This past weekend marked my last day as a Product Design intern at Canonic. As the first day of my final year looms around the corner, I wanted to take the time to critically reflect on the past 4 months and collate my learnings, experiences, stories and observations into a single article and document what I take back from this experience as I walk back into the gates of my institution.
#1 Reading and knowing.
This was something that professors consistently imparted in college but I never really understood the way they meant it. Sure, I was an avid reader and somewhat active in the design community. I thought that these loose strands of knowledge, acquired mainly during research for a particular project would be enough academic knowledge. It was only at Canonic that I observed something interesting and realised what my professors meant all this while.
Everyone at Canonic had a knowledge-resource stack. A part of their day, usually the first time they logged into their computer, was spent on a curated list of blogs and websites hyper-personalised to the industry and topics that they were interested in. Often, this would result in interesting conversations as they arrived in the office and sometimes, led to the discussion of their own ideas or the trial of a methodology or concept that they came across. This process seemed interesting. Essentially, every single day, they were learning something new or being exposed to something new which was constantly updating their knowledge base and aligning their thought processes to the gruelling demands of the industry. Or sometimes, they read something that would change the way they live.
Impressed by the merits, I made it a point to convert reading, rather “academic reading” into an actionable habit. To help with this, Simranjot introduced me to Panda5: a Google Chrome extension that replaces the new tab page with a curated newsfeed from sources that you select (such as Medium, Hacker News, ProductHunt etc).
As this transitioned into a habit by my 3rd month, I felt the difference. I could contribute way more than before, add fresh perspectives and discuss interesting concepts around fields I liked to work in. This habit recently transformed into an activity of passion and I started writing about things that I come across during a week on this weekly blog.
#2 The importance of working with the right people.
Before this summer, I didn’t fully understand the importance of healthy, positive work culture. Sure, I’d interned before but never like this. From bi- weekly support talks to sweet gestures after an intense weekly sprint, I was willing to contribute way more than demanded simply because I felt responsible, cared for and heard within the organisation. Even as an intern, I worked in an active role where I was accountable for the decisions I took, meaning that the team placed an incredible amount of trust in me even though I was simply an intern. This was a new experience for me.
One of the projects that I completed during this internship could serve as an example to illustrate my point. While creating the onboarding experience for Canonic, the top management never forced a decision on me from the research to its release, making it an extremely collaborative environment where I had complete freedom over the direction of the project. Once you’re in charge of a project where it could directly affect a business, it ends up becoming your baby and I loved that I created the foundation of an experience that would remain on the platform for a very long time. I understood something about myself: I thrive in situations like these when I’m assigned the ownership of a feature/product and the outcome has to meet a quantifiable metric.
As I compared my experiences with some of my classmates, I realised how lucky I’d gotten. Sure, to some extent, I did heavy research on the company, product and team to ensure I made an informed choice from the offers I’d received but I could have very easily gone wrong. I could have been stuck as a mere cog in a large top-down management system or a research assistant tied down by academic formalities. While it’s safe to assume that any of these experiences would have led to diverse learning, I know for a fact that I appreciate collaborative environments where I play an active role. This realisation about myself will shape the decision of where I work in the future as well.
I grew incredibly close to the team and unknowingly, I was working with friends rather than co-workers. The positive impact that this has on your work is noteworthy and I now know how important it is to be a part of the right team.
If you’re in an interview or considering a shift in jobs, schedule a call with the team that has offered you a position and spend some time with them. You’d save yourself so much discontent in the future.
#3 The importance of being in the present.
During the first couple of months, I was in my usual rate-race-success-driven state of mind. I saw this internship the same way I’d seen all my experiences in life: a stepping to something better. This mindset driven by the wild dream to someday make it to the FANGs of the world has been an absolute killer of the present. Even in this internship, I found myself pushing out a project for the company and immediately starting work to document it so that I don’t miss out on opportunities as and when they came by.
I was constantly tired and overworked simply because I always had more to do. It was endless! I rarely found time to do things outside of work. A lot of us have been raised this way, haven’t we? To think that taking a break is not okay, to not be satisfied with where you are and to always chase something better. As I reflected on my first month, I realised that I was doing it all wrong. I was compromising on my experience and learning simply because of a vision of the future that had no guarantee. No matter where I’d be, I’d always be chasing something better but that something better lies in oblivion. By the time August came around, I decided to make a change.
I set time aside from work to do things that made me happy. I met my friends, exercised and also found time to continue my creative practice apart from work. Yes, I was no longer producing large volumes of work towards my goal but I was consistently getting closer; +1% day by day.
To be honest, I may never reach a FANG company and accepting the odds of this failure has led me to find even more joy in my current work and workplace simply because at the moment, I’m only thinking about what I’m doing and its impact in the foreseeable future. Whether or not it contributes to my FANG dream, I will never be able to tell and accepting this is a liberating experience.
#4 Planning.
This is a relatively tiny and direct takeaway. Canonic followed an agile methodology and spent a lot of time in planning. Initially, I did not understand why they’d invest so much time and resources in planning. As everything started going according to roadmaps made a week ago, I promptly understood the value of effective planning.
Canonic used a KanBan board for project management through Jira, a software by Atlassian. There were planned and unplanned tickets (tasks) that everyone could add to the backlog. Simran would then “groom” the tickets and align them towards the goal of a sprint, which would last a week. Every Wednesday, we’d take up tickets and note an estimate for the amount of time that it would take us to finish each task. This gave us a good idea about our work week and whether someone was going over the 8-hour a day mark; which led to the reconsideration of that person’s sprint. I felt that this was quite an informed and responsible way of working. Everyone knew what everyone else was doing as well as the progress that they’d made leading to better transparency across the organisation. Every day at 12 we’d get together and discuss progress in the last 24 hours and remove blockers that a member would be facing. Time estimation is something that I want to actively implement in my work and life.
And with that, you’ve reached the end. Over the course of these 120 days, this organisation has given me a lot more than I could have ever imagined. I’m finishing up this article at 4am in the morning before my first day as a final year student and parts of me still fail to accept that my time at Canonic is over.
Tomorrow morning, I won’t be waking up at 11:25 and heading to the office at 11:30, I won’t be attending a Canonic Standup at 12, I won’t be sharing banter with the team on Slack, I won’t be taking a break playing with Barney (the office dog) in the afternoon and I won’t be on the couch thinking about whacky new ideas. Tomorrow, I won’t be an intern at Canonic but a final year student taking on the final challenge of my undergraduate program. Tomorrow, I’ll be the next version of myself, a more advanced individual than I was 4 months ago, all thanks to the wonderful place I interned at and the people I was fortunate to have been with.
