The A-Z of Starting from Scratch: Making the Case for a UX Department in a Startup Environment

Muriel Naim at UXDX USA. Video: https://youtu.be/Rlkb0-g5q74

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Who is in the room

[00:00:03] Thank you, friend I met in a different conference. Hi guys, what's up? Where are my designers, can you raise your hand? Good. Now where are my designers of my department? Okay, they now need to write notes. So a lot of designers here, researchers, nice, that's pretty good. UX writers, one, two. Okay, hi guys, nice to meet you.

[00:00:31] I'm going to start right away because there's a lot to unpack here, of maybe we can call it the A to Z of starting from scratch. It's hefty, I won't cover everything today, just already saying. Also I speak very fast, I'll do my best to speak slower. Let me know if someone is like, if you're familiar with sports [?], you can just do this to me if I'm very, very fast. I would highly appreciate that.

[00:00:55] I'm not going to talk about myself almost at all, I just wanted to give you a little bit of an insight about my startup professional career. What I left here is only startups, those are only startups. I realize it's more than five, it's actually eight, so a correction to my dear friend and also myself, because I told him it's five. I currently work at Fabric, which is a very ambitious one, it's a headless e-commerce platform that's trying to win them all, as they all do. But started with a bunch of different companies, different sectors, different stuff. You can read really quickly what they do.

[00:01:30] What I'm not going to talk about today, there is really small, like the smallest companies I worked for are those. You might have heard of them, it's pretty hard to get across someone who knows these companies, but I'm not going to talk about them at all because it's a very different creature, the creature of corporate. Whole different story, we're going to talk about it next time, not today. The rules of corporate do not adhere to startups, they do not. You have to throw away whatever you know from the corporate environment, and this also means smaller companies that are not corporate but not startups. Different rules.

[00:02:03] I'm going to try to do my best today to give you a kind of an A to Z guide that you can take and mix and match as you move away with that information. But the most important thing to say is a lot of people here that might not believe in themselves can actually be design heads in startups. You have to get rid of your imposter syndrome, or take in a bigger mission, if you are a bit of what they call, I don't like this term, but a unicorn, like you do a bunch of stuff, or you're very curious about more than just your one specific thing that you do.

[00:02:34] So I think a lot of people, you can probably go into this phase. Believe in yourself, do a lot of homework and a lot of work, and I'm going to explain a lot of this work today. That's just for anyone if you feel like, oh, I'm just a designer, I'm junior, I don't know. You still need to know that because you need to start thinking about your trajectory. And the cool thing about startups is that you can start in a certain role and jump very quickly to a different role. You cannot get that in a corporate environment.

The blank canvas

[00:03:03] So starting right away. Anyone familiar with that thing? Anyone feels that it's daunting? Any writers in the crowd? That is like my nightmare. Also that's me two weeks ago, sorry Rory. Not just as a writer, starting from scratch like a blank canvas. Or if you're more familiar, since we have a lot of designers here, this really ugly slide that I wanted to put together. I know, exactly, okay, didn't have time. That's very daunting as well. So having nothing at all, having everything at your disposal, which a lot of startup founders that get you into the company make you feel like you do, it's a very daunting task. Where do you start?

[00:03:50] I'm going to do a really quick exercise. This is probably going to take you a very long time. The researchers are welcome to do evaluations on how long it takes a kid when they enter a painting shop and given nothing or everything, to do something. I wish them luck, it'll take them a while. As an adult it will take you more time, because you're questioning yourself as well.

[00:04:10] So I'll ask all of you, you have some papers, I say, and if you don't, please bring out your notebook, really quickly, really fast, whatever you have at your disposal. And a pen, I think they gave you a free pen, it's pretty good, it's got like a touch thing. I always examine the swag. And if you can do something really quick for me. So here's your canvas, you have your pen or marker, doesn't matter, whatever you have right now, and go ahead and draw a smiley at the top of your page. Smiley. Whenever you're done, raise your hand, I'm going to count. Four. Okay, almost the whole crowd raised their hands within less than five seconds.

[00:04:49] I'm going to use this ugly thing for the rest of my presentation because I want to simplify it for you guys, and I love dumbing down stuff in general. I'm a curious person. I'm not that dumb, which is why I like to dumb things down so that a lot of people can understand them. I do it for myself to understand things. I'm going to use this guy.

