It seems that I have a June
– Hello! We decided to hire you an assistant for the current project, we found a suitable candidate. By the way, it comes out on Monday.
– Umm, okay.
Reaction
Why wasn’t my opinion asked!? Why am I going to do it? Maybe I don’t want to waste my time!?
– I am not ready! Not sure if I can’t.
“Oh my God, another duty I don’t get paid for!”
Yes, this happens, sometimes a business knows better how to do business, scale a product and how to grow a team, so I suggest omitting the discussion on this topic and moving on – the most interesting thing is ahead!
No panic!
Imagine that you are in front of you, only at the very beginning of your career – try to make the process of interaction and learning as comfortable as possible, because you already know what is important in the profession and what is not very important, what you can skip and where you can cut corners, and where, on the contrary, you will need put in more effort. Now is the best time to take advantage of this knowledge.
At the same time, it should be borne in mind that all people have different experiences – for some, everything went smoothly at the beginning and after graduation he got into a good company, and someone wandered around small studios or galleys, where there was no onboarding process in principle, but newcomers were not treated with due respect.
Your ward is a designer just like you – your task is to help him gain experience and periodically tune his development direction if he wanders in the wrong direction.
Onboarding is easy
It’s cool when there is a document in Noshen (not necessarily Noshen, anything will do) with the most basic questions, for example, how to get access, where the files are, how to create an account in Slack, as well as what to do if you get sick and how to go on vacation And so on. If not, then perhaps it is worth thinking about it, it will come in handy in the future.
It’s very cool when you have a checklist for a beginner, with items that need to be completed for the first week, month, or entire trial period – it’s easy and convenient to control.
Define your expectations and principles
After you have closed some basic things, it is important to state your expectations from cooperation, voice the criteria by which you will evaluate the work of a specialist, what part of the product the newcomer should close and what to be responsible for, as well as the expected deadlines.
Dedicate a person to your personal principles of work and the principles of the company. If you have special work rituals, share this as well.
Getting to know the team
We move on and get to know the team – one phone call with everyone or a one-on-one series, it doesn’t matter.
You can also discuss what the new designer prefers on a general call – okroshka on kvass or kefir, Marvel or DC.
If you go to the office, order a pizza and let the team chat together, or take someone out for lunch, whichever you prefer.
Figma is not everything!
To shoot a person with access to Figma and say – let’s figure it out, it’s not enough! Tell us how everything is arranged in your work with layouts, tell us about specific processes, maybe you name files in a special way, or there are peculiarities in task statuses, or you transfer files to development in a special way.
It will be useful to show previous iterations of your product, this is important for understanding the development vector and working on subsequent tasks.
Tell us about the culture of adding new components to the library, about working with fonts and icons.
After that, you can take a person to a couple of working meetings so that he can see with his own eyes how the processes are arranged, as well as start immersing himself in the product.
Checking on simple tasks
To begin with, you can give a few simple tasks and see how a person copes – according to the results, you will see where it is worth pulling up. I would pay attention to the following criteria:
Timing. The development team expects to receive ready-made layouts by a certain time. It is important to convey to the junior the value of deadlines so as not to let the team down.
Necessary and sufficient level of logic development. You will see whether the person understood the task, whether he found the optimal solution or thought about several options, whether he can explain in detail why he chose exactly what he chose.
How neatly assembled layouts. It is interesting to see how a person assembled screens, whether he used components, whether he paid attention to font and color styles, and how he got along with the design system as a whole, discussed new components with developers, whether all corner cases worked out.
The level of communication with the team. Whether he asked additional questions to the development team, managers, and it’s very good if he thought about what the task looks like from a business point of view.
Ability to independently solve problems and work in conditions of uncertainty. In general, independence, in my opinion, is the most important metric that you should try to grow in your beginner with all your might.
The more mistakes he makes and corrects in small tasks, the easier it will be for him to work on large projects.
Work on mistakes
Three Things That Can Help Aspiring Designers Grow and Take More Responsibility
1) Let’s test solutions
In addition to receiving your valuable feedback and comments from the team, it will be good if the solution is somehow tested. At a minimum, you can assemble a prototype and arrange corridor testing or test it yourself.
