When I interview potential job applicants, a question I am often asked is "what's a typical day like?" Well, there's no such thing as a typical day in user experience. Realizing there must be a good way to share what I do in terms of time and activities, I had a good look at my calendar and found a pattern. I have three typical weeks that I'll call Active, In/Out, and Development.
Active
In an active week, most of my time is devoted to research, testing, and recommendations. That may mean days of usability testing or ethnographic research, hours spent calculating expert task time in CogTool, or creating a testing hypothesis from expert review results. There may be a five second test thrown in the mix at the last minute, or maybe a card sort. Add to that some time spent analyzing data, drafting recommendations, and sketching and wireframing design ideas, and not much time remains for meetings, phone calls, and answering email. These are hectic weeks when time flies by and Friday brings both relief of upcoming weekend rest and the pride of getting so much accomplished.
Not every active week includes all these activities and often active weeks are back to back for a month but I find these weeks bring the most learning opportunities and allow me to hone my time management skills.
In/Out
This type of week is all about kicking off new projects and wrapping up old ones. I like to have new projects start the same week as others are ending to keep the flow going. The exhilaration of presenting well-researched findings to an eager client is balanced with the anticipation of inspiring a new client to try something unfamiliar. During an in/out week, about 50% of my time is spent preparing for and actually meeting with a client. There's the logistics of creating clever presentation material customized for each client's needs, all the scheduling drama, logging attendance, take notes, and delivering dynamic feedback in an effort to sell the client on the concept of usability.
Bringing in a new client is always a great learning experience. Everyone has a unique personality, so it is important to get to know your client's style and adapt meetings, communication, and recommendations to best fit their way of thinking. Some people are data driven. Others just like pretty pictures. I like to take the time to get to know who I am working with to be sure I provide exactly what they need.
Development
Often development activities are squeezed in during a bit of downtime during in/out and active weeks. Watching a webinar, time spent on IxDA.org, participating in mentoring activities can all nicely fit over a lunch hour or during a meeting that I don't really need to be a part of (don't gasp, we all multitask). Occasionally after I've wrapped a few projects, my new ones are slow cooking, leaving me a week to myself. During this time, I try to focus on professional and team development activities. Half my time is spent reading books, practicing new methods, refining presentation templates, catching up on the latest research, and talking to other professionals in the field so I can grow into the most fabulous UXer there ever was. I do take my development time seriously.
The remaining time during development weeks is spent reviewing company and team goals, creating design guidelines for developers, following up with past clients, and surveying usability study participants to improve the experience.
