UX in a Startup company

Process & Techniques
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#1

Hello everyone,

I noticed there is no dedicated thread to practicing UX in a startup company. And I believe this is the most challenging and unpredictable piece of UX. I would be very grateful if you post your stories here, what were your challenges at the beginning, what were the “fuckups”, what was a success. How did you achieve whatever you achieved. Did you use any methodologies? What was basically helpful to you while working for a startup. What was the copany building?

I’m working at a SaaS startup company since almost 5 months. And this journey was and still is a rollercoaster ride. Whatever I knew about UX, whatever I could read about UX turned out to be either not true, or not entirely working. I had to adopt a new approach, forget some things, learn other stuff. I am learning constantly and if there are people like me, they might also benefit from this thread and the knowledge you’ll share.

Thanks!

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#2

I can’t speak to working UX for a startup - my only startup experience was as a Team Lead where I did everything from UX to systems engineering to development.

I will say, though, that the feeling of expectations of what a UX job will be versus the reality of what it actually is very common in our industry. It’s great to talk about theory, but putting it into practice is much more difficult in real-world environments.

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#3

I work in a hybrid UX/product design role in a SaaS startup (we’re ~4 years old).
We design this product (the one you’re currently using).

The thing that I find the most frustrating is the amount of time it takes to see my work come to fruition. We have a team of 15 devs working full time but we tend to prioritise feature requests, bug fixes and infrastructure issues for hosted customers (our product is 100% OS) so some of my ‘big projects’ sit for months before anyone gets to them.

I combat that by taking on a mix of ‘big’ projects and small fixes which tend to find their way into core much more quickly.

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#4

Hi all. I’m not sure my story(ongoing) is helpful for this community but I’m new junior UX designer as very tiny family business app development company. So I haven’t achieved anything yet but found tons of problems. So I also wanted to share this with you and also want your tips to improve my situation.

Problems

  1. All members are not on the same page
    Although we are using task management tool like Jira but people here tend to be very poor at sharing information and what we need to complete. So what I’m facing is there is specifically nothing to get it done quickly because even the deadline is set and they often ignore it, very laid back or I should say very lazy.

  2. No mentors that I can communicate and respect around me.
    Due to very tiny startup we have only less than 20 people and technically I’m the only UX designer. This is my main concern because I’m not sure whether I’m on the right path to grow as UX designer.

  3. No UX process exists but depend on untrustful methodology(very personal preference) to make decision.
    This really makes me worried as I’m wasting time for nothing and losing chance to gain new and right knowledge.

If you were in same situation, what would you do and how do you cope with this problem? I do prefer having many opinions and ideally from the viewpoint of senior UX designer because I prefer efficient way to be good UX designer.

What I’m trying to do is to keep updating myself like improving my portfolio, Linkedin account and gaining new knowledge about UX design daily.

I would be happy to know your opinions.
Thanks for your help in advance.

#5

I work as the sole designer for a startup. It was really difficult really knowing where to start, where to gather data and to carry out research. Being the sole designer you immediately are without one very powerful tool; feedback from colleagues. Also, as mentioned above, I found myself without any mentors, which was difficult as a new designer.

What happened was I found myself (and still do) taking part in discussions like these, watching webinars, reading and working even more on private projects, in order to then put my experience into practice with the startup project. It’s tiring, but I can tell my abilities are improving. In regards to feedback and research, I had to get creative. Use social media, ask friends and family, reach out to other UX groups, look for surveys online. Most importantly, I learnt that I should keep my user testing brief, quick and easy for people to do. Simple A/B tests, short questionnaires. more people are willing to take part in these, and you still get really valuable data.

It’s certainly not easy in these solo roles, and can get very frustrating when you don’t feel as though you’re progressing, professionally speaking. But, it also gives you the chance to get creative in your methodology and provides you with a project that is your own. I think a lot about it, for me anyway, was getting over the idea of making mistakes. As a solo designer, it’s easy to think that you’re the only one that will get the blame. But at the end of the day, making mistakes is what good UX is all about. You want to figure out what those mistakes are, in order to rule them out of your designs.

#6

Hi jholden, thanks for sharing your personal experience and positive tips.
I was very encouraged and inspired by you because I was able to know this happens at startup company.

As you experienced, I will try to update myself and test it out for actual project that I’m involved in somehow after I do personal research and design practice.

