Onboarding at a new job and snorkeling around Cabo Frio, Brazil
First experience working for a startup and the most times I snorkeled in a month
Just 3 hours by bus separated the mountains of Petrópolis from the beaches in Cabo Frio and in the variety is the spice 🌶️
Free time helps to clarify thoughts. The thigs is when. Sometimes it’s vacation, a weekend walk, a reflective night, or just a random epiphany. But it is very common that plans and the generation of ideas are postponed. One of the times I had more time to rethink my next steps was when I resigned to work as a (kind of) full-time freelancer. It was not an easy path but I felt like I learned a ton of things in just one year and a couple of months.
I got to learn how to manage everything on my own. From searching for clients and communicating with them to developing e-commerces via WordPress and touching weird .php files. End-to-end design and development process. No room for extra help, salaries and so. Budgeting, crying to get paid, and lots of headaches. Flexibility. but no good control of it and a bad work-life balance. I didn’t have a clue about the future although I was learning a lot of things. In short, hustling…
One day, it was enough. I thought it was time to work for a big company and get more experience in the field as I was still young. Soon after I was 30 and had new dreams. There was something I was envisioning. It was always there but never focused on it. Again, in the variety is the spice. And being stuck in the same thing forever it’s not so cool.
Look at this:
Intrapreneurship is the act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within an organization. Intrapreneurship is known as the practice of a corporate management style that integrates risk-taking and innovation approaches, as well as the reward and motivational techniques, that are more traditionally thought of as being the province of entrepreneurship.
Being an early freelancer but also an autodidact I felt comfortable taking those risks and managing on my own. I also learned a lot from working with others and that’s a stage I wouldn’t skip. I think it’s better to taste everything you can, learn and then make decisions on top of that. So that lead me to what was obvious but I still didn’t know. I had to work in a start-up!
Jack of all trades, master of none?
I’m ok with that! Wearing multiple hats? Yes, I like the variety I said…
Working for a startup was also aligned to my life goals at the moment so I think that was the perfect match and an opportunity to see if that worked out or not. Also, it would involve less bureaucracy and the more certain possibility of getting a job when there was no virus around.
Today, big companies hesitate and struggle a lot, and when they choose to work 100% remotely it’s like if they had made a french revolution. Back in 2019 it would require both the employer and the employee to agree on terms, trust each other, and special empathy.
That was definitely hard and being honest, that thing couldn’t even be possible if the contractor thing figure wasn’t possible. Anyway, besides that, working on a startup means focusing mostly on a single product/service. And there were things I liked to work on more than others. That’s the cool thing about design.
Working for a travel agency was great because I like that, obviously. I also like food. I mean, I really like it.
The good thing about travel is that you get to try new food. The good thing about trying new food is that you get to travel somewhere.
So I happily joined CookUnity, a food-tech company ready to start disrupting the industry in one of the most demanding markets in the world.
Working for a startup meant that many things could go wrong and be your fault. But luckily, and hopefully, it could be the opposite too. There was that thing.
Being a solo designer at a startup company
- You will wear many hats and do a variety of work (design, branding, writing, testing, and more). Understand what are the limits and what you can outsource
- Fit into the current processes that are running in the startup. And take notes to chat about what can be improved later
- Be autonomous. You need to learn a lot on your own. Do your own research and use existing documentation. With freedom comes responsibility and you need to prove your worth
- Ask for feedback on important things. Don’t disappear. Small and straightforward things could be reviewed briefly at a later stage
- Don’t think you are wrong all the time. Being on your own might be problematic. Talk to colleagues, communities, or mentors. You will find folks deal with similar things and can help you solve problems and feel better
- The process is neverending. Track each step of the process, tackle the main problem, and let some ideas mature for later. You will have to revisit them
Get the design basics right
You will work on most of the designs. That means you need to take care of all the assets, their organization, and also plan ahead for whenever there’s a new team member. That’s not entirely a big problem in the beginning but separating a time on your weekly agenda to polish those things will make you save a lot of time when working on 1, 2, 5, 10, and more screens, prints, videos, or whatever.
What are the design basics? As a designer, that would be the minimum portion of things you need to accomplish a design that respects the brand identity and it’s also useful, scalable, and developer-friendly.
There’s the minimum version of a Design System which is a Style Guide and that’s the first thing on the visual side of things it’s worth attacking. That’s how you are gonna build mostly everything. And if it’s done through an online tool such as Figma that allows you to collaborate, update, save storage place and even prepare print-ready designs…easy peasy!
Quick Tips
Fonts
- If there’s branding already set up, use the main font for the headlines. Use another one if that one it’s not so clear and screen-friendly when being smaller. Any font that is neat and readable (f.e. Helvetica, Roboto, etc)
- Don’t reinvent the wheel. Watch design systems and find common patterns and an average to choose the font sizes for the headings (h1, h2, h3, h4) and paragraph text.
Colors
- Use existing colors from branding. Check that they are screen-friendly. Avoid using colorful texts if they are not so readable. The solution might be changing them quite a bit but that’s changing branding colors and a mess so instead rely on black and white tones for texts
- There will be extra colors to be added. Illustrations might require different tones. You can lower the opacity on main colors like this: 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%. Validation colors for messages/status/notifications are another use case where you will need to use/add new colors
Icons
- Choose an already built icon gallery to save time that matches the branding as much as you can. There are tons of free options. Check that it’s easy to use by yourself (easy to search and place on the design) and easy to export/code
Components
- Take references from other design systems. You can even grab some components and tweak them as needed while they respect the brand. It’s also very important to keep in mind the developer’s frameworks. You can save time their time by agreeing on which framework to use so you can adjust your design so it fits (f.e. Material Design)
How about the onboarding?
Onboarding was fast-paced. There were a lot of things to understand and learn, get to know people, but there were plenty of things to get done too. That kind of onboarding would be different in a more corporate job. Startups need to move faster, prove the product/service works as fast as they can without losing their money, get investments and so.
A good thing about startups is they are small. It’s easier to get in touch with the executives who are by default the ones they know the most about the business. And many times about the user too. Their inner drive will lead them to know the most about how they can create an impact. But employees are hired for some reason and it’s translating those learnings plus the value they can add with their expertise. Possibly you will have to try to educate and evangelize and that’s why soft skills are important too
From learning about the user flows/journeys to user testing some new ideas for a prototype based on some previous customer inputs, assumptions, and brief competitor analysis. All of those “small things” helped a lot in the end.
Having said that, you can imagine working remotely (as many are doing nowadays) it’s not staying at the beach all day.
So weekends were meant to be spent walking and snorkeling around and that was the extra motivation to get things done properly during the week. That was more than enough to allow us to spent time snorkeling like never before 🤿
