some of my favorite work principles that have guided me in various ways, and hopefully they can be helpful for you in similar situations in your career.
1. You own the entire experience, end to end
Joining an early-stage startup usually means that you will become the first and only designer in the company. It is therefore important for you to own the entire end-to-end customer journey and develop a bird-eye view of the experience across touch-points. As a fact, customers nowadays have high expectations for great experiences from all products regardless of industry; and in the world of customer experience, nothing is someone else’s problem. Which leads me to the next principle…
2. Flesh out your brand strategy as early as possible
The most important piece of work for any early-stage startup is to work out your brand strategy. The goal of the brand strategy is to be the “north star” for all executions around the customer journey to ensure a consistent and thoughtful brand experience across all touch-points. The foundation of an effective brand strategy is a set of values and attributes that define the purpose of the company and its products, which then can be translated into practical guidelines and processes of the day-to-day work.
3. Prioritise and focus on high-impact work
Time is the most important asset in life, and that’s especially true in early-stage startups. When your team is both time- and resource-constrained, it is necessary to be laser-focused on a small subset of high-impact work that can achieve 10x returns compared to other things.
It is also important to find your own productivity hacks that work for you. Spend some time to think about how to structure your day and week so that it enables you to be most productive and stay present in the constant stream of tasks and priorities that the modern work life usually entails.
4. Keep an open mindset
In a startup environment, change is the only constant. Designers should have an “always be learning” mantra and operate with an open mindset to make sure that you stay on top of latest progress and information in order to make informed decisions. Ego is the designer’s worst enemy, learn to fight it.
5. Good designs are not created in a vacuum
Collaboration and good communications are so central to great product designs that they should always be part of your design process. This means designers should never work in silos, even when you are the only designer in the team. Nothing stops you from collaborating with other stakeholders in design workshops and frequent design review sessions.
“Anyone who influences what the design becomes is the designer.” — Jared Spool
6. Practice Lean and Agile methodologies
While “Lean” and “Agile” may sound like the buzzwords of the century, they are simply the smarter way to do business. Practicing Lean and Agile methodologies means figuring out the “minimal viable product” in all the work you are responsible for and be obsessively focused on delivering those with high quality.
7. Test, test, test
Any design process won’t be complete without user testing. User testing sessions are always amazing opportunities to test assumptions and finding ways to improve your design. On that note, it is recommended to create and maintain a recurring user research schedule to be constantly learning about your users and improving your design. After all, there are no better ways to learn than learning them from your own customers.
8. Bias towards action
One of the greatest powers of designers is to make intangible vision tangible through designing and prototyping. The ability to manage ambiguity and take action is what makes best-performing designers and design teams so effective. When consensus cannot be made through discussion or debate, try creating mockups or prototypes and show them to the team. “Bias towards action” is the designer’s super powerful to make things happen and move fast.
“Show, don’t tell”
9. Develop your own creative confidence
Developing creative confidence means putting faith in the design thinking process and believing in its ability to produce amazing results. It’s about being confident of your intuition as a designer and not afraid to defend your design decisions when you have solid evidence and reasons. Most senior designers have dealt with “imposter syndrome” at certain point in their careers so if you are just starting out, it is helpful to find a mentor who can help you crystallise your design process and your product thinking, so that you can develop your own creative confidence that will benefit you for the rest of your career.
10. Above all, do good sh*t that matters
None of the things above would matter if you are not working on a product that makes a positive impact in the world. Design and tech ethics are the most heated topics recently, with big tech companies suddenly in the limelight for questionable ethical practices. As a designer in an early-stage startup, the company’s mission and values should be consistent with your own beliefs and values. And you should always protect your users’ interests and act as their voice when no one else cares.
At the end of the day, working at an early stage startup will be one of the most valuable experiences in your career. It’s a transformative experience you would otherwise never get in a traditional corporate environment.
“I always had the support of the founding team, but that early-employee environment is transformative. You don’t get that in a three-year stint at a Google or Facebook. It happens at the beginning.” — Stacy Lai
We are constantly on the lookout for great talents to join our team. Visit our careers page to learn more and feel free to reach out to us!
