Challenge Accepted. New Adventure Begins!
As I wrote on my previous article, I finished my journey with Mister Aladin and starting my new journeys, new roles and new places also. Here I’m now, with Stranger Soccer.
But, Do you know what Stranger Soccer is? I would love to introduce it if you don’t know about us.
If you are football lover, if you are love to play football or futsal or if you want to play but don’t have team or friends to play with no need to worry, Stranger Soccer will be your solution.
Stranger Soccer makes soccer more accessible and convenient. Join a game on demand. Organise your game. Find another team to play against. Even book a pitch. No more hassles like finding enough players, collecting cash, or calling around to book a pitch. It will really help you to play football or futsal based on your needed and wants. Also, we are not only provide for adult game, we also can cover Veteran game and also Junior or Teens that want to play. Just download it on Play Store and App Store and you can directly try all of our features!
For example: If you want to play, but you don’t have team or even friend, just join game with us. Our host will help you, arrange your game, include referee and the pitch. Just play with us!
(note: we are only available at Singapore and Malaysia — hopefully soon will launch in Indonesia and other country)
So what I’m doing with Stranger Soccer?
I joined on July 2019 and my role as a Lead Design. I’m responsible for all product and design that we want to create. I handle UX/UI for our all platform. Together with Product Team, Costumer Experience and also Developer team we tried to build the best product who can help our user to understanding our apps and exactly to help them use our app and join our game.
Sometimes, as we are just new start up, I help marketing team to design some graphic design stuff like flyer and also social media post for but it’s just a minor rules because we have some freelancer designer to handle it — and yes I’m the one that lookin and take care all the freelancer until the project finished.
So, as a Lead Design, I have many things to do and surely need to build it as soon as possible. Here are some things that I want to share it to you, my starting plan to handle it and also my to do list as a “New comer designer in another country”
First things first, Let it be..
Sound’s weird? ahaha.. but sure, first thing that I did when I joined was Let it be like The Beatles song’s title it means: Look, Listen and Check, let say this looks like observe.
Look
Just look around, look up my desk, other team desk, look up the person in team, their working flow, look what their doing so I can understand how they work and it will help me to having same rhythm while working with my team mate.
Listen
This is important things for me so listen will be one of the biggest part of my day. Will listen what they are talking about, listen their discussion about the product and how they communicate each other. Try to understanding what they are talking about and the progress of their work and what are they want to do for next will help me to start my task and imagine what are they doing right now — and surely as I know my english not good, I need to improve it, listen it carefully and also check it to Google Translate if I don’t understand what are they said or I want to say to them.
Check
Interesting part, I need to check all the design that they ever created. I need to check UX/UI asset, branding guide — it will lead me to my next things to do. As I know when I’m checking on it actually we don’t have design asset both for marketing and also product — even we don’t have like branding guideline. Big homework for me.
(+1) Ask
Also I need to listen about what their expectation from me, what they want from the designer and it help me a lot to create working mindset to my new team.
As lead design, more responsibility handle UX/UI and sometimes doing Graphic Design things and take care and brief freelancer. UX/UI or Product Design isn’t new things for me and sure that’s my passion and also my expertise especially as UX designer that I want to explore it more but it’s different with Graphic Design, yes sure that’s my major, but sometimes I feel that Product Design and Graphic Design process have different design process that designer must face. But, once again, this is my challenge and I want to handle it and it will made me stronger and also “level up”
My Target & To Do List
So observation stage done. I find many things that I learn and next step I need to collect all of it and start to compile it to be my target & to do list:
Explain about Design Process for both of task list
Since my team don’t have real designer, since they are still new start up and since they don’t know the design process, It would be nice if I start my journey with explain to them what is designer and how designer can work, especially I’m doing both of product design and also marketing design — explain about how design can work and design steps will help them to understand what I’m doing and time estimation of each step.
After presentation to the team, they understand how the design flow for each step and hopefully they can support me to do all of this flow.
Know Singaporean user more
We can separate UX design and research. If we want to build a product to user we need to know the real user needed and why they need it. As a new product designer that have a project on another country, I need to know real singaporean user so I can build the product based on their needed. Especially on sport field. Stranger Soccer core business are sport product, sure I play futsal back in Jakarta, but Jakarta’s people habit on playing futsal must be different with Singaporean people. This become interesting challenge for me.
Design System
As a product designer, I will work closely to developer team to develop my design. Sometimes it hard to make website/mobile apps 100% same with my design so we need bridge to connect the design and developer. Yes Sketch, Invision, Marvel and Zeplin really help a lot. But for the basic structure and also for the branding, step by step I will create our own design system. With it, developer and designer have some perception and also same guide to handle it. But first, since we need time to build it, for first step I create some UI kit and also guide for our illustration style.
Improvement
I’m all ears. Always listen user feedback to improve your product, every time user giving us feedback even positive or negative I always write it and start to documentating it. So we can know what do we need to no next.
So.. here is my live and my job for this time. Observe and Goal will be my key for doing all of this stuff. This is new things for me and really challenging. Sure, I will face it and challenge my self to conquer it! Next, I will explain do that work or not, and what should I do for it. Thank you!