[00:05:11] The reason I'm going to do something very simple is because starting from absolute scratch is hard. It's just hard. You can't just do it like that, it doesn't work like that. And if you're going to jump in, I did it a few times, three times actually, I just jumped into working as the unicorn, or as a UX person, or as a designer, as a researcher, you're going to either burn out, you're going to ruin your pointer fingers, you're going to do some things to yourself or to others that may not be the best for your career in this startup event.

[00:05:41] So because startups are very fast, you need to understand where you start. You're not going to have a lot of time for everything I'm going to explain today. You're going to have about three to four weeks, maybe five. Corporate environments give you two months of onboarding, three months plan, 90 days. You're going to have about a month. But if you do those things in a month, I'll guarantee you won't burn your finger. I cannot guarantee anything else, but you'll probably have a good idea of what the company needs.

The canvas, the tools and the goal

[00:06:08] So I'm going to move into this simplistic idea. Canvas, enablement, tools, your goal. I chose a brilliant goal, smiley. Oh, you're welcome. So you have a smile at the end of the day as well, but also because I thought about it and I thought, all right, smiley is the right thing for you to do. The smiley is a very hard portion, you're going to get into it and break it down, you're going to see all the complex numbers in a minute. The canvas is arguably more important. I'm going to break down this canvas for you. I recommend to start with the canvas, also as you get onboarded, use the time.

[00:06:44] This is the canvas in a startup environment. I'm going to go over them very quickly because they're quite self-explanatory. The company vision, you probably know about this before you even join a startup, or from the company website. Pretty easy, even if they're starting off.

[00:06:59] The second thing is the company size. You can search it up online, we don't need anyone to tell you, but you can ask the CEO when they interview you, they typically do when it's a startup, a very small chain of command. Growth plans do not sit with company size, it's a very known mistake. Company size might be 1,000 people, startups, some of them have 5,000 people, some of them have one, the founder. They really like design, so they say, and they invite you over, and so they say. The growth plan of this one-to-five-people startup can be aggressive, and the growth plan of a 500-people company, 1,000, may be very minimal to downsizing, as two of my peers earlier said. So it's important to know the difference between the two.

[00:07:41] The next is the forces at play. Forces at play is not just the E-team but also the S-team [?], and also the energy levels of these people. Not just the roles. Understand the org structure. Don't just jump in like, oh, I don't know what to do. Look it up really quickly, it takes five minutes. Not just their LinkedIn, just look at the org structure and understand who you're dealing with.

[00:08:00] Expectations, they're usually set before you even join. If you have one question to ask before you join, ask about that. What will make it successful for you, in your opinion, in this role? Once you join you should ask that again, it might change.

[00:08:16] Okay, maturity level. That's unfortunately one of, all of these things by the way I mentioned are changing every startup you go to. That's why there's no one-world-fit-all, it doesn't exist in startups, each of them is completely different. I know you know that, I have a friend here. But the maturity level is pretty consistent. Everyone loves design, but do they know what good design means? The answer is no. They love design. A lot of sales they work with, they love design. What do they like? They like when there's a shiny gradient and there's some kind of a floating 3D block, I don't even know. It's not good design, and not to mention it's not researched and backed up design. So maturity of it is pretty consistent. But sometimes some of you might have met some folks that actually appreciate good design and know what that means. That's incredible. Doing the job every day, we have to keep doing it, be strong.

Vibe check

[00:09:05] Vibe check is the one I'm going to actually dive into. Vibe check, no kidding, seriously. The reason this is important is because it's the thing that no one tells you. I argue it's the most important thing in your canvas. I'm going to break it down, I'll try.

[00:09:20] I'll start with giving a really simple example before I show this next screen that you're going to take screenshots of. Let's say a friend, which happened to me in LA, invited me to a party. I do not live in Beverly Hills, I didn't live in Beverly Hills. She's like, hey, there's a big party in Beverly Hills, like a house party. If I would basically go to this party, my friend is somewhere inside, real scenario, and I would just jump into the pool naked shouting. Might be a great idea for like a film, or some places that's what they do, but I literally read none of the vibe check when I entered the room. No one does that, no one enters a house party that you know no one in and just starts shouting, or starts talking loudly. You get these little things that you don't usually get in corporate or startup environments, but you need to look for them. It's a little hard.

