A day in my life as a UX Designer working from home

Hello, what's up? Long time no chat. It's my first date or something and I'm like, I don't want to say the wrong thing. I don't want to sound weird. Yeah. If you don't know who I am, which you probably don't, my name is Beretta. I am a UX designer in corporate. Yeah. I've been working as a UX designer like full-time, full-time like with a real, a real job, like a real big girl job for about seven months now. And it's kind of crazy. It's kind of crazy. Uh, today's Thursday. It's Friday Eve, if you will. And I was like, I have a lot of things going on today. Meetings. Then I have a UX event later today. I'm networking around lunchtime. All of this is from the comfort of my parents' home. Because I decided to film, to start filming at 1030. I didn't get to film my fancy montage that I usually film, you know, like my morning montage of like me making my coffee and like with my Nespresso machine and like pretending that I know about coffees and like when all I have to do is press the button, but I'm like, Oh my God, it turned out so good. Even though like I didn't do anything. Um, so I didn't get to film that for you. I'm so sorry. I know you're like devastated. Um, but I got a coffee this morning. I was just one of those mornings and I was like, you know what? I want someone else to make my coffee. Um, but yes, this is my coffee. I have a meeting in like 10, 15 minutes. Um, so let me debrief you for a second. Okay. Let's talk about how do I start? Um, okay. So I am leading a project, leading the UX of a project that we're doing here. And this meeting that's coming up is a cross-functional meeting. So that basically means that I am meeting with someone of another team, a meeting with the manager, and I think another designer of a separate team who works very in an area, very closely related to the project that I'm doing. So my work is essentially going to affect their work. So I just need to tell them about what I'm doing, ask them for their feedback, present my designs. I worked on these designs pretty much all day yesterday, pretty much this entire week. I worked on this design, um, a couple of designs. They're, they're variations of each other. As a designer, you usually don't make like one design unless like it's at the end of the exploratory brainstorming design phase where you've really decided and tested what is the best design. But usually at the beginning, um, the designs are, you know, you make a couple of designs, at least where I work, you make a couple of variations of designs, different solutions that could be possible. And then you usually present them or talk to someone about it, or you test with actual customers or actual users. It's literally my favorite phase of the design process because you get to have fun. You really feel like a UX designer at this point. So that's what the meeting is in 10 minutes now. Um, I'm a little nervous. I always get a little nervous, um, especially at this point in my career, cause I'm still just a UX designer. I'm not like a, I'm not a lead yet. I'm not a, I'm not a senior yet, yet. And then after that, I actually have a networking. Someone reached out to me because I make these videos on YouTube. I get a lot of wonderful, lovely, amazing people that reach out to me on Instagram or LinkedIn. And one girl wanted to chat and ask me questions. And I guess she needs some advice. So I was like, yes, girl, let's do it. Let's drink coffee and chat, you know, but I need to worry about this meeting now. So I'm going to start preparing. So I don't sound stupid during this meeting. I only work from here right now, but I feel like my life would be significantly improved if I had a monitor. So if you have suggestions for a good one, I would love to know. So at this point, we use InVision to house all of our designs and our prototypes. And that's what we usually send, uh, the product managers or other managers or leadership or other people that are not UX. We send them an InVision link with the designs on it so they can click through it. Um, but we're moving to Figma and I'm, I'm so excited. I love Figma, but I'm going to pull up these designs and usually like 10 minutes before the meeting, I will like in my head, run through what I'm going to say kind of, um, because if I just pull it up right at the meeting and I haven't looked at it for a couple of days, I haven't looked at the designs for a couple of days. I might forget what I did and why I did it. You know, I always tell myself, you know what, Greta, you are never going to get better if you shy away and you don't show your work because it's so easy to just never show your, well, actually you kind of have to show your work at some point, but it's very easy to just kind of be quiet and just not get feedback and not say anything until you absolutely have to. But if you present your designs super early in the process, it's a lot easier because you don't spend hours and hours perfecting a design that you think is going to be the one that they go with. And then you realize, oh crap, I spent so much time on these designs and they're not even going to use it. Did you see that? First we have, I survived. And it went really well. So they basically, so out of the four options, they kind of told me what they felt was like the best design solution and why they felt it was the best solution and other competitors to look at and other people to talk to in the team. My manager was like, that went so well. And I'm like, I know. And he's like, I know it's not actually how it went. We ended a little early. So I have like 13 minutes before my one-on-one with, um, this prospective designer. So right