What It’s Really Like to Work as a UI/UX Designer in a Startup
A narrative short story
Written by Gyeongwon Kwak, social media content writer at Path Unbound. Edited by Stella Guan, Founder & CEO of Path Unbound.
The alarm blared across the bedroom, bringing Alex’s pleasant dream to a jerking halt.
They dismissed the alarm from their phone and sat up on their bed.
They’ve been working at a startup for 3 months now, but they could never get quite used to waking up at 6 am.
The cold morning air greeted their bare feet as Alex swung their legs out of bed and stood up slowly. The sleepiness in their body slowly left as they completed their usual morning routine and prepared to go to work.
After checking the weather report for the day, Alex grabbed their bag and walked out of their apartment in a hurry to catch the bus.
Luckily, they caught the bus on time and managed to have a smooth commuting experience.
Upon their arrival to the office, Alex smiled and greeted their teammates, Emily and Taylor. These two were always on time and full of energy in the morning.
Alex liked arriving a little early to relax and settle in before the office became crowded and full of noise.
They sat down at their desk and checked their emails and messages before reading over the schedule for the day.
Based off of the schedule, they made a to-do list on a sticky note. Today’s workload was on the heavier side, which made Alex a bit nervous.
Everyday was different at their jobs.
Eventually, the rest of their team began to trickle in and sit in their usual spots.
With the bit of free time Alex had before they had to go to a meeting, they continued to wireframe on their tablet for a recent design project that their manager assigned them.
Alex was one of only two designers in the team where they handled more of the UX end of the design and the other,
Emily, focused on the user interface. However, they worked closely together throughout the entire design process so some of their duties overlapped.
Alex checked their watch and realized it was almost time so they walked over to the meeting room where the CEO, the marketing lead, and several other co-workers were waiting.
Alex and Emily showcased how much progress they made in the initial design concepts and made sure to explain what each technical term meant since not everybody in the meeting were familiar with design terminology.
They frequently had meetings where they had to tailor their presentations towards non-designers. It was frustrating at first but now, they became accustomed to articulating the importance of design in the product for more business-centric individuals.
Alex also took note of the CEO’s suggestions for changes in their design and decided that a different approach was needed to face the problem at hand.
After the long meeting, it was Alex’s favorite time of the day, which was lunch time. They went out of the office to grab some food and to enjoy her free time outside in the fresh air.
They checked the time on their phone and sighed as they realized that lunch time was almost over.
It was never long enough.
They headed over to Emily to critique each other’s work and to discuss their goals for the upcoming week.
Alex showed her some of their wireframes that they worked on for the past several days, and how they could incorporate what the CEO discussed in the meeting into the prototype.
The company was preparing to release a minimum viable product (MVP) soon so they had a mountain of work ahead of them.
During breaks, Alex and Emily often complained about the short timelines for their projects but they managed to stay on top of their heavy workload despite being in a fast-paced environment.
They dreaded how many iterations they would have to work on and get approved before the official launch.
“Oh yeah, we also need to prepare for remote user testing soon,” Emily added as Alex began to head back to their own desk.
Smiling, Alex nodded at her before leaving.
As soon as they sat down, Alex whipped out their tablet and began the preliminary designs for the prototype.
They visited Emily and their manager frequently, asking for feedback and clarification.
Alex learned from working at the startup that design was often a group effort that required constant communication and collaboration.
Once the clock on the wall was nearing 5 pm, Alex was feeling a little burnt out and logged on to Slack to update the whole team on their progress for the day.
The team actually didn’t have a way to update each other until Alex recommended using Slack since they heard about their friends working at other companies using similar methods to communicate.
Afterwards, they logged off and left the office building to go home.
Alex looked back at the building once they exited and found the window that they often peer out of once they stared at the screen of their computer for too long.
Tomorrow is going to be another day.
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