The Biggest Gift OVO Design Team Gave Me During My Internship
As I sat writing this article, it had been a week since I graduated from OVO. For the last 6 months I’ve been part of the OVO design team, pursuing an Product Designer internship. It’s been great, really. No school course (maybe not yet) could have taught me what I learned interning at OVO for half a year. It’s been pretty magical to work at the place that has had such an impact. Because of that, right now, I want to share the gift that the OVO design team has given me.
what I have learned during this great Intern
Just like a baby trying to walk on his own two feet, I struggled to adjust to a new environment on the team. In the beginning, I just couldn’t get my head around it. I am very grateful to the team who always give me various forms of input and assistance. They were also very kind to me, always answering when I asked questions, helping me when I was in trouble, encouraging me to do my best.
1. Always open and gather more feedback
Due to the impact of COVID-19, our design team is forced to stay and work at home and stop interacting directly. All you will hear now is their voice coming from the laptop in front of your desk. Endless discussion on Slack threads, multiple team calls to fill your google calendar, deadlines.
Seeing my mentor work. I noticed a level of thoughtfulness I had never seen before. Every pixel, every letter and every situation was considered. “What if the user behavior more like this?”. “where are we going to put this information so that users can easily see it?” . “Why this design doesn’t work?” I realized that making a design that looks simple doesn’t make it either. Every design is always challenged, the pros and cons are always questioned.
But after going through these challenges, can this solution be said to be the best? I don’t think so, I learned that, even good solutions can create new problems, such as overlapping product samples, you only want to change 1 small form for this particular product, but apparently changing one product can negatively impact the other. In addition, people who use the product differently than expected will create new problems.
And perhaps as a result, the final solution that looks outwardly may not always look like the best. But in my opinion, that’s okay, there will always be room for improvement in the future.
Being a part of OVO, even if you are an intern, you have access to every product and are involved in every product development process. Engage with the product to be released, along with business managers, product managers & developers. There is no limit in interacting with them. Gather as much information as possible to develop a better solution. Sometimes the Developer and Product Managers voice out their concerns over certain user experiences.
From my point of view, I think having an environment where they can easily voice their feedback is very helpful for the product itself as well as developing yourself.
2. Understand first what you are doing
In general, we will usually do what the product manager asks of us, for example create a new feature, design or product. I’m not saying this is wrong, from their side they must have done research and validation, worked closely with UX Research and so on and then they gave us the brief as designers.
Apart from doing what is our duty, it never hurts to challenge what Product Managers give us, such as ‘are you sure this can solve our users’ pain points?’ understanding the product that we will be working on and better understanding our user pain points will also certainly help us. Maybe the problem faced by the user is valid, but it could be that the solution provided is not optimal, well, from there we will definitely brainstorm together again and we will make a solution with a better plan than the previous one.
Pretending to think what we are doing is wrong. I realized that if you try hard to be wrong, you will eventually be right. If you find your problem, you can solve it, not if you pretend it doesn’t exist. You don’t have to be afraid of the mistakes you make. I was told by my mentor, when you do an intern that’s when you make a lot of mistakes, and from those mistakes you learn and are ready to take on even bigger responsibilities later. As an intern this is the time for you to make & learn the mistakes you made.
3. Rediscover the confidence to deliver your designs
Confidence. ‘How to build self-confidence?’ To be honest, I realized this after going through many trials and 1on1 sessions with my mentor. I realize that every time you make a presentation on your product, you must always show confidence and always be eager to bring your craft to others. That will make other people believe that this product has gone through a mature process and is ready to be launched.
I’m not talking about your voice having to be loud, or showing your expression to others to bring that confidence. More than that, the way or style you deliver the presentation, then the tone of your voice. Trust here is your way of conveying that you have that confidence, but before you convince others you have to ask yourself, ‘are you sure?’ I think if you are not sure about the product you are going to present, it will be difficult to convince other people.
I know giving a presentation will be difficult for some people, I have experienced the same thing sometimes. But believe in every process you go through, and if the results don’t come right away, they will definitely come next time.
4. Documentation and Daily Check-In Is Important
Since we are working from home and it is quite difficult to see each other, we need something systematic so that we can know what tasks we will be doing and others.
At OVO itself, our design team has a daily check-in where you each day put a card on what you are going to do today, this will help you stay on track about your project.
And after you finish working on your project, always do documentation about what problems you encountered during the project and your exploration during the project was created, although it looks very unpleasant but it is very helpful, with you doing detailed documentation, you can help your team when facing problems the same as you. Of course this will reduce wasted time and become more efficient.
On the other hand, you can also visit projects that have been completed, read some of the contents of the documentation, to help you make decisions about the project you are working on.
5. Have Fun!
Tired of office work, lots of sketches in front of the desk, slack notifications that don’t stop? Well, every Tuesday of the week, our design team always has a schedule to get together (online of course), forget about our work for a moment and get together to do activities other than discussing something work-related. Playing games, discussing some topics, sharing interesting things and so on.
Sometimes simple things like asking each other how they’re doing will help us feel that it’s good to relax and take a break, there’s nothing wrong with that. Take a few deep breaths and joke with each other.
Working at OVO gave me a lot of experience, meeting great people with extraordinary minds. I feel like I got a lot of experience that I shouldn’t have been able to get before I was in 5th or 6th semester, lol. But here I am, managed to get through 6 months at the beginning of my 1st semester, it was a really tough journey, but I will not refuse to repeat this experience again. Being involved in real crafting projects really made me realize that design is not only limited to pixels and colors, it’s about communicating, conveying messages to users through our designs. Appreciate every process and believe in yourself, always looking for the best solution in every problem, and so on.
That’s all from me, thank you for reading to the end. 🙇♂️ special thanks to all OVO Design Team!! 💜
Interested in an internship with the OVO Design Team? We always open opportunities for you! To apply, send your profile & portfolio to design@ovo.id or visit this link bit.ly/ovodsgn
