Happy 1 year Deloitte Digital anniversary to me!
Reposted from my Medium article written on October 8, 2020
From experiencing steep learning curves to working from home for half of the year, here’s my 12-month journey as a UX designer at Deloitte Digital.
Left: Me walking to work with my nerdy laptop bag on my second day of work. Right: A horribly lit photo with a slightly shiny forehead, but something about getting a new building pass is still pretty exciting to me! 😂On October 8th, 2019, I joined Deloitte Digital (DD) as a user experience (UX) designer, which means today is officially my one-year Deloitte Digital anniversary — woo hoo!
Prior to joining, I was an experience designer at a telecommunications company, a digital marketer at a tech accelerator, and a website and graphic design freelancer.
As someone who had not worked in consultancy before, I had no idea what to expect but I was absolutely excited for the challenge and was ready to become a sponge to absorb as much information as I could.
Fast forward a whole year later…I’m happy to announce that I’m alive and well, and surprisingly still enjoying my time here despite experiencing some extraordinarily steep learning curves in the beginning. ;)
Before we get started into my learnings for the year, I’ll share a bit about the context and story around how I ended up at Deloitte Digital in the first place.
The job hunt
Around August last year, I started job hunting to find new opportunities.
In my last role, I was a service designer, designing end-to-end customer experiences for enterprise products as part of our digital transformation program. We facilitated workshops with over 40 people in our delivery teams and collaborated with product, process, and business architecture teams.
It was great to have the opportunity to practice human-centred design as a service designer, but I wanted to hone my skills in UX design and get more involved with designing the product itself. (Get me on the tools!)
I was involved with a few projects before as a UX designer and I absolutely loved having the ability to create the designs, prototype them, and test them out with customers so my goal was to find some opportunities that would help me thrive in those areas.
Although I had some UX design experience, I wanted to learn more about how other designers were currently doing UX in other industries and learn from these best practices.
“So, a little birdie told me you were looking for a job…”
During my job hunt, out of nowhere, friend Z messages me telling me that there may be roles opening at Deloitte Digital. I was surprised Z knew I was job hunting because I was keeping that on the down-low but I guess word got around.
I wasn’t sold at first as I had never worked at a consultancy before, but after a few coffee chats with former and current employees from Deloitte Digital, everything about the opportunity and the culture sounded amazing so I was open to applying for a position and seeing where that would take me.
After several interviews, negotiations, and waiting time in between, I was offered a role at Deloitte Digital and excitedly accepted the offer.
Fun fact: I accepted the role and offer while sitting on top of a mountain… in the middle of a snowboarding run. 🏂🏽 (Yes, I was that excited!)
Reflections after 12 months
So here I am now, reflecting and documenting my journey because I think it’s pretty hilarious from when I first started until where I am now.
Joining the Deloitte Digital family was indeed daunting and scary at first, but it has been one of the best decisions I’ve made throughout my career.
Consulting may not for everyone, but it definitely did rejuvenate my love for learning in fast-paced environments and continuously staying curious.
If you’d like to follow what I have been up to during these past 12 months, keep reading below!
Postcards from around the world from global Deloitte Digital team members :)
In the beginning: Understanding the office dynamics and meeting new people
As I had a 3-week trip booked a few weeks after my start date, I wasn’t on a chargeable project until after I came back from leave. Looking back, thank goodness I went on a holiday during that time because who knew a global pandemic would suddenly appear into our lives?!
The first few weeks were spent understanding the seating arrangements in the office, working on proposals, and meeting new people.
Although it was an open environment with what looked like common work areas, there were some sections reserved for specific teams or people so you couldn’t really just sit anywhere.
I ended up gravitating towards the “grad table” as that was a long protruding desk that was usually packed with friendly looking faces.
During the first few weeks, the majority of people I met were graduates. I felt like an old grandma as they were YOUNG.
One person even tried to guess my age one afternoon.
Oh…dear…lordie.
I often wondered where the heck were all of the people who were ‘my age’ and even questioned where all of the UX designers were hiding.
Then I realised most people were working at client sites so it was a bit difficult to meet people within the UX design team.
Fortunately there were team lunches scheduled so I did end up meeting some awesome people there!
My first client experience: Steep learning curves as a consultant noob
Once I returned from leave, I was put into a 5-month engagement with a client based in the eastern suburbs.
Our goal was to re-design the product and category pages of their e-commerce website and enhance the digital experience of their online configuration tool that enabled customers to customise over 400 print products.
As someone who’s never been on a DD project before, my bright-eyed and bushy-tailed-self thought I would be ‘trained’ by the senior designers to learn all of the in’s and out’s of how UX is being done for the project.
However, I quickly learned that the team will not hand-hold you and will expect you to know what you were doing (remember…they hired you for a reason!).
You’re literally thrown into the deep-end and learn as you go. Most people won’t interfere with your work because they trust your skills, but if you are struggling with anything, make sure to speak up and ask for help!
Honestly, the first few months were the hardest for me as I felt like I had to rewire my brain into doing the simplest tasks such as organising folders and naming components correctly. Some of my habits were not up to the DD standards, so I had to teach myself best design practices and how to manage my time properly.
Transitioning from a corporate designer to a design consultant was an eye-opening experience.
On top of learning how to use the tools properly, I also had to learn the best ways to produce top-notch deliverables within a short time frame. Something that would usually take a few weeks to complete would now take only a few hours or days.
Not only was the turnaround time to complete the deliverables much shorter, but the quality of work and attention to detail was definitely above average.
