A day of making connections in work and play
If you’ve ever wondered what a typical day looks like for one of our Principal Designers, Esin Isik is here to share hers.
7am: I wake up without an alarm. I’m a morning person. If I had an alarm in the past, it was to prompt me to get out of bed or to catch a flight. But there are no flights to catch these days and I am the mother of a toddler who usually calls for me when she wakes up, so no need to set something to get me out of bed. I get up and drink a glass of water — I don’t check my phone first thing in the morning, I can see the time on the microwave in the kitchen.
7:15am: “Maaaamaaaa!” — the call to welcome the day with love and compassion! I go to her room and ask her if I can give her a morning kiss. Building awareness around consent is a new concept for my generation of parents. We then make coffee for my partner and play with Duplos (the bigger Lego blocks) together.
8:30am: Everyone is showered, teeth brushed, muesli eaten, and snack boxes prepared. My partner takes our daughter to daycare while I have a little morning walk before I start work. This is a new habit I developed last year to mentally separate home and work.
8:40am: I meet my friend Ilksu who lives a couple of streets away and we enjoy a quick morning coffee and chat. Today we talk about camping trips — we went on a camping trip last year and we want to do it again this year.
9am: I am in front of my computer in the office space at home. We had to transform our living room into a bedroom/living room to create an office with a closed door. I enjoy working in an assigned office. I start by checking my emails and chat messages, go through upcoming meetings, and think about what I expect from the day. It’s Thursday, so I fill out my weekly reflection form, then I start working on a research proposal on 3D size and fit experiences.
11am: I have three half-hour meetings, one after the other. One is a regular product and design catch-up for the Size & Fit team, and the other two are mentorship catch-ups. I really enjoy mentoring — especially if I can help with communication, storytelling, and design reviews.
12.30pm: I’m off to get lunch with Joy, a fellow principal designer at Zalando who’s a good friend. We get sushi to take away and eat it on the stairs of the Volksbühne, a magnificent theatre in Berlin.
1:30pm: I have a review meeting in half an hour. We’re writing a press release for a new experience that we’re creating as part of the ‘working backwards’ approach we’re taking. I take half an hour to review our progress then meet with the team to go over everyone’s comments.
3pm: I make myself a cup of tea, check emails, reply to chats… a little bit of digital downtime.
3:30pm: My partner and daughter come home, I hug them and go back to the office space. I’m preparing a presentation on design and emotion to share with my larger Size & Fit team tomorrow. I tweak the content a little bit since the material was created for senior designers and tomorrow’s audience includes applied scientists, software engineers, product managers, and business developers.
4:30pm: I quickly review the research proposal I was working on earlier and share it with stakeholders with a message about the kind of feedback I’m looking for.
5:30pm: I review my calendar for the next few workdays. It’s important to me that I am truly present at any gathering I take part in, so I add an agenda to all meetings unless they’re purely social chats. I add that there’s a training session I want to take part in to the agenda for my one-to-one meeting with my manager. I end the day after checking my emails and chats once more.
6:20pm: We cook and eat quite quickly. My new year’s resolution for 2020 was to be able to cook three courses in 30 minutes. I managed to do it. I love food and home-cooked meals. While we’re cooking and eating, we talk about our days. We are a multilingual family, so dinner time is usually fun with three to four languages being spoken.
8:15pm: The kid’s in bed, almost asleep. Now it’s friend time! Every Thursday evening (for more than a year now), I call one of my best friends — Caner, who’s also a product designer but at another company. We talk about work, friends, food, and laugh a lot!
10:30pm: I am exhausted! My partner and I have a lovely cuddle, and talk about our days and the things that we’re excited or bothered about. After practicing my newly acquired skincare routine and brushing my teeth, I go to bed, close my eyes, and try to be present for a moment. Then I grab my book. I’m reading Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu these days, which I’m excited about because Julie Zhuo and Tina Roth-Eisenberg recommended it a while ago. I fall asleep after a while and am hopefully lucky enough to have removed my glasses right before I doze off.
We’re actively looking for senior candidates to join the Product Insights & Design community. If you’re ready for the challenge apply to one of our open positions!