[00:10:10] For the cognitive researchers here, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's all the things that are not quantitative. This is your most important canvas, and I'm going to get back to it when I talk about the how at the very end. If you don't get that in the very beginning, you'll have a hard time succeeding in this company, period. Granted, I failed many times because I didn't read the room really well.

[00:10:33] I'm not going to go over all of this in detail, but I'm just going to give one example. The first startup I was ever in, I started as an IC, and I came with, I had a nice suit, it was from H&M but it was still nice. I thought it's nice, and I like nice shoes, and I came in and my boss was a CPO. Shook my hand, he had flip-flops, shorts, I think Billabong shorts, he had like a tank top, he had a piercing and a tattoo, and he's like, hey, what's up. And I was like, I am cool. But you know, I just didn't read the vibe before I joined.

[00:11:12] It's fine. The thing is not the technical, you know, flip-flops. It's the environment in the company, and it's many times set in the way they speak to each other, especially in the virtual room. It's going to be harder for you. So you need to read the signs. You need to ask a challenging question in a meeting with a bunch of people in the room. Not during the onboarding meeting, the onboarding meeting is for everyone new like you, that doesn't tell you, sorry. Join the first group meeting and try to get the vibe of how people speak to each other. Do they really listen? Do they look like they listen? It's going to give you a sense. What's their work-life balance? Pretty big. Is it like a hit word, or is it lip service? It's important to know those things as they go into your plan and as you sell the plan. So this is important for selling the plan: read the room.

The plan

[00:11:59] Okay, step two, we're kind of jumping ahead here. The plan. If you come up with that, that may get you some good smileys, but you can do a lot with that. I'm going to go a little serious here, because your plan has to be extremely tactile. Not random, not a smiley. And we're getting to the serious stuff here, because if you don't back up your ask with really strong points and do your own assessment, I wish you luck as well. Again, startups are a little hard in that you need to come in really ready. That's the secret sauce.

[00:12:34] There is more here, I'm going to touch upon those really quickly. The company needs, and it together, pretty quickly. The company needs are day-to-day needs, I'm going to tell you in a second how you get those. They keep the lights on, work which is important. The domains: get a sense of the domains right away. If they don't have domains, try to understand the org and speak to the heads to understand what are the domains. Without domains, try to get what are the groups, how do they work.

[00:12:59] The product state is really important. If you're joining a mature company, their product is solid and well placed in the market, you have a different job. You may want to go really far with the vision. If you have a really starting level, beginner in design sense, it means maybe there's no design system, there's no metabolism of working well together, whatever that is, it's going to be a very different story. If the product is not within the range of best practices and best in class, very different story. Get a sense of that when you join.

[00:13:29] The product vision, even if there is no roadmap. Many startups will not have a roadmap. Take, they can take this into consideration. Get an understanding of what their long and short terms are, and you might just speak with C-suite folks. Just do it, it's a startup, you can find their email and they have an open door policy. Sure, let's use that policy. You have to be a little bit proactive.

[00:13:50] Market reality is important. I'm a big research person, I love understanding what I'm doing, so I love jumping into any possible thing. Easy trick when you just join: anyone you meet with, hey, do you have some documents to send me? The boring documents, send it to my inbox please. Block your last day of this first week and read through all of that stuff, put like lo-fi beats on or something.

[00:14:13] And then North Star vision, which is important. You might not get this North Star customer experience vision from the people you talk to, so you might have to come up with it yourself. You need to have an understanding of what you think the North Star vision will be, to build a really strong department. You have much more power in a startup than you do in a corporate environment. You're not just designing, you can set up the future of the company. I believe in that.

[00:14:36] How do you do that? Oh, the most important one, this is my previous talk: you need to establish your ways of working. This is particularly important when you have very little hands on deck. The better your process is, the more you can do with less time. If you don't have a process, it's going to be very hard. How to set up a process is up to you, but there's a lot of things out there to help you understand that.