I’m based in the UK now but I have been wondering whether this is just UK work culture or just happening at only the company where I belong to to be fair. What is the most painful things to me are there is no prompt feedback to very tiny task that should be done instantly but they take 2 or more days to reply with not informative information, to make matters worse they skip or ignore my questions if they consider them as not priority.

#7

It sounds like you’re dealing with some frustrating things, and not being able to gain feedback isn’t very helpful. One thing you might want to ask them is, how do they value their products? Good UX is at the very heart of a great product, and without it, they could spend a fortune on developing a product that ultimately users don’t want to use. Maybe open dialogue and gently try and encourage a more open, transparent dialogue about how the company needs to work.

When dealing with product design, it is vital to work like a team, with a really open environment. If it’s an app development company, then I would have hoped that they would be working like this, in an agile environment, working in sprints with other designers and developers.

It sounds frustrating at the moment, but it also appears that you really care about what you do. As I mentioned, maybe reach out to them and explain that you would like to be included in the process and tell them about the value of great UX. I’m also from the UK, and I admit that some British people can sometimes be a little reserved, but that shouldn’t prevent them from opening up a bit more. Maybe someone just needs to break the ice a bit more?

In the worst case scenario, and you continue to not enjoy working there, you are still in the beneficial position of building your CV experience and will be better placed to get a new job. The good thing about UX design is that there is lots of work out there for people who care, and it really sounds like you do. Keep up the good work!

#8

Hi jholden again,

The fact behind this problem I’m facing is app design is just side business for this tiny family startup business. They run more important and beneficial business which makes much money I assume. Simply speaking they don’t care even if app developing business fails ultimately.
To make matters worse, the main developer is part of the stakeholders. He might be able developer but obviously he is lack of basic design principles, so our present app looks very cheap and typical user unfriendly app unfortunately. For example they don’t care about consistency and centerize element. So our app looks like horrible student portfolio. What I heard from my colleague who has already left was dev team just cares about minimal realistic development without considering design and this is exactly happening now. This equals they ignore and are lack of user viewpoint which is the most important thing in terms of UX design.
Another serious problem is final decision tends to be done by CEO whose decision is based on very personal intuitive preference. This makes me feel like as if I’m joining school work without professional mind without solving any problems.

What I’m frustrating about is I’m wasting time everyday and unnecessarily mentally tired due to the above problems.

So as you mentioned regarding CV I have to achieve something which stands out from tons of CVs. And also I have to be more realistic like I want to solve internal problems but its very challenging because changing not only myself but someone is very difficult and unrealistic.
So what I’m thinking is to focus on renewing design task. Our present app has tons of bugs due to no professional teamwork and support. The task management tool = Jira has so many unsolved tickets so realistically it’s not smart idea to try to solve all but I will have a chance to be involved in creating new design. Then I can compare the result easily like the number of download and users real reviews.

Would you be able to tell me how is final design decision made and who in general?
I’m very curious about this basic process but unfortunately I have only experience in tiny company and with unprofessional people.

#9

It certainly does sound like a frustrating situation. I think I have been in a similar situation before. What I have tried to do is use statistics and quantitive feedback to prove where the problems lie. Sometime sit’s difficult to get this across, especially when people don’t understand the fundamental importance of design. Maybe you could find some examples of successful design to show them just how important it is?

I’m also working in a startup, and it’s a little frustrating because I don’t really get much feedback on my work, and so it’s difficult to validate any of my work from colleagues. What I did was use analytics and statistics to prove where pain points still existed in the design, and where we should improve. Essentially, as a sole designer, you have to be even more self-motivated, and find ways yourself to validate your design decisions. I found this really difficult because, as a young designer, you’re still learning as you go, and I had to spend extra time to learn about all these things.

As a result, design decisions are essentially left up to me, and then signed-off on by the business owner (in a bigger company that would the product manager I assume). I think herein lies the problem. The design decisions are ultimately up to someone who doesn’t know about design, or how it works. I have to spend so much time explaining my design decisions. For example, my client would often want a big, shiny interface with lots of videos, images and functions, and I had to explain and prove to him that this was probably not the right choice. I did this by showing him other examples, building and testing prototypes and showing him the statistics.

It is so frustrating as a sole designer, I know. Also, it can be difficult to stay motivated. To be honest, I think I could spend much of my days doing literally nothing, and taking the pay cheque, but I don’t want to do that. I want to be motivated and work hard on a project that I can really get involved in. This has meant I have to work extra hard in order to set my own goals, motivate myself and validate my own work. It’s not easy, but it will show in your work, and hopefully be seen by your colleagues.

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#10

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