After several interviews and the trial, I joined the company and here I am, one year later.
Discovering Automattic and Automattic Design
I liked the onboarding process for new employees. It isn’t very common for a company to ask you to spend the first week learning about the company culture and values, how the teams work, and talking with customers. It’s an invaluable experience that quickly sets you up for success.
Joining the Dotcom Design team, responsible for WordPress.com, felt like coming home from the very start. Despite Automattic being a distributed company, onboarding with a team felt surprisingly seamless.
Teaming up with developers, my focus mainly centered on enhancing the Newsletters feature. Together, we conceptualized, developed, and launched several new features, enhancing the product experience.
I recently joined Jetpack Design, and I’m super excited to learn more about how they work and the challenges they have.
What I’ve learned this first year
@shaunandrews taught me the importance of having a Design Compass,—a personal design ethos guiding every designer through the labyrinth of uncertainty in our profession. Here’s mine (for now):
Design is collaborative
Work alongside diverse professionals—designers, developers, copywriters, data scientists—because great design knows no boundaries.
Share, but don’t wait
I can hear you thinking that we can’t share everything all the time, because we’ll get stuck waiting for approval from others. And that’s right. The key here is to have a vision and work in small iterations, which can ship quickly
We want everything to be as perfect as possible all the time, but this is not always possible. My approach is to ask: is it better than what exists now? If so, go ahead, even if some nuances still need to be addressed.
Design is iterative by nature, and we shouldn’t get stuck waiting for feedback. Especially at Automattic, a distributed and async company, where you may work with people who aren’t in your same time zone.
Don’t be afraid to share early work
We should get used to sharing work-in-progress ideas. Think of wireframes, interfaces that “aren’t quite there yet”, and even sketches. Shorten the feedback loop as much as possible. In design, it is not easy to change the course of an entire idea when it is already underway, so the sooner we take the right direction, the better.
You don’t know everything
It can be daunting when you’re working on a flow or layout and sharing it thinking you’ve accounted for every possible nuance… and then you realize that you missed something important. That’s why it’s a good idea to share early work, so you can learn faster and iterate quickly.
Own your time
Balancing autonomy with responsibility is an art, and it’s easier said than done. All weeks are different: there are some days where I have (more or less) control over what I’m working on, and others where I’m drowning in documentation to read and videos to watch. And that is fine.
It’s all part of the journey—just know what and why you’re working on it.
Design QA
A lot can happen between a Figma file and the live version. Over time, other projects can inadvertently introduce changes to what you designed. It is important to check what’s live regularly, including the whole flow.
Think globally
A company like Automattic demands that you consider the big picture. Some flows and systems are intertwined, and there are many touchpoints. It’s about ensuring that the story you tell is the same in each one.
Trust your team
Last, but not least: design isn’t a solo act. Sometimes you’ll get stuck and end up in a rabbit hole where you can’t find the right solution. Embrace collaboration, share it with your team (designers or not), and hear their opinions and ideas. Their context is different, so their ideas can help you use a different approach. And in the end, we all want the product to succeed :)
Wrapping up Year One
I can’t believe it’s been a year already since I joined the team at Automattic. I’m filled with gratitude for the growth and opportunities it has brought. The challenges I’ve faced have honed my skills and expanded my perspective, thanks in no small part to the incredible support of the team. Their expertise and encouragement have been the secret sauce to my growth and achievements.
I can’t wait to see what challenges and adventures the next year brings!
Automattic Design 