Remember that I promised you to reveal more about the work of my UX colleagues?
The day has come!
When I learnt what UX is about, I was curious what an average working day of our UX experts would look like.
In a nutshell: there’s no average.
Every day is different.
Varied and exciting rather than humdrum.
Apart from their morning routine, maybe 😉.
That’s why the following just represents an example day in the life of our UX team.
8:00 am
Anja gets herself some water, checks her emails as well as the team’s JIRA board to see what’s up for the day.
8:30 am
Focus time! If there’s no early UI text session, Anja can concentrate on her scheduled tasks. Later in the day this becomes difficult, as colleagues check back on UX concepts, bring up questions, or discuss stuff.
9:00 am
Lena enters the office. She grabs a coffee, checks her mails, and discusses the tasks for the day with Anja.
9:30 am
It’s time for the daily. Together with the other teammates, Anja and Lena quickly go through yesterday’s tasks, and what’s scheduled for the day. Afterwards, they might make some quick arrangements and scheduling together with their Scrum Master.
9:40 am
The ladies have some time for alignments, meeting preparations, and also to focus on tasks.
11:00 am
Usually, the meeting marathon starts off at 11. If it’s a UX meeting, PM meeting, UI text session, roadmap meetings or development team review - there’s no time to breathe until lunch.
12:00 am
Around 12 am the stomach rumbles. Time for a lunch break. If the weather is nice, they grab something from one of the many restaurants around and have a picnic in the park or go for a walk. Sometimes they bring their own food and eat in our social room, which is also a great choice for lunch.
Thursdays are a bit different.
Anja attends the yoga session together with many other colleagues.
Yeah, you’ve read that right.
We can show off a bit - we have our private yoga trainer.
Yoga is an awesome distraction right in the middle of a work day.
1:00 pm
The afternoon starts as varied as the morning. If they are lucky, our UX ladies have some focus time for their scheduled tasks. Or there are periods, where they have time blockers to plan and conduct usability tests. Or they sit together and discuss UX concepts, do research or contextual inquiries. If they get stuck on something or need advice, they go over to our designers and ask them to walk through the issue together.
2:00 pm
Once all the teams are back from lunch, the office gets crowded again. This means, it’s time for the next meetings. This can be discussions about help center articles, alignments with the product owners, arranging UX requirements or clarifying implementation queries from our designers.
3:30 pm
Time to quickly gather with some colleagues at the favorite coffee shop to grab a soy latte or almond cappuccino. Yummy!
3:45 pm
The coffee cup still in hand, this is a good time for Anja and Lena to meet with their UI writing colleague. There’s work to do on aligning UI texts and style guidelines, scheduling next steps, and thinking about the big picture.
Every month, this will perhaps be the time to discuss topics to show in their team review and preparing the slides accordingly.
5:30 pm
Anja says goodbye, and heads towards the train station to enjoy the evening at home. Whereas Lena takes the advantage of the calmer office hours to tackle her scheduled tasks.
6:30 pm
Time for Lena to switch the light off and go home.
Boring job? No way!
As I said, every day is different. And this makes the job exciting and colorful. Communication is king in the life of my UX colleagues, and is definitely required on a UXers’ set card together with creativity and open-mindedness.
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