who else is the sole designer at a startup trying to work out how to do *all the things*?

Sounds it! Ours is a few years in too but I only joined a year ago when there wasn’t a full time designer previously, lots to do! Also pretty technical in some areas as it’s a music tool, but yours sounds very. Do you do a lot of user research?

I started just 3 weeks ago, mid-sprint(s) towards the year’s largest games industry expo in a week, so…no haha 🌪️🌊 It’s the plan though, but a lot of the work rn is just to scaffold and introduce basic design process actions to the teams

Yeah makes sense. I’ve sporadically managed to fit some in and thankfully have a CEO, backend dev and PM who all try to get it done too, but it’s hard to integrate it properly, still a work in progress!

It sure is. I’ve realized with time that orgs either want to do this or not. Trying to steer a boat, by nudging it from down the engine room, never justifies the opportunity cost when compared to running the engine on a ship that’s already en course