The speed and pace of work reminded me of my first job in digital marketing at the tech accelerator as we organised over 120 events per year. Each day was an adventure and I absolutely loved working in a fast-paced environment.
Although I struggled a bit during my first client experience, I knew that overcoming that obstacle was the foundation to drive me to become a better designer.
My learning curve skyrocketed into outer space during the first few months, but I absolutely loved being able to learn so much in such a short amount of time.
A representation of all of the things I’ve learned from my first project — aka way too much to name! Photo by: Graham Holtshausen
Working with awesome people
Fortunately, I was able to keep sane with the help and support of some of my fellow colleagues. When things got tough, we struggled together and found ways to support each other.
Without their craziness and banter, the project wouldn’t have been as memorable.
Because I was so focused on completing my daily tasks, one thing I did neglect was being more social and connecting with people. I was pretty awkward in the first few months because I was so flustered with work, but once I got more comfortable with the pace, I was able to relax and be myself.
People could finally see how dry my humour was (yay!).
Shout out to the team members who were always themselves — I admire you for being the quirky and loveable people you are!
Here are a few photos to showcase some of the awesome people I had the chance to work with in those months. :)
Our orangey-yellow day at the client’s office! Ft. graduates, consultants, senior consultants, directors, clients, and everything in between. :)
Denim Day - Serious faces lol
Denim Day - Smiles!
Some key lessons learned from my first client engagement:
Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you are struggling
Make sure you understand your role, everyone else’s role and what deliverables/activities are expected from you
Question everything — from the initial requirements to multiple design suggestions and continue to challenge the status quo
Understand the design sprint plan and the impacts that will occur if you cannot complete your tasks on time
Engage with the right stakeholders early in the design phase and continue to update them with iterative designs
Don’t forget to have fun!
After tackling the first project, things got easier
I was fortunate that my first project was a 5-month engagement that provided me with the opportunity to work with a large design team, collaborate with global developers, and push us to solve complex and challenging problems.
After tackling the first project, everything after that felt…easier.
Coming into new projects, I had a very different mindset.
Instead of worrying about how to complete detailed design tasks, I finally understood the bigger picture of things and could see the project from a bird’s eye view.
I was more confident in joining new teams, getting onboarded onto new engagements, and understanding what needed to be done. I began to understand the design and development process better and could visualise how the end-to-end process would work within the given timeline. I knew how long it would take me to complete certain deliverables and understood how to manage my time better.
Most importantly, I knew where to go if I needed any type of help. Whether it was finding the right people to get my questions answered or sourcing templates from our shared Wiki pages, the resources at Deloitte Digital were bountiful and the community support was incredible.
Once you learn where everything lives and how to find your way around the myriad amount of resources, you become a speedy gonzales at completing your tasks and start producing great work.
Current client engagements during COVID-19 times
Currently I’m on another ‘long-term’ engagement. It started off as a 5-week engagement in May and then I was extended for an additional 6 months until December.
For the entire duration, we have been working from home due to the global pandemic and lockdown restrictions so that has provided another level of new experiences.
I have yet to meet my clients face-to-face or even some of the members from my design team, but that doesn’t stop us from working smoothly and efficiently together. In fact, I think we work preeetty well together despite not seeing each other in an office space.
I’ve had the opportunity to design for 4–5 different initiatives so far and regularly run remote customer testing sessions to test the solutions. I did the math and I spent about 2,000 minutes speaking to customers virtually across 44 different customer sessions. Wowza!
To read about some of my memorable moments during user testing, check out How to fail miserably at moderating remote usability sessions. ;)
It’s been really fun so far as each initiative I get involved with has different teams to work with (e.g. different product owners, designers, business analysts and developers). So although I’m on this 7-month engagement, the work I do frequently changes, bringing in new requirements and new problems to solve.
On top of solving key business problems, our client’s preferred design tool is Figma which is great because it’s another tool to add to my design toolkit. Slightly sidetracked, but Figma is AWESOME. I even joined a Figma club to learn more hacks and share my learnings to within our Deloitte Digital community.
Another great place to learn about best practices within DD. :)
Some key takeaways (so far) from working from home during the COVID-19 situation:
Understand how each person works and what they need from you to help them do their work efficiently
Learn and communicate expectations of how frequently you should check in on each other and share your updates (e.g. daily standups, weekly catchups, etc.)
Be proactive to check in on your fellow teammates to see if they’re okay during these strange times and whether they need any help with anything
Triple check your technology to make sure everything is working properly before starting any virtual meetings or customer testing sessions (is your internet working today? Do you have a Plan B if your technology fails?)
Don’t forget to take breaks — set some time to enjoy lunch, go outside and breathe in some fresh air, get some vitamin D from the sunshine
In Summary
Overall, this year has been a whirlwind of learning— even though half of the year was spent working from home due to the global pandemic.
Despite this, each day has been new adventure and I’m so grateful for being a part of the Deloitte Digital family.
Thank you to those who have been there to help me from the beginning of my Digital journey (special shout outs to Xile, Arlen, Vivienne, Helen, David, Maud, and Warren — definitely couldn’t have grown this much without your support!).
I look forward to continuing to learn and challenge myself each day and can’t wait until we will be able to reunite and see real people face-to-face! ️️️❤️
Best of luck to everyone in this crazy situation.
If you ever need someone to talk to, my virtual door is open! Feel free to drop a message on LinkedIn.
If it’s outside work hours, I’ll most likely be off sweating at some HIIT session or attempting to make some new iso dinner idea, but I’ll happily return the message. :)
xoxo, knd.