Toodaloo post
Written by Birgit Timmerman on 2nd October 2015
I can’t believe this is the last day of my internship at Spindle. Time flew by. I accomplished a lot in the last twenty weeks I spend here. By writing this last blog post I want to say thank you to all of my co-workers who made it incredibly pleasant for me to work at Spindle.
My project
I am very pleased to say that my project has been very successful. You can read all about it in my previous blog posts. First I started with writing a plan of approach and research proposal. To figure out what the biggest usability issues were, I used a tool called ‘The User Compass’. Then I did in-depth interviews, card sorting sessions and a focus group session with the users of HelloLily. Once I made a new design of the dashboard of HelloLily, I researched the usability of the interface by doing paper-prototype sessions with the users and I evaluated the end result with a group of experts.
What I Like About You (The Romantics)
This may sound cheesy but I’m really going to miss working here. Of course we just moved to another workplace (The Big Building, really awesome) but this place is super great and sometimes it feels like I’m in the middle of a playground for kids. From 12:15pm till 13:15pm it can also be kind of dangerous because there are drones flying around, remote-controlled cars racing around your feet, ping-pong balls are bouncing everywhere, it’s crazy. But let’s not forget that when the break is over, everyone will return to their desks and work like (hola)crazy! During the rest of the day everyone is really focussed on the important things, and making innovative products that are changing the world.
Other than ‘the playground’, let’s not forget the stand-up moment every day at 12pm, the four-o-clock-beer-o-clock rule that applies on friday, the very (read: VERY) good lunch which is being prepared for us everyday, the helpful people, the smart people, the creative people, also the i-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about-but-you-sound-very-smart people (I still see myself as a ‘semi’ nerd and although I worked here for twenty weeks, I still don’t always understand what the developers are talking about. It’s like gibberish).
About the organisation model of the future, Holacracy, I’ve noticed that being completely responsible for your own job triggers your sense of entrepreneurship and self-organization and it helps create an efficient and stress-free workplace. I can imagine it would be a big change when I start working at a company where there is no holacracy.
One thing I am not going to miss are the walls of glass.. you can imagine why.
Thank you!
To all my co-workers: thank you so much for your kindness and your helpfulness. To all of my respondents: thank you for helping me out with my research methods. Without you my project would have never turned out like it did. And it really was a success because the developers of HelloLily are going to use my research to optimize HelloLily!
I wish you, people at Voys, VoIPGRID and Devhouse Spindle all the best and I hope we meet each other again soon.
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