Where to get the information

[00:14:58] I'm going to give you a really simple how. That's again a cheat list on how to make those happen, or when and where to get them. First of all, set up some one-on-ones. Instead of talking about the weather and that you're originally from Tel Aviv, lovely, try to understand what they're looking for pretty quickly. Hey, what's your optimal scenario working with me? Hey, what's your optimal scenario for the company? What's your vision? Just be casual, but write it down.

[00:15:26] The other thing is I would highly recommend for you to meet up with C-suite folks. Meet up with all of them, five people, meet up with them, 20-minute meeting. They'll find time, you're new. You have a lot of gravitas [?] when you just join, you're the new person. Even if you're just a little designer and you're just the first designer, you can still set up a meeting to understand what's going on.

[00:15:48] This is arguably more important. That's the real understanding of the company, because the C-suite will tell you some really nice shiny things. Meet up with your peers: EMs, engineering managers, project managers, account executives, super important if you have a SaaS company. How are we really doing? What are the problems in the product? They're going to give you the tea, they're going to give you a lot of information.

[00:16:11] Next is getting what I mentioned before. Many times you won't have any research in the company done. Fifty percent of my experience, no research done at all. No research done at all. Clear time, do your research yourself. You have to be scrappy, it's a startup.

[00:16:29] This portion is really important and my favorite one. Introverts: think and sketch. Give yourself time to come up with your plan based on the needs. I know it sounds obvious to some of you, but many of us don't do it when we just join, we just jump in. I highly recommend for you to not jump in. I highly recommend take a week or two, you have this time. No one is going to fire you in one week, except if it's in Kevin's company and they just laid off people, that has nothing to do with what you did. Okay, you won't be fired if you need to establish something. Take a second to think before you run, otherwise you can't run really well. I love doing sketches on a board personally.

[00:17:07] From all of that, it's a bit intense: get the CEO in a room, close the door, communicate the plan, get the sign-off. I literally did that in the last two companies I was in, because I was able to luckily be in a real environment. This would take you about one to two weeks. I know it sounds wild, that's the startup motion. Clear time to do that in the first two weeks, maybe three. Seriously, so you have something there.

[00:17:35] I had all of that done in three days, because that was the offsite, and I happened to be joining on the first day of an offsite. So I literally got the CEO in a room, I showed him the ridiculous board I had, which was a mix of that. It's messy, I mean you don't have time, but I was like, hey, this area means that, this menu is the emotion of a week ago [?], and I spoke in between obviously, because who the hell understands what that is. Barbara de Alba [?], it's a wine list. Anyways, have your ideas, have your time to think, ready to go. It doesn't have to be perfect, that's a big, big tip in startups. Done, not perfect. Please don't make a shiny deck, make sure you communicate your ideas quickly.

[00:18:23] So you have your idea, the idea of all the domains and all the needs in the market research and what's the North Star, and you translate it into some kind of an org and a project map. Then you communicate it. Communicate that ugly thing to your boss and/or the CEO. Again, it's a startup, even if you're a mid-level designer and you're the first designer in the company, get the time with the CEO, be like, hey, what do you think about this plan? Make it rough intentionally, because rough can be adjusted and pristine is hard, cognitively, to adjust.

Who is going to do the work

[00:18:58] Now we jump into an interesting stage: who is going to do that? You can do that, one out of 25 projects you can do. Sometimes you have to start yourself, I'm not saying you don't, sometimes you have to get a buy-in, sure. That still doesn't erase the fact you need to have a plan, because you'll burn yourself down, or up. You'll burn yourself. I'm not from here.

[00:19:28] So the who is important, and I would argue you should start with the optimal case scenario. So here's how I do that, taken out of that. You might have your own version, but I recommend doing something like that. Have an idea of the projects, domains and how you tie them together. Have an idea of how many projects are in the pipeline, what's the roadmap, break it down. I'll show you an example very soon, I'm just giving you the rules for now. I'm going to give you a very specific example. This company I'm going to give the example of had gigantic visions, the roadmap was wild. Break it all down, take the day to break it down, and try to understand from that step what is your optimal case scenario for that plan. Start with the optimal.

