A Day in the Life of a UX designer
Join Nicole, UX designer at MING Labs Singapore, on her day co-working with the team.
When I was asked what a typical day for me looks like at MING, it was a little hard to answer. My tasks differ so much from day to day depending on what I’m working on. But that’s also something that I enjoy about working at MING. While we’re many days free to work from home, I decided a day of co-working would be a nice one to share :-)
8:30 am — On the way to the office — Things I notice as a UX designer
In my career as a UX designer, I’ve realised that I’ve become increasingly more sensitive to everyday experiences (both pleasant and unpleasant) . Today on the way to work I had two such examples:
1st Occurrence — Signage
I use the train a lot in Singapore, and today at the station where I got off, the signage only had letters shown for each of the exits (as seen in the picture). It was different from the one I’m used to seeing which has roads or landmarks written beside the alphabet for each exit. My first thought was, “What do all these letters even mean, how do I know where to go?”
My next thought was: “This would not be acceptable in the UX world”. Here I am as a commuter in a crowded station during rush hour, not knowing which exit to take — I could either go to an empty corner to look up which exit to take from Google Maps or squeeze through the crowded station to the information board where the road names or landmarks of the exit were listed. Both of these should be avoidable through good design.
Second occurrence– lift system
When I finally found my way out and got to the office building, I was met by this lift system. This was my first time seeing a lift system like this, so this was an interesting interaction for me. It went like this:
- The select floor on the outside of the lift
- The screen will show which elevator to go to
- The elevator also clearly indicated which one was yours
- Once in the elevator, the buttons are already “pushed” based on the floor you selected
In normal lifts, we typically press an up-down button and go inside the lift to select which floor we need to get to. While I can’t say which way is better or more efficient, just being able to see things being designed differently is always interesting to me!
9:00 am — Arrive at the office and explore the space
The entire Singapore team is remote, but once a week we decide on a co-working space to go to so that we can spend some time working together.
We don’t have a specific location that we are fixed at, instead, we like to try out all the different co-working spaces that are available around Singapore. I like this concept because I get to explore a lot of spaces with their charm and facilities :)
9:15 am– Start of my day
To get me into work mode in the mornings, the first thing I’ll usually do when I start my day is to go through my to-do list for the week and check my calendar to see what meetings I have that day.
At MING, there could be multiple projects that we work on at the same time, and I need to manage all of that context-switching. For this week, because I’m supporting a team member who is away on holiday, I need to put in extra effort to keep track of all the tasks I need to complete.
Things that I will always have with me besides my laptop are two cups — 1 for coffee and 1 for water. Always need to remember to hydrate!
10:00 am — 1–1 with Jason — General Manager
Every week I have a catch-up with Jason who is the GM of Singapore. He’s a busy guy so I’m always appreciative of the sessions I get to have with him.
We usually touch on two things:
1. General feelings about how I’m doing
2. Any current or future project-related updates
10:30 am — Roundtable Discussions with the team
Roundtable Discussions are a recent initiative that was started within the Singapore team as we continue to explore improved ways of working with the team. We’ve been talking a lot about being intentional with the actions that we take, so even with our efforts to work together weekly, we wanted to make use of that time even more by having these weekly roundtables to talk about topics that are of value to us.
Today we started with a sharing session on our key takeaways from a UX conference that a few of us attended recently, and also future sustainability efforts that we would like to pursue as a team. I like the conversations that we’ve been having so far because it gives me an insight into the different perspectives coming from each team member.
1:30 pm — Lunch with the team
During the coworking days, we take the opportunity to bond over lunch. Because we try out the different co-working spaces around the city, we also make it a point to try out the different foods each week. Today I had a super yummy chicken pita!
3:00 pm — Meeting with client and developers
After the more team-focused activities in the morning, the afternoon was focused on individual work. At 3 pm I jumped on a call with a client and their developers for a project that we’ve been working on. Co-working days can get a little busy and loud with so many people around, but there are usually phone booths in the co-working spaces that I would use whenever I have to take a call.
Today’s session with the client and their developers is very typical in my experience as a UX designer. During the session, the developers went through what they’ve built based on our designs, and my role was to make sure that the developers built the screens according to what we designed. The session was also used to review any additional designs that we had for the client, and with their feedback, we would go back and improve our designs.
4:00 pm — Focus time
For the rest of my day, I was focused on doing project work. Most of my time was running through the requirements that I’ve gathered from the client, understanding the problems I’m trying to design for, and doing exploration work to come up with designs to solve those problems.
6:30 pm — End of day — Time to go home!
As my day ends and I have to travel back home from the office, there are times when I like to just take a stroll around the city as my way to wind down from work. Sometimes when I’m lucky, I’ll stumble upon nice buildings like this one!
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Written by Nicole Xin Yi Ooi
Edited by Sindre Rydhard
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