In June, while I was attending the General Assembly User Experience Design Immersive, I saw an opportunity to do a student shadow at the creative agency projekt202.
projekt202 is an end-to-end, experience-driven company that helps organizations navigate complex digital transformations.
My UX course was teaching me the fundamentals to put into practice, but I knew it would be useful to have the perspective of seeing the UX process out in the real world. In late September, myself and two students from different UX programs in Austin went to projekt202 for a full day in their office.
Schedule for the Day:
9:30AM — Welcome and Office Tour
10AM — Internal Project Meeting
11AM — How to Work with Clients
11:30AM — Client Status Call
12PM — Understanding Team Roles & Responsibilities
1PM — LUNCH :)
2PM — Portfolio Reviews & Career Advice
3:30PM — The Dev Perspective
4PM — Wrap-up and Debrief
10AM — Internal Project Meeting
After a quick tour around the office and some introductions, we joined our first session of the day. There were six projekt202 team members getting together for an internal meeting regarding a client project (Dev, Design, Content, Program Management, etc). The agenda of this meeting was to review web page template creation. One of the biggest challenges the team faced was identifying how many different templates were needed and balancing that with the original project scope. Originally they set out to create eight templates for the client, but the list of templates to review was up to thirteen. Because the team was working on templates for two different websites for the client, they were looking to see which templates could be shared across both sites and if there were any that could be consolidated.
What stood out to me about the session was that everyone in the room was cognizant of each other’s workload and how additional templates would impact that. Every person was committed to figuring out a sustainable solution that would still provide the client with a great product.
11AM — How to Work with Clients
Jess Moss, a Senior UX Designer for projekt202, gave our group some insight on the ins-and-outs of client relationships and how to engage with them.
Here are some of my key takeaways:
- Always show your video when video conferencing with clients. This helps build rapport in virtual client relationships.
- Always record the meetings to be able to refer back to. This can easily be turned into a transcript that can save time note-taking and help with project details.
- Limit virtual meetings to 30 minutes. This ensures that meetings are concise/productive and respects the client’s busy schedule.
- Always have a presentation for client meetings. Utilize a presentation template to save time and keep the meeting on track.
11:30AM — Client Status Call
We were very fortunate to have the opportunity to sit in on an actual client call. The goal of this call was to provide a status update on the project. The call was run by the Program Manager, Bryce Cottle. Just as Jess does with her client check-ins, Bryce used a template for the project that contained important details and can be referenced by both the team and the client during the call. The call itself went smoothly and was fairly speedy as most project items were on track. A central topic of the call was ensuring that the projekt202 team had identified the product owner on the client-side. Once those details were finalized, the call wrapped up with next steps and date for the next meeting.
My takeaway from this meeting was the importance of organization and communication. The meeting went smoothly because there was a clear structure in place and someone keeping track of the details.
12PM — Understanding Team Roles & Responsibilities
With lunch quickly approaching, we jumped into a session with a group of projekt202 employees to better understand what they do in their day-to-day functions. They graciously opened the floor to us to ask them any questions we had about what their roles entail.
The panel included:
- Leigha Selby: Senior Experience Strategist (AKA Research)
Her day to day includes ethnography, synthesis, identifying mental models and pain points, idea generation, and creating recommendations for design (just to name a few) - Natalie Schultz: Senior UX Designer
She values being included in the research process and says it leads to a stronger end result. She utilizes artifacts from the research phase and works to identify what assets the dev team needs to code the design. - Eric Gehrman: Solutions Architect
He works to figure out how to build the design and make sure it works with the client’s systems. - Bryce Cottle: Program Manager
He improves the process and translates findings into requirements that can be designed against.
Key takeaways:
- Cross-functional collaboration is key
The research and design teams are very closely integrated, which allows each function to have a better understanding of the process and how to best serve the client. I was really impressed with how all of the roles within projekt202 work together. - Adaptability is critical to success
Every project is different and requires flexibility. The same approach won’t work for every client and every challenge. It’s important to assess the situation at hand and find the right solution. - Streamline the process
There were several different systems mentioned but the ones that stood out were those that helped automate certain functions (Zeplin) and demonstrate key interactions (Invision). These are pivotal when transferring the design between groups and making sure things don’t get lost in translation.
2PM — Portfolio Reviews & Career Advice
After a tasty lunch provided by projekt202, we headed into a session to get advice from the pros. As a student, it’s pretty rare to have the opportunity to sit in a room full of experienced designers and get candid feedback on a portfolio or project. Ryan Tillett, Arthur Asseo, and Emily Cutting provided in-depth portfolio reviews for each student. While there will always be many varying opinions on what a good portfolio should be, I found the insight from this group really helpful.
Portfolio Tips:
- Make portfolio skimmable with clear titles and short chunks of text
- Include deliverables and make them easy to find
- Emphasize your role in the project and the work you personally did
- Include “read more” button (good way to reduce the amount of visible text but still gives people an option to dig in)
- Demonstrate changes made from usability testing with clear notation
3:30PM — The Dev Perspective
For our final session, we sat down with Jon Brennan, a Senior UI Developer with projekt202. Jon is passionate about his work and cares about integrating development with the UX process. Because he has a unique perspective on both design and development, there are some key things he looks for when hiring or working with new designers:
- Are you proactive and can you figure things out on your own?
- Do you get along with your coworkers?
- Are you flexible?
- Are you passionate about your work?
4PM — Wrap-up and Debrief
In true designer fashion, we ended by debriefing how the day went and completing an activity called Start, Stop, Continue. Each of the students got a pack of post-its and a marker and wrote out observations for each category as it pertained to our student shadow experience. We then reviewed our post-its with the projekt202 team about what went well with the shadow program and where there are some opportunities.
My day ended with several new acquaintances, a notebook full of helpful takeaways, and some cool projekt202 swag. The experience was truly invaluable and I cannot thank projekt202 and Jess Moss enough for inviting us into their office and sharing their time/knowledge. If you’re a current UX student reading this, I highly recommend trying to snag an upcoming student shadow spot. They typically offer one shadow day a month. You won’t regret it!
