Tales of a UX/UI Student: There is no I in Team
By: Heather Lutz
Tags: Life Lessons, Students, UX, Uxui Design, Bootcamp

People are funny creatures. No two are alike, even when they are similar. And there’s no way to tell what type you’ve come across until you spend time with them. The funniest thing about people is that you have to invest at least a little bit in someone to know what you are working with and sometimes that comes as a pleasant surprise and sometimes a disappointment.

Going into Bootcamp, I did not have any type of corporate or “workplace” background. The only people I interacted with were either already my friends or the parents and teachers of my kids’ school. To say that learning to work in teams with people I have never met can have its challenges is an understatement.

So here’s what I’ve learned so far about working in teams. This may change and evolve as I get into an actual workplace, but for now, in a Bootcamp/student setting, this is what I’ve got.

People are going to do what they want.

I’m an extremely empathetic person. It’s one reason I was so attracted to the world of UX and why I feel like I’ve really found my wheelhouse here in this industry. Unfortunately, not everyone is wired this way. Even more unfortunately, not everyone is even striving to be this way. If I could check a box, everyone would be more empathetic across the board. (Can I get a high five for world peace?) Alas, I cannot check boxes, and I cannot singlehandedly enact world peace (womp womp). All I can do is accept that people are going to do what they want and my job is to still act as empathetic as possible. Having been in a few different work groups now I’ve learned that everyone is going to go about a project the way they think they should go about it. And sometimes you come together and get on the same page, and sometimes you don’t. I truly believe magic happens when you do come together, but for those times you don’t, you just have to let go, do your part and remember that people are going to do what they want. And that’s ok.

Choose your battles wisely.

Life is a constant string of decisions and choices. And as stated above, no two people are alike, which means that nobody is going to always choose or decide the same. This can be especially tricky when working in a team setting. If you try to fight for every little font/spacing/color/layout you are going to waste so much of your time. It’s just not worth it. I’ve found that if there are some things I’m willing to concede on, the things that matter to me most I can really go to bat for. Waste not, want not becomes especially true when it comes to your own time and energy.

Above all else, listen.

There’s a famous band that once said, “All you need is love”. While I don’t disagree, I don’t necessarily agree either. As stated above, sometimes you don’t come together as a unified team. Sometimes your group just doesn’t “click”. This doesn’t mean you dislike each other, they can be perfectly fine and nice people, it just means the bare minimums for a working relationship are there. So when this is the case, you can’t act based out of only love. Because the love and admiration just isn’t there. But you can always, and I mean always listen. Even working in groups where we don’t have that magic, I have found that I generally do better and learn more when I’m willing to just listen. So when in doubt, listen. Absorb. Take it all in. You never know what you’ll learn.

In this industry we cannot avoid working in teams. And it’s never insulated to just your team either. Engineers. Stakeholders. Marketing. These will all be groups you’ll need to interact with in some form or another. So I’m doing the best I can now, as a student, to learn the skills to be a fantastic teammate.

Empathize. Edit. Listen. Repeat.