[00:20:15] All right. I like mapping it in kind of boards, so I like putting research in one bucket, UX prototypers in one bucket, writers, if you have the ability, usually they come later, I'm sorry, in another bucket if you can, and product designers, basically the ones going from A to Z. Sometimes they even have a place for just UI designers. Whatever the company needs are, they're going to be very different, very, very different from each startup to another. Make sure you have this North Star of yourself, of what your perfect team looks like in this company.

[00:20:49] Here's the difference with the corporate and a startup: you have to plan for this at all times. At all times. Startups are scrappy. So from your perfect plan is the velocity equation. But you don't have to go fancy, just plan for the maximum velocity with the minimum amount of heads. I aim for a crazy amount of 80% of the time they're busy. That means you have to think about more than just a project two or three. Don't think about the next quarter, think about the next year. Start with the year. How many people do you need that will keep busy more than 80% or around, for the next year?

[00:21:28] Once you have these numbers, this is what I do: how can I put a head, or one head, in a bunch of different places in a way that will be 80%? This is important, again it's abstract, but I'm going to give this example in a minute. Where do you put them? Is it domain, is it projects, is it roadmaps? What is it? That's for the plan. This is a smiley.

Selling it

[00:22:00] The last portion is combining them also together, because you want to get to that. I'm so excited about my smiley, I don't know, I'm the only one maybe. It's dumb, stupid simple, but this is the hardest step actually, because it's a startup and they don't have money. Some startups have money, they do by the way, but they don't have money.

[00:22:27] This is where your vibe check is going to come into play, this is where your tools and 80% velocity is going to play, and the most important thing is your plan and how it's tied together to those items. So this result of who's going to do that, yourself included by the way. I didn't put myself here, but I put myself as a star just to say, like, where am I. Should have probably picked like a poop emoji or something instead of a star, but that's fine. I would put myself there as well.

[00:22:54] Be reasonable with your abilities as well, this is important. It's the first designer, sometimes the only designer for a while. You'll have to be highly aware of what you do fast, what to do slow, what to do well, what to do less well. Be really real with yourself and what you can really do. Again, you don't want to burn yourself, it's dangerous.

[00:23:13] This and that. Especially this, this nervous man. The vibe check is going to tell you how to sell it to this company. This without that, you'll be gone very soon. This without that, I mean, I wish you luck, I don't know what you're doing there. But the selling is really hard. Those are a lot of scrappy people, they don't have a lot of money for the departments, and you're asking for a department, and you're asking for the hardest department that is usually underappreciated. It's called design, creative. You're going to have to have a really strong plan.

A case study

[00:23:54] I'm going to jump into a case study because I have no time, sorry. Here's an example, I'm going to go really fast over that. A recent company I started with. By the way, when you join it doesn't mean you're coming for being the first designer. This company I joined, and there were two designers running around like chickens without their heads, really talented folks, but they were just running around because they were given things all the time. There's no strategy, there's no leadership, there's no mentorship. So it's still called establishing a design department, okay.

[00:24:25] The vision was ambitious as hell. I was like, oh my God, I want to take over the world, I mean cool, but that's a lot. The current state was very far from that vision, and when I entered, I only realized it after entering. I looked into the product, I did the research myself, and I was like, oh, that's very far from what they have in mind. Okay, I'm here, it's good. Company size was not bad. Growth plans were pretty intense, I was like, oh that's good, that's a good growth plan, they're planning to actually add some people, that's good. Design maturity was very low in this specific case. And the vibe, which is very important, was dramatic. Top-down. I love ambitious people, but a lot of top-down, and I was like, all right, okay, they're dramatic, I'll be dramatic too.

[00:25:13] I made the presentation, this is after the few days or the two weeks I recommend to do. I was like, all right guys, so the design department currently is functioning like a UI service vendor. Is that what you want? I mean, it looks like it as well. I'm not being dramatic, it's true. There's no best practices, needless to mention there's no life balance. And I created the, I showed, first of all I showed my vision, just not to be too bleak. I was like, hey, I want to just amend and improve the experience, and I want to make sure that we ideate and execute the future of this SaaS company to be the ultimate no-brainer market lead. This is ambitious, guys, I translated your vision. It means I need stuff, but see where I'm starting. And that's the first picture that I painted in this company.

