First things first, I would like to thank my manager Atithi Srivastava for giving me this opportunity to work with an awesome team here at Attentive. I am thankful for this opportunity. So, all set my 4th semester got over and I returned back to my home in Delhi on 18th of May 2022. For the upcoming summer vacation of 2 months, I decided to upskill myself, improve my portfolio and then finally apply for internships.
Once, I was scrolling through LinkedIn and saw something (I don't remember exactly). I then connected with Atithi and this was the turning point that I was hunting for the past few months. She told me about the opportunity and I got interested in that. I thought why not give it a shot. I had passed round 1 of the interview, then she gave me an assignment. I completed the assignment, sent it back to her and had a 2nd round of interview.
Finally, I got selected for the internship after clearing the 2nd round. It was just a kind of formal discussion on product thinking. I officially joined Attentive on 13th June 2022 with a decided tenure of 2 months full time User Interface Design internship. Now comes the 13th of June, the first day of my internship. I had an Induction Session where I was told everything about the company. Following that, I had a Design Onboarding Session where I was told about the design workflows and all. Being the youngest (and perhaps the most enthusiastic) member of Attentive team, I was ready to face new challenges.
We here at Attentive solve landscaping problems in the US. It's not like the problems we're trying to solve are too complex, it's about the lack of awareness of this industry in India. After working more than a month, I somehow got to know about the problems faced by landscaping industries based in the US.
As this was my first internship as user interface designer, I was worried about the work that I'll do here at Attentive. I was not even sure whether I would be able to meet deadlines. In the first week of my internship, I was given a task to design screens for a training platform. Even after a detailed discussion with the program manager, I wasn't able to fully understand the problem statement. That's the beauty of UX Design, you don't know about the difficulty level of the problem statement you encounter.
It was until I started off by creating user flow first, to help me understand more about the problem statement. Then I took to Adobe XD and started creating hi-fi designs. I then went into a state of flow, where I connected the dots using user flow and came up with a design solution. Yes, that required several iterations, but at least I got to know the process which is much more important than final design itself.
For every design decision I took, I was not sure about the assumptions I took to solve the problem. Sometimes, I was able to convince the stakeholders about the design decisions that I took and sometimes, I badly failed at it. Yes, you read it right! You might be thinking how can a tool be a challenge? We at Attentive use Adobe XD as our primary design tool. Before joining, I have practiced Figma a lot while my expertise in Adobe XD was way more inferior.
After working on Adobe XD nearly a month, I must say "Come on Adobe! It's high time to optimize the UX of this UX product otherwise there would be no difference between XD and Sketch in near future". Figma is way more powerful, especially for collaborative work. Yes, during my internship only we switched completely to Figma after having discussion with the team. I faced many other challenges as well but these are the most important ones that I thought to share with you all.
Everything was going smooth back then, all of a sudden a news came that we were shifting to a new office in Noida and it's inauguration date was decided to be 12th July 2022. And what could be a better day joining the amazing team than the inauguration day itself.
I joined the team in-person on 12th July 2022 on the inauguration day. I was mind blown after seeing the ambience around the office. When I entered the office, I was mesmerized by how beautiful it is.
Meeting the folks I have worked with, remotely for a month, in-person, had a feeling that can't be expressed in words. This is especially when all of them have a growth mindset. As the office was far from my home in Delhi and it took nearly 2 hours for me to reach there, me and my manager decided that I will be coming here on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Tuesdays and Thursdays would be WFH. Yes, sometimes the journey felt a bit overwhelming especially when traveling back to home but then it's a part of life, if you're coming to office, then you need to head back to home at the end of the day.
Although this was a user interface design internship, thanks to my manager here at Attentive as she wanted me to learn UX processes of the real world as well. We then had an in-person crazy 8 exercise on a problem statement. It was the time when I got to learn the art of constraint thinking and how to come up with possible solutions in a given amount of time. Before that, my manager and I also created a user journey map for a problem statement. This session was held virtually but then also we had a lot of fun creating it, thinking about edge cases and so on. I was so engrossed in the work that I even forgot, I am a college undergrad and my summer vacation is ending soon, I need to go back to the campus for my upcoming semester. This really threatened me.
