Welcome back! We hope you’ve enjoyed getting to know our first set of designers, and are excited to meet the next set of creative minds in our mini-series. At Fullscript, we have our well loved Wherever You Work Well philosophy, meaning our teammates get to pick their own office — whether that’s in-office, at home, or a little bit of both. This time, our designers will share a little about their journey into design, and how we collaborate so well together, so far apart.

Our team members today are: Johnavan 🤙🏾, Anna 🦑, Colin 🧙, and Thomas😂

So, who are you?

🤙🏾 Hey, I’m Johnavan! I’m a Product Designer here at Fullscript and am based out of Toronto. I work on the care delivery experience for practitioners. I joined Fullscript back in 2019 after having a sudden realization that product design was something I wanted to explore. I joined as an intern, and have been here ever since. I’m proud to be able to say that I’m technically the second longest standing designer on our team! If not designing, you’ll find me running around the city in a pair of Jordans, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a camera in another. Design, sneakers, coffee, and photography pretty much sums my life in a nutshell. Fellow Stagg pour-over kettle in matte black.

🦑 Hi, I’m Anna. I’m a Product Designer on the Design Systems team. Currently, I reside in Toronto but I had a chance to live in Russia, the Czech Republic, and the USA before I moved to Canada 3 years ago. And so far I really like Toronto. I enjoy taking a ride along the waterfront on my board after work, or going to the AGO on the weekends. There is a very dynamic vibe in this city and it suits me really well. But, maybe I will be somewhere else in a year — Vancouver sounds like a good option! I’m super glad that Fullscript supports us in working anywhere across Canada. Rolling Pin.

🧙 I’m Colin, Lead Product Designer for the Platform division and very recent addition to this fabulous team. Some of my favourite things in life are riding my bike, reading weird comics, deeply exploring the infinite library of music that exists in our world, and hanging out with my partner and dog in the mountains. My claims to fame are running great games of old-school Dungeons and Dragons, getting my bike stolen while riding to Mexico and watching far too many movies, especially strange ones. Kettle (Electric).

😂 Hola, I’m Thomas, Product Designer who recently joined the Care Delivery team at Fullscript! Growing up I’ve always considered myself a city boy, but since moving in with my partner in Gatineau I’ve come to realize just how important it is being close to nature and having access to walkways and bike paths. Fun facts: two truths and a lie, outside of work you can catch me playing video games on the Xbox (right now we’re playing Dying Light 2), planning the next destination get-away (preferably to a place with lots of snow), and trying new food recipes. Air fryer.

Pro-tip: preheat your air fryer to 385 for 5–10 minutes before popping in your chicken wings to get that crispy, crunchy oh-a-sensation without using a single drop of oil. You can thank me later, you’re welcome. :)

Why did you become a designer?

🤙🏾 I spent most of my life thinking I wanted to code. I went to Carleton University for Computer Science and was chugging along, getting through my degree. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed what I was doing in school, however there was always a doubt of whether this was actually the right thing for me. In 2018, I had the opportunity to direct a concept video (shameless plug here) based off of a popular Tamil song which had been released that summer. The entire creative process was very exciting. I enjoyed conceptualizing visuals and thinking about how they could be crafted together to tell a story. Whether it was figuring out how a scene could be shot to immediately grasp a viewer’s attention or how colours and sounds could be used to bring out various emotions, getting to experience every stage of this process was eye-opening, to say the least. It made me realize I wanted a career where I could express my creativity while also being able to apply the knowledge I learnt from my degree. After doing some research I discovered the world of product design, and immediately set myself on a path to somehow take my shot at it. One year later, I ended up getting an internship at Fullscript and over the course of those few months, I learned to love product design more than ever. It checked all my boxes for my dream career and to this day I wake up every morning never feeling like I’m going into “work”. Literally, this is more than I could ever ask for.

