Startup Designers
Startup Designers is the biggest community for product and UX designers in Israel. Today the community has over 17,000 members participating in various initiatives including surveys, social media groups, meetups, webinars, mentorships, and more.
I founded the community in January 2017 and with time recruited
a leadership team to accommodate the growing needs of our community members.
The community’s website can be found at www.startupdesigners.co
Startup Designers
Startup Designers is the biggest community for product and UX designers in Israel. Today the community has over 17,000 members participating in various initiatives including surveys, social media groups, meetups, webinars, mentorships, and more.
I founded the community in January 2017 and with time recruited
a leadership team to accommodate the growing needs of our community members.
The community’s website can be found at www.startupdesigners.co
Mission Statement
As with any other major project, I started by identifying the target audience and the purpose. The community’s target audience is product designers. It doesn’t mean our community isn’t valuable for brand designers, or PMs. But it means that will curate our content and value to fit product designers specifically.
Our purpose is to share knowledge, learn and grow. This has led to our initiatives, work, and growth mindset for the last few years. Based on this we can decide what initiative to pursue and what is not a good fit for us.
The Visual Langauge
The visual language for the community has evolved into a consistent set of rules over time and today, any designer in Israel would immediately recognize it and connect it to the Startup Designers community. It is mostly recognized by the bright gradients combined with oval fluid shapes that often create frames. The language is used in all the community assets from banners to the surveys, the website, the instagram and facebook platforms, the events and more.
The Salary Surveys
Since 2019 I have conducted a yearly salary survey for the members of the community. Each year we have around 800 participants, who answer a questionnaire I compiled in around 10 minutes. I cross-examine the data points to identify trends and changes and prepare a final report of around 12 pages. The report covers subjects like work-life balance, salary size, satisfaction with work, gender gaps, influence of Covid on the job market and more.
The Mentorship Program
The community mentorship program is a pro-bono program dedicated to helping the design community in Israel grow and evolve as a family. With over 100 mentors volunteering their time, there were more than 1000 connections made between mentors and mentees. The program is divided into focus areas, from technical design tool classes to support with career changes and portfolio building.
The Live Events
Since the community was founded and up until the raise of Covid, we conducted monthly live events. The events were free to all designers and focused on delivering free knowledge and supporting designers with building a presentation and presenting to a large audience. Each event is hosted in a different Startup, with the goal of exposing designers to different work environments and possible offices they would like to see themselves in. Since Covid, our events have moved to an online format and have just recently gone back to the regular live format.
The Team
This community could not have grown and reached its success without the wonderful team I recruited along the way. Each team member has a specialty she’s in charge of, apart from the day-to-day social media group management. Apart from the core team, there are also contributors that support healthy communication within the community.
