I’ve Been Working At A Fast Paced Startup For 2 Months And This Is What I’ve Learned

When I first started, I was shadowing the designer in charge of the customer relationship management program for their company. This program is used by the sales team at Remine. It keeps track of all the communication with agents as well as the agent's data from their career.

After 2 weeks, her contract was up and I took over.

I was terrified. I didn’t know anything about real estate. All the meetings with my boss felt like they were in a foreign language. I couldn’t understand all these new terms relating to agents and their data. I didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing.

The only thing I could do was ask questions, google new terms, and interpret as best I could. I would design a new feature and send screenshots of iterations to my product manager to validate the direction I was heading. I asked her constant questions along the way to help me understand the user cases and tried to be honest when I didn’t understand something.

After a couple weeks, I finally felt like I was starting to figure it out. The meetings started to make more sense, I was starting to understand the users and the product itself, and I was getting better at designing the product.

In addition, I got to explore my UI/graphic design side by redesigning the company website. I made illustrations, backgrounds, and icons like these.

Then at a team dinner, our COO told me I should take a stab at our logo for the customer relationship management product called Sonar. A week later, I sent him my first draft. A few days after that, he approved the logo and told the web developers to put it in the program.

The next evening after work I read an email our COO sent out to our entire company. He explained the future of Sonar and how it’s going to be expanding to external customers. Then he gave me a shoutout. He said, “Part of this future is also a new logo designed by Lauren Marlowe, which I am proud to introduce to the company today.” and attached my new logo in the email.

The next day a couple different people acknowledged me for my new logo design. It made me feel on top of the world.

Then I was challenged again. 2 weeks ago, my product manager who was usually there to help answer my questions went to Europe on vacation. I was on my own to manage the designs and prototypes.

Since then, I’ve been reporting directly to the founder of Sonar with one on one meetings almost daily. I’ve learned what kind of questions to ask to understand how to design the features he wants. I’ve learned with trial and error. Our one on one meetings quickly evolved into meetings where I write down all the iterations I need to make.

The past 9 weeks have taught me more about my talents and passion than anything I’ve ever done. I feel creative, validated, and more confident about my ability to design.

Most of all, I’ve learned how glad I am that I never went to college.