Although the internship would end on 12th August 2022 as we decided on a 2 months tenure, then looking at the quantum of work I have been doing since last one month, I informed my manager that I won't be able to continue further. I won't be able to continue because my summer vacation was going to end on 31st July 2022. I would be starting off with the 5th semester, the most hectic semester of BTech in any discipline.
It's not like I wanted to leave, it's like I had to leave, there wasn't any option B. But again I learnt a lot, literally a lot during this 1.5 months internship. Here are a few learnings that I would like to share with you all: Yes, it's the most important. Although, I messed up with this but after working here for quite some time, I realized the importance of organization of work. Organization starts from the tool itself. The Adobe XD files I was working on totally messed up after some time and me being the creator of those files, wasn't able to proceed flawlessly. Apart from that, organization of various tasks depending on the priority order is also very important. Documenting all what you've done so far will prevent you from making unnecessary decisions about a problem statement.
Learn Notion, the only go-to tool to help you manage and organize any sort of work. Yes, these days learning Notion is equally important as learning Figma. Before joining, I used to create casual projects in Figma after taking some inspiration from Dribbble. I did the same here in the very first project that I was assigned. But later during the first project itself, I realized after having a discussion with my manager that creating the final design is not the only work we do as user interface designers. Our work should also reduce the time for the developers to code it. See, design is not a single handed task. It's a collaborative effort. I learnt how to collaborate with my colleagues, what to do and what not to do during meetings and all.
Instead of arranging a meet to discuss every problem, at the later stage of my internship, I started jotting down some notes before meetings so that I can ensure I clear all of my doubts about the tasks rather than waiting for the last minute hassle near the deadline. I started setting up a proper agenda so that I can be sure I take out something meaningful from every meeting I had and implement the learnings in the tasks that I was assigned. During the interview itself, I was told that things are pretty fast here. I took it casually. But when I started with my tasks and getting into a state of flow, I then realized what fast actually means in a startup culture. Startup is a team of people on a mission to solve problems, impacting millions of lives.
Since the beginning of my internship, I just consider my work as different levels of a video game. The higher the level, the more fun it is. The fast paced culture was never an obstacle to me. Yes, you read it right, Let me just say it once again, "if you're wrong, admit it". Keeping your ego aside, showing a little enthusiasm and hunger for learning will definitely help you in the long run. If you've done something wrong in your work, then straight away admit it instead of arguing with your colleagues or seniors, if you don't have a valid argument to support your decision. Saying "sorry" to your senior/manager who actually cares about your growth won't make you inferior/superior to somebody. It will only help you to grow.
If your senior/manager/colleagues actually care about your growth, then at least once think of their suggestions and most of the time, those turn out to be valuable ones. I also said "sorry" to my manager 2-3 times during the internship because I really felt that I have done something wrong and this could have been better. This actually boosted my growth when I saw the before and after version of my work. On top of all this, we also had 2 Brown Bag sessions on Communication Skills and Problem Solving By First Principle Thinking which were held by the founders of the company themselves. In each session, I learnt something out of the box which I couldn't learn in 4 years of my BTech.
My last in-person working day at Attentive was 25th July 2022. After the office hours, we had a small party. My last working day at Attentive was 31st July 2022.
All in all, I would say I had a really great time here at Attentive. Every task I was assigned, I did with full enthusiasm and open to feedback every time. Everyday just before sleep, the dopamine in my body desperately craves for a new day, new task, new challenges and most importantly new learnings. Then oxytocin and melatonin would take over dopamine and allow me to have a sound sleep. So much biology, phew! I strongly believe if you're doing something meaningful that doesn't trigger dopamine in your body, then it's not worth doing. After working here for around 1.5 months, one thing I can say for sure, "Attentive is not a company, it's a culture, it's a culture which every corporation should deploy".
All thanks to Shiva Dhawan (Co-Founder and CEO at Attentive) and Sarthak Vijay (Co-Founder at Attentive) for creating an awesome work environment here. Working here never felt overwhelming, it's like a game for me as I was doing something that I actually love doing. If I were to get this opportunity again, I would dedicate my entire life to making Attentive the best, when it comes to solving landscaping problems. Thanks a lot for this opportunity, Atithi Srivastava, hope to meet the team again soon.