Meet Our Design Strategist- Semih Özkoç

From the only designer in the design team to becoming our Design Strategist, Semih came a long way. We interviewed Semih to share his experience at Insider, here’s what he had to say …

Let’s go back to 2015, when you joined Insider

I joined the team when we were working with freelancers and to be honest our products were conceptualized by product managers and developers. When I joined the team, we were expanding rapidly all around the globe and building our growth management platform. I was lucky that the team was still small and we decided to deconstruct the whole platform instead of going for a quick fix.

What is your current role?

As the Lead Design Strategist, I work closely with my Head of Design to define the strategic objectives — vision and strategy — to team objectives and tactical plans, as well as execution and monitoring them.

Sounds Fancy..:D What you actually do?

On a typical day, I meet the head of design to check the daily tasks, monitor the progress, help my peers and junior designer with their work, meet product managers to showcase designs and take design interviews. Every month, I also meet our clients and users to take interviews and feedback on the product for improving the experience.

What have you found most challenging about your role?

Biggest challenge is maintaining consistency and doing design critics. We operate in more than 21 countries so meeting users expectation and designing for such a large audience is also a challenge. Designing for SAAS products are very different from designing for a consumer based app. SaaS products are complex. This naturally leads to complexity in the UI. I need to think through the UX design thoroughly so that we can hide the complexity of the features and deliver an easy experience for the user.The user must not feel lost or frustrated at any point.

Is it true that you hired your Head of Design?

Yeah..Around 2018, We grew in terms of products and offices in 19 countries however in terms of design team, we were only 2 full time designers. I was juggling my time designing, meetings and interviewing designers..It was a mess. To be honest, I was rushing stuff and not enjoying the only thing I love…Design and was also not able to spend time to learn. so I talked to my co-founders that I need someone who will help me to grow the team, can be a leadership figure and will help me to achieve my career goals.

How was that experience? Was it odd to hire someone you will report ?

It was not easy to be honest. Maintaining my daily design tasks and taking almost 3–4 interviews per day was exhausting. It was not odd because I has a clear goal in mind. I was never apprehensive of hiring someone above me. In fact I wanted a person from Design background as my head because all my life I worked under Co-founders and Product managers.

In a way it was odd for the people I interviewed. A lot of them even left the interview knowing that the person who is interviewing them will be reporting to them.

After taking almost 150 interviews and meeting people from Europe, South Asia and even US, we found the right match in India.

What it’s like to be a part of Insider’s product design team?

We are a young and dynamic team with quite a diversity, we have people from 3 different nationalities. Diversity is something we take pride in. I think designers working in Insider create a huge impact. We are not a strict corporation with hierarchy. Head of design, the Co-founders and even our CEO are approachable. Even the junior designers are encouraged to talk to customers and learn the end to end design process. We focus a lot of research and make sure the developed product by the engineering team is well tested.

We also focus a lot on enjoying as a team. Team activities are done weekly.

Whoever joins our team will be exposed to the fast paced growth of Insider and will learn from a great bunch of designers.

We are right now 10 people out of which 5 senior designers and , 4 Junior designers and a UX writer.We will be hiring rapidly in 2020 and have a target to hire 8 more people from UX, Visual and Research background.

Semih is a Lead Design Strategist in the product design team at Insider. Check him on Instagram and Linkedin

Want to join Semih on the Product Design Team? We’re hiring UX Researchers and Product Designers.