Summer in Solutions 2022 – New Experiences within UX Design

Ella’s name has been changed for this blog post.

This time in Summer in Solutions 2022 -blog series we get to hear from our User Experience Design trainees! What does a typical day for a UX designer look like? What excites our trainees about their summer job? How does the portfolio help a future UX designer with recruitments? Read further, and soon you’ll know the answers to these questions!

Back to basics; what is UX Design? Well, User Experience Designers explore how the customer would like to use the program and what kind of needs they have in terms of it. The work typically includes planning improvements for user experience, testing the plans and testing whether the customer can do everything they want to do with the program.

In practice, the improvements are done in terms of product usability and for example include modifications on how a product looks and how it functions from a customer’s perspective. Designers’ job is to ensure that our software solutions serve customers’ needs in the best way possible and this is also what our trainees are working with!

A dream of creating better digital services

One of our two design trainees, Jasminka, is studying a Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction in Tallin University. She wanted to pursue a new chapter in her career journey, and after seeing the job announcement on LinkedIn she applied for Visma Solutions. Moreover, she was interested in the fact that Visma has a great impact on our society through technology as well as learning more about the Finnish working culture since Jasminka herself is from Serbia. With this job, Jasminka wanted to challenge herself.

I was eager to challenge myself working in a large international company and learn more about Finnish working culture. Visma sparked my interest as a place with an active role in shaping the future of society through technology.

Our other trainee, Ella, found her passion through previous work; her reason for applying for this position came from a former job experience within financial management. She felt frustrated towards existing platforms in use because they didn’t work very well.

She started working on platforms and how to make them better. Gradually the excitement grew into a dream of being able to create platforms from scratch. Then, the right job announcement suddenly appeared in front of her and it felt like it would be a dream come true to work for Visma. The fact that there would be great opportunities to grow and move forward inside the company seemed attractive for her.

In addition to pure interest towards UX design, Ella has gained a lot of relevant experience before this summer. For example, she has completed different educational lines related to internet services production and maintenance, webstore as well as marketing. In addition to this, she has taken a course about coding in Haaga-Helia, Google professional UX course as well as LUT University’s course in user interfaces and usability. Previous work experience with websites, webpages, graphic design and marketing have also been helpful in finding her own interests and getting a desired direction for her career.

Portfolios on point

For UX designer applicants the interview process had two steps. First, they had a remote interview after which they were invited to the office for another interview where they presented their previous work with a portfolio. A portfolio can include for example case studies, previous designs and what kind of education the applicant has gone through. This is a great way to show what you can do, especially when it’s about a visual job. Overall, the recruiting process was quick and smooth for both of the design trainees.

They both have been very happy about the job so far; for example amazing colleagues, nice office and good working equipment are highlighted as having a positive effect on the overall experience. Also, there has been a great balance between freedom and responsibilities!

Planning, testing and supporting

Jasminka summarises the experience after starting as follows: “When I first started, I received an introduction to Visma, the company visions and the UX processes practised. Although my mentor left the company at the beginning of my internship period, kind colleagues from the design department were always there to support me and help me on my everyday design journey.”

Kind colleagues from the design department were always there to support me and help me on my everyday design journey.

Our trainees work in different teams hence the projects look a little different for them: “The project I am working on is the core product of Visma Solutions services. My task is to support the development of the Design System, components and documentation while operating closely with front-end developers and UX designers”, Jasminka explains. Ella herself is working in two teams; the design team and controller team.

UX design trainees get to experience and learn many things during the traineeship. Ella tells us that for example, a program called Figma is in active use in her day-to-day work. Designers use it for planning new “user views” and maintaining the old ones. Moreover, the Controller team plans and executes the Controller section of Netvisor.

There are many different programs in use for designers. For Ella, ‘Maze testing tool’ was a new one but still easy to learn and use. Maze works so that first a designer uses a planning tool to create a wanted customer view and then transforms it to Maze where it’s possible to plan questions and tasks for clients. The responses can be used for analyses and further improvements!

People & projects = <3

Our design trainees work mostly online (remotely) which seems to have been working well so far. There are plenty of online meetings in which people tend to use cameras actively. It’s nice to see your work buddies also while working remotely. For example, Ella explains that the controller team meets everyday while the design team meets a few times per week.

Good colleagues and meaningful projects are the two most important things that matter when it comes to working places.

Design trainees agree about the positive work atmosphere in Solutions. It tends to make you excited when people are supportive towards innovations. The best part has been the team and colleagues: “I appreciate a friendly working atmosphere and genuine colleagues from all the Visma departments because good colleagues and meaningful projects are the two most important things that matter when it comes to working places.”

Summer in Solutions 2022 -blog series is coordinated and written by the marketing trainees of this summer, Ilona Kämäräinen and Sanni Okkonen.