A day in the life of a product designer at Block One, Mars
By: Simo Herold
Tags: Product Design, Design, Storytelling, Writing, UX

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Fox. Why didn’t she just tell me her real name and what was the rush, there were still a few minutes before headcount. Why she wants to meet a complete stranger during dark mode? Could it be some sort of twisted trap? My mind was still playing different scenarios on what could happen when my thoughts were interrupted by a large bell sound. The conference calls we have start immediately, you do not answer or decline as you are expected to be available at all times no questions asked, no exceptions. A new discussion has been initiated to ideate the possible interaction approaches for our newly generated direction. First iteration.

Meetings, meetings and meetings. More time spent on meetings than on design. Although, it is pretty nice to get different points of views and the ideas we usually put together feel very solid — communication is still one the key elements of design. After being at work for a while, I’ve found there is one major problem (no, not related to the problem statement). We are ordered to work in isolation full-time — how are we going to test and validate our ideas? We can’t always just rely on remote testing as there are so many important behavioral factors that we would need to observe.

The context here is about the livelihood of the people, if it were entertainment, we might be just fine with remote testing for a while. The method of running testing is also a challenge. Majority of people don’t really like a safety drill or don’t take them seriously. I would like to see what reactions our newest idea could bring if triggered with a selected sample. What about interviewer bias? What if we just observe? The afternoon is spent on preparing user stories (job stories) for the interaction.

We empathize as much as possible with the users and build on assumptions and job stories. Main assumption is that people will feel that it is alright to disable tracking and force the system on their devices if it helps them to avoid a disaster. We do value the privacy (not sure about management’s thoughts on this thought) of our users and the focus is on the user, but sometimes giving too much preferential choice can work against them as well. Here are a few samples of the job stories we came up with:

When an emergency happens , I want to be notified , so I can prepare for evacuation as soon as possible .

, I want to , so I can . When there is no emergency, I want to disable tracking, so I can keep my privacy, location and activity information to myself only.

We work with a human-centered design mindset, but due to working method limitations set on by the management, we do not have the possibility to go to our users, test and validate our assumptions. How can we solve user problems if we are not able toget their insights on the proposal? We’ve had lot of situations before where a large amount of time has been wasted due to not being able to test and research our user behavior in a better way,

As product designers we are more interested in solving a problem that can further improve the experience of our product, rather than focusing on pushing updates without a reason.

We should aim to try to work-around the current management restrictions — but who will dare to stand against it with the risk of loosing their jobs? Office politics.

Jobs stories led to a minimal low-fidelity prototype. Our goal is to not waste paper and other resources, so all our notes, ideation and prototypes are stored in the system. We can easily access these again with our own devices, anywhere and anytime. Our first idea on improving the tracking feature is finished. My mind went again to Fox. What am I getting myself into? It was almost 1630 hours, which marks the end of day for all residents in Block One. End of day means again that the artificial daylight (Light Mode) will be switched to Idle Mode (a.k.a Dark Mode, or simply, night time). At 1630 hours my Vitaxband clock me out of work and arranges a time-slot to remove myself out of the building.

1630 14th August 2048, Friday Ends

Friday has official ended. Idle time will continue until the next morning 0800 hours. I’ve stepped out of the building. Other employees from the same building are making their exit in 50 meter intervals. I ride the monorail to our meeting spot on the North East Station One. There are four exits — she did not specify which one so I just have to try my luck, walk around and presumably look for a shirt that says “You are just my type”. I walk from exit A to B, and finally at C, just below the monorail pillar I see a group of 5 people. I walk over to introduce myself. One is Fox (you just can’t miss that typography shirt), one is a tall male figure with a long orange beard called O’Brien, a short, chubby and jolly-looking man in a lumberjack shirt and called “Bob”, a tallish slim man with all in black attire called “Jack”, and finally a woman with a black turtle neck and blue jeans called “Evets”. I guess there is no specific stereotypic look for designers — they can be anyone.

Fox’s name is actually Susan Fox, but everyone just calls her Fox, as it is custom to use last names in Block One, and no, the image on her user profile is not a fox, but she is actually a giraffe. Confusing, but understandable. Now I just feel weird saying my name was Hare, but it did made sense on the spot. They said they are all designers working in the building with various projects, but only recently had found out each other in a similar fashion as Fox made contact with me earlier today. They have been meeting in regular intervals outside of work. They had invited me today to join to see that even there is no communication during working hours — there is still a office culture of some sorts where colleagues get together for business or pleasure.

Fox and I are on the same team, so I asked her directly what were her thoughts on the employment rules at the office. I found that even on the surface it may look like no user testing and research is done, the reality is quite the contrary. She said the designers have joined forces to create an after-hours group to simply do and explore all things creative simply just because of shared interests. She agreed that conditions were somewhat limiting if taken just as it, but if you are open to think new alternatives instead of just focus on one obstacle — you can find a lot of new approaches and that the only limitation was actually just your own tunnel vision.

We made an initial plan to test our assumptions and jobs stories after working hours to get better insights. After a brief discussion on the matter at a local gastro-pub, we found that majority of residents do not want to be tracked during their idle time, but are content with the device having a emergency function. We had just actually some-what validated our first assumption! We only talked, observed and listened, yet learned so much. There was a new topic that came to light that indirectly affects everything we do; Wild Mars and the people living outside the zone.