[00:25:58] I know it's a really intense term. Remember: dramatic. They were dramatic, so I was dramatic too. I was like, you guys have a really vicious cycle. Here is the picture today. I based it off all of my one-on-ones, I based it off all of the research I did, everything I read again in this very few days, and I explained what happened, why do we have really problematic user experience currently in the SaaS product. Look at this cycle, what do you expect? That's our current state. When you present a dark image, you should give it numbers. Problematic, a little bit.

[00:26:42] I also wanted to give them a North Star. I was like, hey guys, we're not in this next slide, but I just want to show you what it can be like. I just grabbed it from Google, literally, I mean. So here's a ratio and here is a ratio. Paint a picture, paints a picture. And here's me being dramatic, because if you don't do it really soon, I wish you luck with your ambitious plan. It's dramatic.

[00:27:07] Then I had to speak some data. I did a really, really hefty job in breaking down the environment and the domains. This is five out of 25 domains this company had. That's a lot of domains for two running-around designers, and it's not enough to have one more designer, I'm sorry, or two.

[00:27:24] I painted the picture. I'm going to run through this one really fast, this is the one I did after these crazy sketches. I was like, you guys are crazy, I'm into it, but you should understand what all of this means. I made a map, ClickUp, I like them, they're cool, it's free. And I tied talent to that. And then I said, all right, I'm jumping a few steps ahead here, I said all right. You didn't see the previous screen because I jumped a lot of screens here, but I had like optimal scenario, not going to happen, and I was like, okay, bare bones, a start.

[00:28:01] Give them options. This is like a sales pitch, or like a company SaaS sales page: the premium, the simple, the pro, whatever. Make it easy to understand what is possible and what is a must. Let them pick. It can be a back and forth, no problem, but let's start from here, let's talk from here. And I tied all the data and everything you want in the world to this plan, okay.

[00:28:25] So to sum up: start simple, then expand. I highly recommend following something like that. The reason I put it in kind of a roadmap for yourself is that that's almost like the design head's mini roadmap. You don't have a year for that, you have a month for that, because it's a startup. Each of these starters will be different. You have to be a little curious person, like you just started working, even though you worked in it for 20, 10, five, three years. When you enter, get the vibe, create a plan, move along.

Tips and tricks

[00:29:08] All right, I don't know how we're on time. We're good, okay. There's going to be a lot of questions, I'm sure, or not, but we'll have time for that, but I wanted to give some tips and tricks, just to finish this on a high note.

[00:29:24] Anyone knows this saying, in Rome act like a Roman? This guy said it to a Christian lady that visited Rome and was supposed to fast on a different day. This is the pope of Milan, or something like that, someone Christian at Milan, that's important. That was the advice he gave this lady when going to Rome. So it's based on empathy. I think, act like a Roman is based on empathy. With all this tactile plan, be really smart, be really sensitive on what's going on around you and adjust based on that. That's expected, that's not in my really fancy previous slide.

[00:30:06] Next tip, can't say it enough: doesn't matter how you're pushed around, how many times, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast. If you're not smart at all, you're going to go slow. If you don't have a plan and you go fast, you go slow. You're going to go slow, granted. So keep that in mind.

[00:30:28] The last one: anyone here knows Taki? One, no Taki. Okay, it's a game, doesn't matter. This card, everyone hates this card, they took it out of the decks in later games. This card means it's the shuffle card. When you put this, it's a card game, when you put this card on, everyone has to shuffle. So all of their strategy is out the window, they have to shuffle everything to the next turn. I was like, are you kidding me, for like two hours I built this strategy and now you're taking it. That's also possible.

[00:30:56] This Taki card, or shuffle it all, that may change every day. Be ready for the ride. You have to be open, you have to be flexible, because it's a startup, but that's what's cool about it. You have your solid plan, things will shift around, but keep in mind it may change and it will change. It's a faster moving environment, at the same time high investment, hard investment, very high value. So if anyone wants to start in a startup, I will highly recommend that. I think it's the most fun environment ever, but you have to come with a plan. Okay, that's it for me.

