Twitter Tours: A Day In The Life Of A London Designer
Hello and welcome to Twitter UK!
My name is Eleanor Harding and I’ll be your host. I’m a Senior Product Designer here at Twitter in London. I use my time and design skills to help professionals keep up with what’s happening in the world as it’s unfolding, through TweetDeck.
Let me walk you through a typical Friday at the office.
Every Friday morning starts the same — with a steaming chai latte and a bacon naan roll from our favourite spot in London, Dishoom. It’s a team tradition to spend some time together around the corner from Twitter before we start the day.
After that, we head over to the office. Reception is a welcome sight of color with clouds of bright balloons. We don’t always have balloons, but it’s not at all unusual to walk into the office and discover something wonderful. We’re in the heart of Soho in a gorgeous space filled with teams of designers, engineers, product managers, data scientists, curators, partner managers, account managers, and many more.
The first meeting of the day is a standup huddle around the high table to check in on progress and talk about what we’re planning to do next.
After standup, we dive into focused work. Usually I design mockups for user experiences that help people be part of what’s happening, or do sessions around a whiteboard to work through sticky design problems.
We have lunch in the Commons, catered by the phenomenal team at @JustEatMyTweet. They Tweet out the menu, so there’s almost always someone in the elevator checking Twitter to see what delicious things lie in store for that day. You’ll also find us having breakfast here every other day of the week, often debating if waffles go well with bacon (for the record, they do).
After lunch, we pair up to collaborate on a project or plug in individually for some focused effort at a desk, in the studio, in the library, at a booth, or in a soundproof pod. You can decide on the right kind of space you need to do your best work. Some say there are secret hidden spaces in the office too…
One of my favourite afternoon treats is heading downstairs for a change of scenery and the chance to work on mastering the art of making a perfect cup of coffee. There’s even a machine that prints whatever design you like onto your latte. With coffee in hand and a clear head in a different space, ideas flow freely and solutions come to the surface.
If you prefer a game of Fifa to a cuppa, the games corner is the place to regroup your thoughts when you’re stuck. Problem-solving magic happens when you take a brief step back.
In the afternoon we plunge back into work and get together to make progress on impactful projects. Late afternoon meetings and a few extra emails mean our colleagues in San Francisco have come online to collaborate. As the afternoon winds down, we gather to share demos of the work we’ve done during the week.
Well-deserved weekends start on a Friday evening after Tea Time (our weekly all-hands meeting). With people in the London office from all over the world, it’s a common sight to see suitcases in the office on a Friday, with their owners ready to head off to the airport or train station to explore somewhere exciting or visit family back home.
Twitter is what’s happening and the office is where it’s happening. Twitter is our creative home.
If you like the way we work, there’s an open spot on the sofa waiting for you.
