Talking My Way Into Product
How I got into product: I talked my way into a telemedicine startup with no software experience, taught myself design, and redesigned onboarding to grow adoption 200%.
- Role
- Intern → Product Manager & Designer
- Timeframe
- 2015 – 2018
Context
eVisit is a telemedicine platform that lets physicians care for patients anywhere. I found it as a student. I was the student representative on an Arizona State University board and met the company's CEO there. I'd just taken a human-computer interaction course and designed a parking-spot app, and I had zero real software experience, but I asked him for any way to get involved.
The work
I started as a “general” intern, building financial dashboards, reporting on customer issues, and learning how the business actually worked. Then the Director of Product invited me to wireframe with him on pencil and paper: our task was to redesign the login screen to lift account completion, which grew into a full redesign of new-patient onboarding. I fell in love with it. I taught myself Photoshop to mock it up (rough, looking back), kept building the craft, and ended up leading our move to a Sketch design system when it launched. The internship became a focused product design and PM role, and then a full-time job after graduation, right before Paradox.
Impact
- Talked my way in with no software background, going from general intern to Product Manager & Designer
- Redesigned new-patient onboarding, growing adoption 200%
- Self-taught design; led the team's move to a Sketch design system
- Owned features end-to-end, from research to design to the engineering build
What it taught me
This is where I learned how far curiosity and a willingness to learn can take you. I didn't have the software background yet, but I had a real pull toward how people and technology meet, and I taught myself the rest.
