How not to go insane when your epic project is killed 💔
I guess each of us, at some point in our design careers, have worked on a project from scratch. Over time you develop this deep bond with it and eventually, you started calling it your baby. You were over the moon about it, you liked to come to work. Awesome!
That’s exactly what happened to me. I, UX Designer from Slovakia, moved to Germany to work for IBM Studios Boeblingen, and got to spend a year designing the UX for IBM Digital Business Assistant! I loved it so much that I would spend the weekends thinking about how to solve some design problems and how to make it better. I would wake up in the middle of the night from a dream in which I was freaking out about notifications and feed designs. I would go for a dinner with my friends and sketch out some interactions on a napkin. So in short, yes I was into it! It was cool since this project had quickly become my hobby and so I was excited to come to work every day. Yay!
The Project
In a nutshell, the way I would explain IBM Digital Business Assistant to my parents is, it is an Assistant for business people like Siri, but without Siri so it would proactively notify you of important situations you would previously turn on … like Alexa Skills I suppose.
So, what did I love so much about it? I loved how we wanted to solve the pain of overwhelmed business users, who are losing awareness of what is happening around them. Let’s say a manager is super busy doing his work and as he tackles his daily tasks, he might not realize some important situations happened. For instance, a negative article about a bank partner gets published. This article could highly impact a contract the manager is about to sign with the bank and guess what, he will likely find out too late, so that’s why our Assistant was about to be created.
We did IBM Design Thinking workshop Austin, TX, formed a team of 10 designers and voilà we were ready to start researching and designing. The cool thing was that I got to lead mobile first approach what ensured simple interactions from start. And believe me, this was a big deal! Even though this seemed like simple UX work, “BTW: it is 2018 … everything should be mobile first, huh?!”, at a large organization like IBM this proved to be a complex task. But I managed to create good relationships with other stakeholders and made it happen. Luckily, we ended up having native iOS & Android app, as well as responsive web, which made UX process fun! Not to forget, the visuals were playful and we had great plans with it — mostly AI driven. I could not wait to release this and expand further.
Nightmare #1
Everything was going great, until on one, cold German December day, I was told that IBM is going through a co-location movement, and now all designers on my project will be located in Austin, Texas, HQ of IBM Design, in order to be close to Offering Management (IBMs Product Manager) and Engineering. Sounds cool, but since I was based in Germany it was pretty crappy news to me. I would have to change a project 😳.
I was obviously struck with this news as I felt I’m about to lose my project. But the unpleasant situation turned around when I got an exciting relocation offer to Austin, to work on this project side by side the most talented designers at IBM Design. WOW, that was unexpected! Let’s do this!
Yaay Austin
Seven. Yes. It took seven months to actually get the visas, finish paperwork and finally board on a plane to the USA. I felt like, this is it! I’m living my dream, I’m moving to Austin to continue working on my dream project.
When I finally made it there, it was crazy hot, around 100℉ (37℃) temperature, but I didn’t mind because I was excited about being in USA, seeing familiar IBM Design campus and finally eating proper tacos 🌮 ! It was a great moment and a fresh restart of my life, including a new apartment, car, friends and everything.
Nightmare #2
Everything seemed to be looking pretty good. Then at one point, we had scheduled our first team meeting, which I thought would be a great opportunity to meet finally everyone in person. Yaay! However, this meeting turned out to be my biggest nightmare. We got news from the management — my baby would be absorbed into another successful project (IBM App Connect) located in the Brexit-ready UK. Finito!
It was all played very nicely, they told us how impactful our work was, and that we did and outstanding job proving this area needs to be tackled, but it was time to merge a product portfolio. Despite that, the news hit me hard, I was totally speechless. So I put all sweat and tears into this, moved to another continent and ….. wait what did just happen? It felt like my whole world broke down. I felt so disappointed and let down, at the time it was hard to find a silver lining. I felt like shit honestly … 😭
Lessons learned
It took me a while to figure stuff out and bounce back from this letdown. So I wanted to share the lessons I learned and how not to become insane when you project is killed.
❤️ Lesson 1: If you can, absolutely fall in love your work. You will be much happier to come every day to your desk and design, sketch or prototype. However, don’t get too attached to this single one project, but instead try to enjoy the ride, have fun with your team, learn as you go.
👫 Lesson 2. If you like your project, then it is all perfect, but don’t forget that your work is not everything. Keep doing your hobbies, meet your friends, because those will stay as opposed to projects which might not.
💥 Lesson 3: Don’t think of a project release as the only measure of your success. I know you want to have a shiny portfolio, but I bet you have learned a lot while working on it, so while you might end not having anything to show, your experience is invaluable and you have probably earned some reputation doing a good job anyway.
🤴 Lesson 4: You are likely not a CEO of your own company so bare in mind that your projects can change anytime and you won’t be able to do anything about it. Projects come and go, so be open to any new opportunities. Everything happens for a reason — cliche but true. Check out what my good friend and UX Designer wrote on this topic as a part of his 2017 review, so there is definitely something about this.
🏄🏼 Lesson 5: If you are ever stuck in a similar situation as me, then some take time off and explore what else was there that you wanted to do, but you couldn’t because you spent your whole time thinking about your work. For example, I’ve got to do surfing, kayaking, hiking, swimming, car racing, biking etc 🙌.
Final words
Eventually, I got over it and I’m having a new project, in a new environment, with good people and hell yeah I’m in the USA!! To be completely honest, I’m thankful for this experience, because it helped to grow as a designer and I have now better perspective on my work & free time. It is now all cool and I’m grateful for IBM bringing me here, even though the primary purpose of my move didn’t work out as planned. Anyway, I recently started exploring the autocross scene in Austin, so if you are into design or cars hit me up :)
Do you have any other ways how to tackle such situations? Share them below :)
PS: I’d like to thank Sasha Kerbel, Sammy Schuckert and esteban pérez-hemminger for their epic support when writing this blog 🙏.
