For the first time, I am leading a team of 2 at Crpko (Equicomtech).

Today I saw a major unlock for my team. Shaina is a graphic designer, and while working together we found a major issue with how graphics get updated across the web and mobile platforms.

The current flow involved downloading assets, sharing them through Drive organised in folders: boring, manual, and slow. Every update meant repeating the same tedious steps.

I took the initiative to have Shaina build an app specifically for managing graphics. Here is the link: Shainam.vercel.app

Yesterday before closing the day, I suggested adding animations for each SVG uploaded in the graphics app.

There are many ways to do it, but which one to pick depends on how effortlessly you can make it happen.

During the discussion, one idea was to build an editor environment inside the app for animations. Too much time and effort.

The real solution came during a smoke break. I do not smoke, but I join others because ideas flow really well at that time.

The idea: create identifiers for SVG elements that need to be animated, and assign a CSS class for each animation type. No editor needed. Clean, simple, and fast to implement.

Hiring is very important. More than skills, communication is important. As agents become more powerful, even right now they can design, but what to design and how is still the job of a human, which needs clear communication.

In my last hire, I neglected this and went for only work because it was urgent. But it did not turn out to be much help.

Yesterday, I met with our Legal Compliance head. What an energetic person. Being 54, he is great at his work.

One thing we discussed that I want to share here: if you do something for some days it becomes a habit. More, it becomes a hobby. More, it becomes a passion. More, it becomes character. At work, try to build character.

Based on this, I shared this with my team. I am doing my best, but the problem is there is no feedback from teammates about my leadership.

Today I was thinking about my team and how I can utilise them at max.

The graphic designer is set, no worries there. The UI designer is where I feel a little worried. More of his work is just becoming implementation, and without a brain behind it, there is no real work. So I decided to assign him the role of UX researcher.

Research is the differentiating factor next. You can get good UI, even all sorts of UI, out of AI tools. The real question becomes what to do and how to do it, and most are not doing that in a way that gets to the best version.

I already have something for this. Internally I built an app to capture all the references in our sector, which gives a lot of real-world, shipped designs. The next step is figuring out what to implement.

To my surprise, I forgot the UI designer is on leave today. So tomorrow when he comes in, I will assign him to capture references and come up with ideas to work on.

Today I also interviewed Bhumika. For three hours we brainstormed on ideas, and over my expectation she actually learned about Liquidation and came up with what it is and what can be done. That was good.