If you are working on a mobile application, let him look at it from the screen of a mobile phone, sometimes a lot of unplanned discoveries happen here.
2) Show the solution to the team
Show the completed flow to your team – the developers and the manager, they will probably voice some comments. If you have other designers, it will be very helpful to get comments on and from the layouts. At this stage, the feedback received will help the newcomer to improve the current solution.
3) Let’s make mistakes
There is no need to immediately wrap up solutions that will not work – let the person digest this solution a little and understand where its minuses are. Moreover, you need to do this as delicately and reasonably as possible in order to push a person to think about some more solutions, and not close. Gently highlight the cons of the current solution and give detailed comments, show examples of successful solutions to a similar problem.
secret formula
In fact, it does not exist, but there are three important points:
Immersion
With each problem solved, the immersion in the product will grow, making your life easier. It’s great when a person himself is interested in starting to understand the intricacies of the product, this should be encouraged and be ready to answer questions, sometimes uncomfortable ones.
At the first stages, it is important to push a person and help him understand the limitations of the product, talk about the context of making certain decisions and the direction of development.
Delegation
Each new independent step will untie the beginner from you, and he will rapidly gain experience points. This is great and every time you can spend less and less time working with a beginner. The important point is that at the same time, you should start delegating more complex tasks to your ward, as well as demonstrate a willingness to delegate responsibility for these tasks.
In the first steps, you can help – discuss the conditions of the problem and technical limitations together. Make sure the person understands the problem and give them the freedom to find a solution. Discuss the intermediate results in a couple of days, and if June went in the wrong direction, adjust the solution search vector.
Humility
Here the question is on the border of your ego (perfectionism, if you like) and responsibility for the product.
Even if your mentee designed not the most optimal solution, which is generally at a sufficient level to become part of the product, accept it as such. Of course, you can always justify from the height of your experience and knowledge why you can do better, but if you are sure that the current solution also solves the problem, accept it and send it to development!
Getting the result will be a powerful motivation for the June. Even if the layouts are not perfect, you will have something to discuss and suggest how to do better next time.
It will be very cool if after a while you can get feedback from your users or analytics data on how the implemented solution works. Let your jun gain useful experience and improve his own solution in the next iteration.
Don’t forget to support
Give eco-feedback
At the heart of any quality feedback is honesty. Be sure to highlight the moments that turned out well. Vague wording can look disingenuous.
When highlighting weak points, focus not on the problem, but on the goal. Argument why it does not solve the problem, or solves it, but not in an optimal way (for example, it is too expensive to develop).
By the way, I think that it is also necessary to praise for simply a job well done, it is not necessary to highlight only outstanding moments.
Guide progress
OK! You’ve been on the job for a while and your protégé has some points you’d like to bring up – feel free to make an appointment and discuss it.
Give recommendations and discuss the dates for the next meeting on the results of the work.
If everything went well and June is already on the staff and successfully solves product problems, feedback sessions are, of course, appropriate! Usually a small call every few weeks or once a month is enough: find out how the person is feeling, if there are questions or any problems, how progress is moving with tasks and personal goals, are there any comments on your work as a leader (yes, and such you should also ask.)
Untie Jun’s hands
Add an item to the checklist with suggestions for improving the product and current processes without regard to budgets and deadlines. Let him let his imagination run wild.
Don’t underestimate a newbie just because they don’t have experience. Working for a long time on the same product, we often grow together with it and do not want to make any changes. An outsider can bring interesting ideas simply because they have a fresh perspective and are not attached to current solutions, and the lack of a framework can make them really bold and revolutionary.
How to break up
Unfortunately, sometimes it just doesn’t work.
The person did not fit due to weak skills, insufficient immersion in the product, or cultural inconsistency with the spirit of the team. Well, or the company did not live up to the newcomer’s expectations with an unhealthy atmosphere, lack of design culture, built-in processes and common sense in general.
Of course, there is a reason for this, and this reason must be honestly voiced to your newcomer – carefully, and exclusively to the point. Try to give the most detailed feedback, point out strengths and weaknesses, be sure to give recommendations on what you need to work on.
I hope it was helpful, thanks for your attention!
