Experience Vernacular.ai is selling…
First work from home experience as a Product Design intern
Preface📦
In the scenario of 2020, where everyone is discovering new ways to deal with the lockdown and trying to improve themselves, I got an opportunity to virtually intern at Vernacular.ai as a Product Designer.
This article sums up my journey as an intern, including the perks of working from home, challenges I faced during the internship, the team culture, my routine, and my learnings.
So let’s begin…
My Virtual Intro👨💻
Vernacular.ai is an AI-First SaaS startup with two products, VIVA (Vernacular Intelligent Voice Assistant) and VASR (Vernacular Automatic Speech Recognition), both being used together for automating call-centers for their clients.
I joined Vernacular for a 3 months internship in May 2020 as the team’s 33rd member. After a few onboarding sessions, I understood the basics, got comfortable with the people, and settled down with a routine.
For the first couple of weeks, I learned the basics of Machine Learning — which was damn exciting, to get familiar with the jargon used within teams, and gradually began contributing to various projects. Here, I majorly worked on the Product called Console, which is a web-based tool used internally to maintain and train Organization(Client) specific Voice-bots.
I felt a lot of responsibility on my shoulders as I knew that I was the only designer in the team. But still, I tried to live up to the expectations and deliver what was asked of me. The ownership startled me at first, as the changes I was going to suggest or make were to get implemented, and a lot of people within the team would be using those interfaces, but I took up the challenge.
Weekly Routine⌛
My day started with a daily Product Team Sync-up at 11 am and marking my presence for the day on a Slack channel called “check-in✅.” In the sync-up, everyone gave updates on what they had done a day before and tasks they would do that day. After the updates, if there was anything to be discussed, it was done there in the sync-up only.
Being stuck at home, it was easy to lose track of time…and even days (believe me!!!), so my reporting manager, PravJ, asked me to fill up a Daily Journal, in which I mentioned all the things I did a day before. It was a good exercise as it helped me and PravJ to keep track of my work and progress. I’ll also recommend this to everybody reading this article, in general.
There were a few sessions that were fixed for particular days and times:
Monday🤯
Team meeting 👥(1 pm) — A meeting for all the members, with different teams delivering team reports and introducing new joiners. While others on the video call waited for people to join, there was a brief and friendly leg-pulling session every time.
Friday😌
Cafe Rant 📢(5 pm) — Ahhaa…this session was fun, people spoke about the problems they faced but in the form of a rant. I usually sat with my guitar and heard people ranting about different issues.
Product Read 📖(6 pm) — This was a productive session where people shared what they have read, related to product design/management.
Saturday😎
Weekly sync-up 💬(1 pm) — This was a one-on-one session with Pravj. We discussed the blockers I faced during the work, sometimes he took suggestions about streamlining different processes within the organization, and I gave updates on my long-term projects.
Product releases were the things I waited for because I got to see my designs functional and being used. A demo of the interface was given by a member of the Product Team to all the people in the organization. Sometimes I worked on Sundays too (few perks of working from home) to complete few pending tasks or extra work that needed to be done from the design end, so that the timeline stayed intact.
People & Culture🗿
Vernacular is a tech-driven startup that primarily needs to focus on improving the Voice-bots, which is their flagship product. So, not much emphasis was given on design earlier, which was valid in its own ways. But now things have begun to change. Design also became a valuable aspect, not only to increase user efficiency but to provide them with a better experience while using the tool — Console.
Even though this was a virtual internship, I interacted closely with a lot of people. My suggestions were valued, which helped me gain tons of confidence. People here were very talented — many loved gaming, some T.T., and some love playing guitars. Unfortunately, I was not able to interact with them all.
But there were a few fantastic people I interacted with throughout my internship:
- Pravj — He was my reporting manager for the internship and the leader of the Product pack. Few people like to call him the Zen God of the company.
- Manchi — One of the coolest in the organization and always up for fun chats and quality feedbacks.
- Lord Sarin — I worshiped (worked with) him for a month, and he rewarded me when he turned on his Video on the call. I have another tiny wish LORD, Let’s grab a beer when I come to Banglore soon.
- Vipul — He is the instrument shop owner at vernacular and a super talented person.
- Shraddha — Our beloved H.R., dullness stays away from her, but she’s an awful secret-keeper.
- Kanika — I’m sure her teachers always had one complaint about her that she is a super-talkative, hyper-energetic kid.
- Snigdha — She created an aura of being super-serious, but it turned out to be a hoax. She’s a funny person who loves ghewar (Rajasthani Sweet).