Q&A

[00:31:35] Host: All right, thank you so much. I really loved how you talked a lot about getting all of your thoughts on paper and they don't have to be perfect. I think that sometimes perfection is the enemy of good, and having the conversation. We have time for about one or two questions, so anybody in the audience have a question? Right there, awesome.

[00:32:07] Audience: You mentioned working with people with a very low energy level. I've been in that situation quite a few times, the kind of people that just actually don't want to do the thing that you want to work on, and they just say no to everyone and feel like there's no change needed. So do you have any tips and tricks on working with people with a very low energy level?

[00:32:29] Muriel: I think it very much depends on where they're sitting in relation to you. Many times people have lower energy levels, this low energy came from somewhere. I don't know a lot of real-life sloths, I know some but not a lot. Something happened at some point, at some place, that made them really have a hard time, and they're staggering along, dragging their feet.

[00:32:53] If you feel something is really unrelated to the department, set up a call, be like, hey, I would love to get to know each other, how are you doing? Seriously. You're going to get two results. One, if you establish a relationship, a little bit, they're going to tell you what's up, they'll be like, ah, I hate that, or this and that. And depending on where they are you can perhaps help moving to a resolution. You can't resolve a lot of things, but many times you have to be careful with your own energy, I would say.

[00:33:28] So if it's in our department, tackle it head first. If it's nearby, ask them, ask around, try to get an understanding. If it's way too high up, if it's high up, that's tricky. I would say either leave, I'm not kidding, it's big stuff, it might be really heavy stuff, you know, if it's high up. Or try to work around them. I'm serious, it's a hard thing to resolve. In your own team it's a very different story, tackle it head first, open up, be like, hey, I don't care what it is, I want to help, can I help you in any way? Be serious about it.

[00:34:10] You have a lot of power, more than you think, even if it's up here, you know, people are just afraid to speak up. So empathy. But if it's too big, this is hard. If somebody's been pushed down again and again and again, many times they might not be able to help, and if it affects you drastically, directly, it might affect your work life, it might affect your own mojo. Be careful.

[00:34:31] Host: All right, thank you. Right over there. Maybe you can just, yeah.

[00:34:51] Muriel: Oh, that's a good one. I have to make this relationship on project management as well. You're talking about speaking with them and, oh yeah, that's true. I think it depends if you have a CPO or not, it's a very different role. I think it's possible. I think many times the UX folks are actually kind of leading the way of product as well, or they can put on the product hat. Do your own research, copy this framework to product world.

[00:35:23] And you have to have, I think, even more understanding of what's at hand. I would jump right away to engineering. I mean, we're also tied to engineering, but product is special, is tied to engineering. Understand the engineering org, that's a key. Get a buy-in with the CTO. Startups are based on tech and engineers, you know, it's tech, engineers are very appreciated, designers are less, product is somewhere kind of sitting in the middle, right, you know.

[00:35:51] I think if you get a really good, familiar engineering head, you'll be in good hands. Get the buy-in from them, up top, all the way to the top, even if it starts at the PM. So I would say nurture a relationship with the CTO immediately, get their North Star vision, get the CEO's North Star vision, and be the connective tissue. They many times miss that, then it can drive a bigger department.

[00:36:12] Host: One more. Right there.

[00:36:24] Muriel: Documentation or creation. Documentation as much as they possibly can. I'm a sucker for showing growth, it's useful as you learn as you go. Sometimes you have to run. I would say it depends. If you start off with the first person and they need to run really fast, and you did all of your research on your plan, and they're like, that looks great but you need to work on this one thing right now, I'll be like, go ahead, roll up your sleeves, as they always say in the description, roll up your sleeves and do it. Don't document, run like a crazy maniac and get this prototype out the window, out the door, sorry, out the window is bad. Out the door, then out the window.

[00:37:07] And then start documenting. Don't waste time documenting too much in a startup if you just started. That's a tip: if you're the sole hands, do not do that. If you have one person that you're leading, do that. If you have to do it, if you have five, definitely do it. It depends where you're sitting. So if you start running, if you're the first, first designer, no time for the plan right now, we'll talk to your plan in a month, no problem, we're excited, but please do this thing right now. Do the thing, don't worry about anything else.

[00:37:36] Host: All right, thank you so much, another round of applause please.