Here at the U1 Melbourne office, each week (and often each day) can be very different. Our staff members are often working on various projects, going to business meetings, munching on morning teas, attending pub lunches or enjoying Friday drinks. If you’ve ever wondered what actually goes on here’s a rundown on what a week in the U1 office looks like.
Monday
It’s the start of the week. We discuss what happened on the weekend along with the latest footy results over a cup of tea in the kitchen. Then it’s off to our team Work In Progress meeting where we discuss the week ahead. We also cover what projects are priority and explore any learnings we may be able to apply.
Tuesday
Tuesday brings a whole lotta motivation and often testing. Our reception bell rings non-stop with participants and clients coming into the office. The dedicated testing and client viewing rooms here become packed, while we run sessions and collaborate on client projects. The walls in our breakout room (or the fishbowl, as it’s colloquially known) gets plastered with sticky notes and butcher’s paper.
Wednesday
Happy hump day! Wednesday brings with it the glorious South Melbourne Market. With dumplings, paella and fresh oysters (just to name a few), we can’t wait for lunchtime to roll around. Let’s just say most of us are usually pretty full upon returning to the office (we would’ve certainly eaten our fair share of famous South Melbourne Dim Sims!).
Thursday
Thursday brings a great deal of excitement as it’s ‘morning tea’ day. We like to get our bake on with everyone in the office taking turns to bring something in. Morning tea creations must take into consideration any of our colleagues’ food intolerances or allergies, which can make delivering the goods a challenge! Despite this, we’ve enjoyed some amazing treats.
Also, every fourth Thursday, we host an internal lunchtime forum. We all get together and shares a bite to eat while one of our team presents their latest learnings from a project they worked on, or a conference they attended (or any other topic of interest). It’s a great way to learn new things and bond as a team.
Friday
Yes… It’s finally Friday. We all arrive in the office with a little spring in our step. Lunchtime seems to come around very quickly on Fridays… We all gather and head down to our local pub, The Palace, to celebrate the week’s hard work. Then when 4pm hits, cheese, biscuits and much-deserved beer and wine come out. Office tunes start to blare and the weekend begins. Woohoo! After a couple of days off, we’ll be ready to go through the week all over again.
Another UX blog?
Yes, there are a lot of blogs out there writing about user experience, and we definitely don’t want to just add to the noise. We hope to be different in a few ways. We like to think that we have a unique perspective on a number of aspects of usability.
1. For starters, we are not a design agency.
2. Whilst we work closely with designers on most projects, we focus on the research side of things.
3. Where others may focus on principles of design, we focus on the principles of research design.
4. And how that can help you to deliver a better experience for your intended audience.
Additionally, being a consultancy, we get to work on a lot of different projects. We work on all kinds of interfaces, large and small, stationary and mobile, and get to experience many different approaches to solving user’s problems and meeting their needs.
We frequently find that some of the best solutions to an issue come from a different industry or platform to the design in question.
These differences will also mean we can offer a unique set of perspectives on experience design and delivery. Hopefully, what we write in this blog will sit nicely alongside those you already have in your feed reader or morning reading list.
So don’t be shy
This blog has been set up to enable a conversation with you, the reader – our clients and peers.
If you have a question for us, disagree with us, want to show us something, or just want to say hi then please do.
Leave a comment, or send us an email if you would prefer. Look forward to hearing from you.
The U1 Team