Cultivating Habits🚜
A. Reading📜
Reading has and will always be an essential aspect of personal and professional growth. In the earlier phase of my internship, I read a lot of Machine Learning stuff for efficiently communicating with the team(s). During the day, I took out at least 1 hour for reading various articles and blogs mostly related to tech and design, and I tried to implement the learning in my work.
B. Interpersonal Skills🗣️
This took a while…but I learned it…phew…. In the beginning, I was a bit hesitant to communicate with others, which limited my interaction within the organization. This happened majorly because I was not used to talking to a blank screen ( 😑 P.S.: Corona! I hate you.). I slowly overcame this and started reaching out to people directly. This helped a lot, I made a lot of friends, and in the later phase of my internship performed in front of a crowd of 62 people on a Zoom call🎸.
Blockers and Solution ⚠️🧠
Undoubtedly, work from home comes with a lot of conveniences. It saves us travel time. We can work within our own comforts of home and can take breaks whenever we like. No rules are applicable. But, it also comes in a package inclusive of some demerits. Disruption of my sleep cycle is just one, to begin with. Limited interaction with peers, lethargy, procrastination, and this list kept on piling up with each passing day. I hadn’t experienced such a prolonged period in this setting. I was new to it but still learned to find my way out from such road blockers in my way of success.
Here are a few major blockers that tried to drag me away from work but I came back again and again and again(*dramatic music plays🥁):
- Delay in work because other people were busy🚧 — I mostly worked with a colleague with much experience and in-depth knowledge about the project I was working on. Mostly, he helped me find my way out in times of difficulty and was the one validating decisions for the project. Sometimes, their work would keep them so occupied that I didn’t really get the chance to discuss my progress. It slowed down my project a bit. To find a way out, I tried to figure out things that I could handle on my own and started working on those and also made progress in the long term projects in the meanwhile. This helped me save my time and improved the progress that I made. I also worked on the long-term project and made progress there.
- Being the lone Designer in the organization💂 — Being the lone designer in the company worked as a blocker as well as an opportunity for me to grab. Not being able to consult someone belonging to the design domain, was definitely a blocker for me. This deprived me of necessary and adequate feedback, ways to improve, and a guidance source. To justify how it was an opportunity for me, I took the ownership of demonstrating the whole company various prospects they were missing out on. I had a golden chance to create a whole ecosystem there. To deal with this situation, I used to critique myself a lot, I used to call up various seniors in other organizations to guide my way through it. Such experiences bring great learning, and you tend to grow a lot in the field. Taking ownership isn’t easy, but I managed to pave my way out. My managers were pretty happy with my progress and praised me for the amazing job I was doing.
Learnings and Skill Acquisition📚
Although there wasn’t a designated Design team as such, this experience helped me immensely to grow as a Product Designer. This happened due to a couple of reasons:
- The people in the Product team helped me get answers to all my questions on the projects I worked, no matter how silly they sounded.
- They course-corrected me whenever I got a bit distracted.
- The interfaces I designed became functional, and people started using them, so I was able to collect data and funnel the information accordingly, to improve the designs further.
- I did not shy away from asking, sometimes I even took the help of my college seniors wherever I got stuck, and they guided me along every time.
I learned to articulate my thoughts as I was allowed to write PRDs — Product Requirements Document, for projects I was working on, which were later reviewed and refined by the Product Managers. This was a good exercise because it happened quite often, and as a designer, one must learn to articulate the design decisions and process for other team members to understand.
I explored a complete new theory called Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) [Good article -must read], which was applicable in design and also in other aspects of the business. This theory helped me to look at a product from a completely different angle. There was still a lot to be explored but we, as a team, tried to use this as an experiment and got some pretty good results in the process.
My work was broadly divided into Long term and Short term tasks; The long term tasks comprised of building a design system for Vernacular and re-structuring Console to incorporate new features in it. The short term tasks consisted of designing new services that were in the pipeline and upgrading the current version of existing service with Console.
In the End…🛣️
There is still a lot to say, but I guess I’ll wind up this article here and say that this internship was a fun experience. I enjoyed working here, learned to handle the pressure of ownership, enjoyed all the fun talks, and everything the company had to offer. However, I wished for an in-office experience and not communicating with people on a black screen.
I improved a lot, not only in terms of my skills but as a person too. I also learned to discipline myself when no one was checking, and I devised ways to deal with different blockers and even learned a bit of guitar🎸 and singing🎤 along the way.
A big Thanks to the people at Vernacular.ai for such an amazing experience…🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
