First week as FT + 3 interviews

Happy Friday!

As you may know, I've been revisiting some old favorite articles lately and updating them with new knowledge. Two popular articles (that I still haven't had the chance to update) are "Working as a UX lead" and "Working as a UX designer". I receive many emails from readers who found my website through one of these articles and appreciated gaining some insight into what the daily work actually entails.

So, with the news of my new role last week, I thought I'd share what this first week in the role of Head of Design has included. Perhaps this will be a post at some point, but for now, consider it a post for this trusted circle.

• CareOS is our tool that all of our providers use to stay in touch with parents, write medical notes, and much more. It's still a bit rough around the edges, but we're working continuously to improve it. Lately, I've been revising the foundation of the tool, navigation, and the general framework, i.e., how things link together, what navigational patterns we use, how we differentiate desktop from mobile, etc. The challenge with a tool like this is to design something that works well now, but also scales to support millions of children and thousands of providers.
• In relation to revising parts of CareOS, I've been talking to providers about their experience with the current solution and showing them initial thoughts to get early impressions.
• We recently launched a blog, and I have been working with our content writers to establish a tone of voice. In relation to this, I have been assisting them in sourcing images and specifying the types of images we should aim for.
• Ahead of our Series A fundraising, I worked closely with the management team on designing the pitch deck. With the successful funding secured, I've worked with them to make adjustments to key slides that we'll use for other occasions.
• For our Care app (what parents use), I've improved the flow of uploading images and videos to your conversation. More specifically, I've examined how uploads can be automatically labeled so that you can reference them in future conversations.

As we're still a small team, you'll find that the work is varied and constantly switches between long-term strategic thinking and short-term fixes. There’s a lot of talk about wether to aim at being a niche designer or a T-shaped. I believe this is the skill that has served me best over the past few years: the ability to switch contexts and horizons.

What about you? What do you consider your most important skill?

Recent interviews

1. I was recently interviewed by Readymag about what I think it takes to succeed as a freelancer.
2. I talked to Spaces (previously Lover’s Magazine) about my career and what my days look like.
3. Workspace.xyz featured my home office.

Want me on your podcast or blog? Just hit reply and we’ll set something up!

Back with some actual writing soon,

Anton