after the meeting ends, I will try to take notes. I will take basically the ugly AF notes that I took in my bullet journal. I'll write them down on my computer. So I have like a document for this specific project where I write down basically any notes, any feedback, anything related to this project. I'll write it down in this word document because I don't want to be like, oh my God, where are the notes from that one meeting that I had with that person? And then I'm like, did I write it in my bullet journal? Did I write it on a sticky note? Did I write it on a piece of paper in my phone? Like, I don't know where I wrote it. And then you're like, oh my God, but yeah. How's it going? I hope you're doing well. I hope you're having fun. So last thing I'm going to say before I take these notes and then jump onto that zoom call is I'm still reading the design of everyday things. I read like a couple pages this morning. I usually read it. The reason it's taking me so long to read is because I only read it right before I go to bed. And right before I go to bed, I only last for like 10 minutes before I literally pass PTFO. So it's now my lunch break. I went for a questionable combination, eggs, spinach, and Brussels sprouts, which I burned, which I burned. I mean, I like my food crispy, but not that crispy. So usually during lunch, I try my best not to get on my phone because I'm on the computer all day, but that doesn't always happen. Sometimes I will end up watching YouTube. Go back to work. It's such a nice day today. Lately, when it's really nice, I've been going for walks. So I might go for a walk in like an hour and a half when I feel like I'm on a good point. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to, okay, let's talk. Let's talk. So after that morning meeting that I had, I had some next steps, next steps, as in things that I have to do next. So per that meeting from the suggestions, they chose one specific design that they really liked. And basically it's a drawer interaction. So I'm going to look at the way that you usually interact with drawers, the layout organization of the contents of the drawer. And then I want to look at the way drawers are typically done at my specific company, because we have a design system or we're actually working on a design system right now. And it has to be consistent with all of the other drawers that exist on my company's site. So I'm going to kind of just take that specific design that I made and make it a little bit better. Give it a little bit more, bring it to spec. They like to say to spec. And that is going to prepare me for the meeting that I have tomorrow. That is also about this project, but with the product manager of this project, I'm just going to do this on sketch. That's what we're using right now. But I'm so excited that we're going to move over to Figma so soon. You're coming on 25. Oh no. Are you recording? Yeah. No. And I wanted to see how long it took me to realize that. No. I'm going to look so stupid. Should I say I'm a visitor? This never happens. He's in the area. Decided to stop by and eat his sub. Use my chair for his sub. Did you just say that so aggressively? He's using my chair. He's using my chair for his pub sub eating. If you're from Georgia or the Southeast, or the Southeast, let me know what you get for your pub sub. Okay. I'm going to work while he eats. It's like story of our lives. Yep. So my work day is pretty much over. As you saw, as you probably saw, like at 4.30 ish, they posted in the huge Slack channel that one of the researchers was doing a readout. So basically when UX researchers, at least here at this company that I'm at, when the UX researcher does like a quick hit study or is asked to look into something with customers, or they're asked to test something with customers or whatever it may be, they will do a readout at the end. So basically they will present their insights, their findings, their conclusions, next steps, et cetera, to the team. But sometimes they invite people outside of that specific team just to hear, because it's always nice to hear about customers' feedback on other areas of the site. So yeah, that's pretty much what just happened. They were posted, they were like, Hey, we're doing this readout. If you want to attend, you should come. So I did. It was very interesting. But now I'm craving the sunshine. It's like calling my name. It's like Greta come to me. Like I hear it calling my name. So what I'm trying to say is I'm going to go for a walk. I'm going to go for a hot girl walk and then going to eat dinner. And then I'm going to go to that UX event today. I was so excited. I haven't gone to a UX event in probably like a month. So yeah, that one is just about designing for queer users. I'm very excited about that. But yeah, for now I'm going to go for my hot girl walk moment in the sunshine, get some vitamin D. That's very important. If you work from home, you need to go outside, go outside, please. You may be wondering, Greta, what do you have on your neck? What is that? It is a an eye mask that can be frozen, put in the fridge to be really cold. And the last clip was of me working out and I somehow managed to pull something or strain something. This turned into a chaotic ending of the vlog. Here I am with an eye mask that is serving as an ice pack for my neck. So yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for watching. Thanks for hanging out with me for a day and seeing what I do as a UX designer. Every day is different, honestly, and it's so much fun. And yeah, I will see you in the next video. Oh my god, I can't move my neck. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go lay down. Bye!