Learnings from my First Design Task
This is a short article about what I learned on an emotional level from my experience while completing a design task. I am not going to get into details about my design process or what the design task was. With that out of the way, let’s get started.
As a budding designer, I had been looking for internship opportunities around the web and came across this tweet by Razorpay regarding their summer internship program.
I was excited. I quickly took a look at what they had to offer and found it to be something that I would love to work on and a team I’ll enjoy working with (their smiling faces = happy vibes).
To apply, I had to submit a design task for which I was already provided with brief research, user pain point, and a possible solution that the team had come up with. I had to design for this solution. I was really pumped up about it but at the same time, I was nervous as this was the first time I was going to work within time constraints and specific design guidelines.
Let’s start
For the first two days after having a look at the design task I had to do, I was brainstorming on user flows and sketching out ideas for the potential screens in the user flow but was not able to completely put them on paper because my mind was busy switching between taking tension and getting some work done.
Don’t take too much pressure, it leads to unproductivity.
With only 3 days left to the last submission date, I somehow took a little control over my emotions (it was necessary) and started converting my wireframes into actual designs. This was the moment when my brain actually started working. Now, I was able to think clearly about how a user would interact with this design. I was also having ideas for new features but now I was short on time.
Become self-aware. Know when to take control over your emotions and not get carried away.
I completed my designs on time but had to make decisions on which feature to include. To make these decisions, I told myself not to think of it as a design task but as an MVP ( Minimum Viable Product). An MVP includes features that are necessary to have for a product to function well and excludes nice to have features for quick feedback.
Though, this is not something that you would want to do when creating for a design task where you should be showing your full potential but I had to make this decision to deliver within the timeline.
The task was not done yet, I even had to create a presentation. At this stage, I was really tired of all the burden on my mind due to this design task. Yes, I was facing burnout for the first time.
Take breaks in between. Working constantly can result in burnout.
I pondered that the presentation held 5% of the evaluation criteria and it was mentioned that it didn’t matter more than the work itself. I went back to the internship task details and confirmed what I was thinking.
On a personal level, I take presentation very seriously as I think it can make or break a deal but considering my situation and with the confirmed information at the back of my head, I headed to Canva.com and quickly created a presentation with all the necessary information that was asked for and applied for the role.
So here’s the summary:
- Don’t take too much pressure, it leads to unproductivity.
- Become self-aware. Know when to take control over your emotions and not get carried away.
- Just start working on it. Let your creative juices flow and then iterate.
- Take breaks in between. Working constantly can result in burnout.
PS: If you are also short on time like me, try using the MVP trick. Hope it helps.
I don’t know what the result is going to be (wish me luck) but this task really taught me some lessons that I’ll be following in the future to work efficiently. This task also gave me a glimpse of how’s it like working within constraints.
Update: I didn’t got selected and it did broke my heart but that’s alright we must accept our feelings and then move forward to what’s next. Currently, I am focusing on improving my design skills so that the next time I apply I get the job.
I hope this provided some value. Feel free to reach out to me if you would like to add something or have a conversation over the same. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Thanks for reading 🙏
