What had I learned after over 3 years at Viec.Co?

Start the journey

• Apr 2019, I joined Viec.Co as a UI/UX Designer (the only designer in the company; I got promoted to Product Executive 6 months later). At that time, my company was small; my product team had only 4 people: CTO, 2 software engineers, and me.
• As I remember, we got around 7K users at that time. And now, it has increased to over 140K users (To be clear, we work in a niche market with tons of problems that people are still unwilling to solve, so that will not be a million number as other mass user products). So I’m happy to contribute to that journey.

Focus on 20% of essentials

I knew I was the only designer on the team, so I had to push my productivity more. So I decided to invest time in building a design system. It helped me reduce time to doing the same thing every day (It was better for the developer too). But a complete design system took a considerable effort, and I had other work to do, so I had to select only critical components like buttons, inputs, navigations, pop-up modals, etc. Because we used them so many times, that was the right time to apply “the 80-20 rules” (Pareto Principle); 20% of essential components deliver 80% value of the design system.

Document, document, document everything

• Practicing documents helped me a lot. I could arrange, validate, and improve my ideas in structured ways. Sometimes, I wrote down my thoughts and recognized that it was silly in a second, giving me another chance to think more carefully.
• I could share documents with the stakeholders and my teams. They could give me back feedback and ideas so that I could improve my solutions.
• One more value, the member who joined after can read them and quickly understand the context without talking to other team members or me. Saved times.

Data-driven mindset

• At Viec Co, I was building a habit of determining the measurable metrics to be evaluated when preparing to implement a feature or solution so that after release, I could evaluate the effectiveness, reducing the bias in my design process.
• I also had the opportunity to play a part in building a dashboard to track key product metrics.

The solution is not coming from the office

One of the most important lessons I learned here is that the fastest and best way to understand my users is to become a user or directly observe them. Therefore, I was also pleased when I had many opportunities to survey and implement in the places where my users worked daily. As a result, I better understood their context, their behaviors, and their motivations so that I could design appropriate solutions.

Done is better than perfect from the office

One time, my team was preparing for a highly urgent usability test, preparing everything in the afternoon, including devices, script writing, and recruiting the user. The following day, we had an acceptable output with full camera angles: user gestures, facial expressions, prototype screens, and streaming so the team could monitor in real-time. And yes, it was not a perfect session, but we made it done and got value from it.

It’s not only in the app

I was not only designing solutions for the mobile app but also had the opportunity to test the integration of many hardware devices to achieve the ultimate goal of solving customer problems and improving user experience. Therefore, I learned that I need to focus on work that brings users value, whether on the app, the web, or other devices.

Leadership is hard

The team was starting to have a few more members, so we needed a solution for the whole team to work together more effectively. My squad started implementing agile more deeply, so I had to deal with additional tasks such as optimizing productivity, setting up workflows and tools, and supporting team members to get their work done. In addition, it must communicate more and handle the connection of team members. I realized that leadership is not easy; fortunately, my leader and team members still support me.

Work-from-home experience

Unfortunately that my team also went through the covid pandemic like everyone else. It affected the company a lot, significantly decreasing revenue. However, luckily because of that, the team tried hard to adapt and have more experience optimizing the workflow. And yes, we had to work from home during that period. After the end of the lockdown, my team continued working remotely for a while. Nowadays, working in hybrid is the norm at Viec Co.

A few achivements

• The company continues to grow sustainably, and I'm proud to be a part of it.
• Rewarded "Employee of the year"
• And the feedback that I mentioned above is also an achievement for me.

Finally, I thank Viec Co, Mr.Tung, Mr.Canh, and all team members for that remarkable journey.