Designers ask us a lot of good questions in interviews, and many of the same ones come up each time. So we asked Gabriel, our Director of Design, to answer them here.
Whether you're thinking about working with us, or if you're just curious, we hope it helps you to get to know us better.
Talented and fun to work with! We have a team of people with different experiences and skills, and those skills complement each other. We find this setup makes collaboration more necessary, as each person can contribute to a project in their own specific way.
That depends a lot on the project. Designers get plenty of autonomy to run a project however they want, but there are often constraints from the PM or engineers, which can make it feel like less freedom. Part of the role is working out which of those constraints are acceptable and which aren't, and making the pros and cons of each really clear to everyone else.
Every project has a Design Lead, who has the final say. Designers will always hear lots of different opinions from their peers, and it's up to them which ones to take into consideration, which to ignore, and which to save for a later iteration.
Because we're async-first, everything you work on is out in the open for the whole company to see and comment on. That can cause some anxiety, and we've often seen people hold off on sharing early work because they don't think it's good enough yet. But holding back delays the conversation, and you lose the chance for someone to spot a problem or point you in the right direction early on.
For me personally, designing at Spoke means constantly fighting against your own ego and fear of judgment. But we are all in the same position, and it's okay to be wrong, as long as you find out early!
We also don't wait until we have all the answers before we start designing. A lot of the time we go on instinct and make our own bets, rather than spending ages on user research before drawing the first pixel. We believe designing is the best way to come up with ideas and questions, and starting early is how you find out what you don't know yet and what you need to ask users or the team.
But often, all you have at the start of a project is a blank page, and while that can be scary for some people, it can be an exciting challenge for others.
<aside> <img src="/icons/asterisk_red.svg" alt="/icons/asterisk_red.svg" width="40px" /> Find out more about life at Spoke
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