🦑 The end goal of becoming a designer was not so clear to me from the beginning. I have always been enthusiastic about drawing and creating something visual. But on the path of finding myself, I rushed from studying economics to creativity, from marketing to graphic design. I tried myself in web development too. And this is where I discovered my desire to create solutions that are visually beautiful and at the same time provide people with the proper solution to their needs. Since then, it of course transformed from just beautiful working solutions to helping my team and working together towards a common goal — creating products that make people’s lives better.

🧙 I fell into design via a love of animation and film. I went to school intending to work in the film industry, but found that making things for the web was much more exciting and weird. I like weird. I’ve spent my post-school life trying as many things as I could, including web, print, product and packaging design. Somehow I even found myself publishing books and games. A big part of my design story involves taking a few years away from full time design work to ride my bike thousands of kilometers around North America and ski to the top of a bunch of mountains. During this time I read Practical Empathy, which re-inspired me to focus more of my energy on human centered design practices and double down on making things that help people.

😂 I kickstarted my career through freelance design, working with individual clients and helping teams who were taking the Founders Institute program to bring their startup ideas and concepts to life. Around this time there were two significant events that really solidified my decision to become a designer. The first one was participating at a startup event hosted at the University of Ottawa called “Startup Weekend Ottawa” and the second one was volunteering as a Lead Designer at a non-profit organization called “Hacking Health Ottawa”. Both of these events showed me the excitement and joy of not only sharing your work in a high pressure environment, but also being able to make a difference in helping solve challenges within the healthcare industry.

How do you approach collaboration in your craft?

🤙🏾 Simply saying that collaboration is important in the creative field is a huge understatement. A single individual could be the most creative person in the room, but that alone couldn’t compare to the creative potential of multiple individuals putting their minds together. The art of collaboration is actually one of the many things I love about being a product designer. When it comes to my own craft, I like to join forces with others during the beginning and final stages of a project. For example, when given a problem to solve, I like to first get in a room (or a video call nowadays) with others and brainstorm ideas. This is usually with a product manager and tech lead, so that we’re making sure that we’re ideating from a technical, business, and design perspective. Once I think we’re at a good spot, I go off on my own to do my thing. I typically check in periodically with others so that I know I’m on the right track. When I hit the end of a project, I like to do one final review with the other designers on my team to ensure I’m presenting something that’s in its best form. If I’m going to leave you here with one piece of advice, it’d be that whenever you’re stuck on a problem, don’t think twice about asking for help. Whatever it is, I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out with the help of others.

🦑 Collaboration is crucial for Design Systems work. It differs depending on who you’re collaborating with. With the designers, I look at the components together. We decide what needs to be changed and what things should stay. With the engineers, I focus both on discussing the initial ideas and on simultaneous work on some areas of our system. I think the most important thing is to involve all parties in the collaboration, communicate and show findings and progress as much as possible.

🧙 I love to solve problems through people. An ideal work day for me is being locked in a big room with a bunch of people who are much smarter than me. Combining research, data and the lived experiences of a diverse group of people is very empowering for design work, and embracing a bit of chaos is both fun and energizing for me. We obviously can’t spend every day locked in a big room, but we can take that same spirit to our design work every day. Involving our cross-functional peers in every step of our design work to expand and improve our ideas is one of those important ways. While we may wish to only show the polished gems, our work will always benefit from showing our napkin sketches to developers, PMs, and whoever else is willing to give us their eyeballs. I find the more I do this, the less often I find myself creatively blocked.

Also, treat the meetings you organize like design problems. Meetings mostly suck, but we’re designers so we can make them awesome. Everyone will love you.

😂 One thing that I’ve noticed that the team does well, whether it’s a design review or showing some work in progress, is that the team strives to share context or a quick summary before jumping into the nitty gritty. As someone who recently joined Fullscript as a Product Designer on the Care Delivery team, this practice is much appreciated as it sets a clear framework and expectations that empowers new and current members to provide feedback that is tailored and timely based on your current progress within the design process.

Hope you learned a little more about us and figured out some tricks for collaborating! Follow along for our next set of designers :)