One thing I realized from interning at Viacom was that they plan ahead far ahead from their launch updates on their apps. The designers collaborate with the developers and product managers in order to plan out what should be done in certain time increments. In order for everyone to be aware of what’s going on in each team they have the employees attend a road map meeting session at Viacom Time Square building. Jason told me that I should attend in order to get a better understanding on how they plan on releasing certain builds of the MTV app.

My experience at this road map meeting was kind of boring. I don’t think designers really need to be there since they just hand the designs files to the developers. However, Jason explained to me that designers need to be there to support the developers in communicating with the product managers on what is going to happen with future designs. They need to be there to help them keep up to date with information and help them if they don’t know how to explain the up coming design changes on the apps.

The place that we were having this meeting was kind of big and there were also refreshments and lunch provided. It was the whole day from 9am to 5pm and I think I stayed in that place without leaving for the whole day. It was sort of like a big conference/meeting in some sort of way. Overall it was a good experience in understanding how a company like Viacom plans things in term of releasing their apps to the public.