A day in the life of a product designer at Block One, Mars
One day of adventures into design.
0545
A new day at Block One unofficially begins when the central alarm goes off at 0545 hours each morning. The alarm, called as Dawnbell, is a one-hour long broadcast consisting of nature sounds and binary beats, carefully engineered to provide a sense of calmness and reach as many levels of sound a human ear can possibly recognize. The broadcast is transmitted throughout the whole zone, including streets, buildings and resident dwellings through a centrally controlled system ZEN (Zone Engagement Network). Mars is dry and sub-freezing, thus the ZEN makes the zone livable by mimicking conditions on Earth. ZEN controls anything from the residents to heating to health to lights and more. The atmosphere resembles the feeling of living under a dome in a closed community of a major scale. Block One is one of nine blocks that together form a zone.
The first 15 minutes of the central alarm are the sounds of birds singing — this part always fail to wake me up. What really gets me out of bed is the part of the bellowing moose — a sound that makes my skin shiver and I’m up in an instant when it starts at 0615 hours. At mornings there is a feeling of quietness and being in the wild, even though it is a massive settlement with modern infrastructure.
I get up from my futon, fold it inside a cabinet on the wall and glance upwards at the ZENEYE, a central communications device placed right on top of my window. The device shows 0617. Internet of Things was developed into Internet of Life to cope with the harsh conditions of the planet. In addition to ZENEYE, each resident wears a wearable device called “Vitaxband”, which tracks the position and vitals of each person, and vibrates for anyone dozing off beyond 0630 hours. ZENEYE is present in each apartment, office hallways and street corners. The principles of the zone are minimalism and decluttering — to get rid of anything unnecessary to keep the zone as sustainable and clean as possible.
I quickly rinse my face at the sink and heat water for instant oatmeal in a medium-sized tin cup. Every apartment has a vegetation fridge, which allows residents to store and grow their own food, and be self-sufficient as food is somewhat rationed in the zone. Items such as tea, meat and coffee are usually sent from Earth, or if one has been lucky enough for a business visit. Sending items can take up to 6 months to arrive and they are very strict on the amount of items transported — beef jerky is not a priority they say. I have 10 packs of coffee beans and 4 bags of leaf tea left from my last business trip to London, Earth. After instant oatmeal, I rinse the cup and prepare a warm cup of coffee. Outside it looks foggy, cold and misty — I think they made it rain this morning to keep the surface more wet.
At 0650 hours it is still dark outside. The only source of light I have inside is one single lightbulb that is allowed beyond the daylight hours. It is bright enough to only read if you stand right under it. Mars is dark and cold all-day around, but the ZEN is programmed to provide artificial daylight and heating (Light Mode) between the hours of 0800 and 1700. It is kept relatively cold in the morning and at night, but increased to around +15C during the day time. We’ve given Block One a nickname, “Spring City”.
0700
I prepare to leave my apartment at around 0700 hours to commute to my place of work on West 2nd street. All streets are numbered streets based on their location in relation to the Sun. Easy, fast and functional. The zone is designed in 1 square kilometer blocks with 4 main streets, occupying an area of approximately 100km. When the zone needs to be extended, they make a new square block in it’s relevant section. The blueprint of Block One follows the principles of Information Architecture where the organization of buildings, services and functions are planned out in a clear and logical way. The reason for such an organization has a clear purpose:
- Minimize the time needed to complete an objective for residents. It is easy for residents to know where they are at any giving point and where they need to go to complete their desired task, such as buying groceries.
- Help residents navigate and make sense of a complex city
- Reduce the number of unnecessary fixes and improvements to the settlement to save resources and time in the long run
I clock out from my apartment at 0710 hours. This is automatically tracked by the ZENEYE. I head towards the monorail station. The air still feels a bit cold and moist. There is no wind, only the Dawnbell sounds create a sense of life — at this moment it is crickets, rain and woodpeckers — quite a strange combination, but feels rather soothing. Passersby walk emotionless to their destination. It is still pitch-black with the exception of light rays from Dark Mode street lamps every 20 metre intervals.
I arrive at my station, which is called South East 2, located on the South East corner of Block One. The monorail works between the hours 0700 and 2200 with carriages running every 10 minutes. I take the carriage at 0720 hours and commute with the other residents. Majority of people are reading or watching their Vitaxband. It looks interesting when a train full of people have their right arm raised upwards to form a hook, staring it like they just had a cut and it is bleeding, and the only way to keep it in control is to keep your hand up. Majority of people don’t have enough energy to keep the hook position for a long time — this has been carefully planned to minimize unnecessary screen time in public places. Devices need to be muted and kept visible to avoid any wrongdoings during morning rush hours. There are usually seats available, so the rush hour is not too bad.
I arrive at the station close to my place of work. The station is called Middle West 3. I exit the station and stop by at a Relaxoshop. Relaxoshop is a mashup of a convenience store, hotel lounge and a cafe. I am entitled to one cup of coffee with company benefits — this is an excellent perk as otherwise it is almost impossible to get any coffee — that’s the reason I have such a large stash at home. I use the next 20 minutes to prepare for my day. I use Vitaxband to cast a bigger screen in front of me and check up on activity logs, any upcoming meetings and my to-do lists. There is no need for emails as all communications is done through direct chat or activity logs. At 0750 hours I prepare to cross the street to enter my office building, a round, red, some-what floating structure called the Co-Op Two, a.k.a the Hive, a.k.a The Red Bubble. And yes, we are literally living inside our own bubble.
0800 14th August 2048, Friday Begins
At 0800 hours I have to enter the building and go line up based on my allotted time to the elevator that moves in a spiral form up and down the office building. The building looks like it is slightly floating in the air. The design of all the office buildings and interior take inspiration from Louis Sullivan, and the Bauhaus that in design form should follow function — using simplified forms and clean lines with considerations for rationality. The aesthetic beauty stems from function. These red circle glass office buildings may seem mundane, but it’s purpose is to serve as an emergency vessel in case a disaster strikes and it will lift up of it’s foundation and float up away from the surface — it might someday save a large number of residents. Decorations and ornaments do not serve any functions in the design of this building and thus have been removed completely — resulting in a modern minimalistic structure.
One Day in Mars is considered to be 8 hours, other time is regarded as idle time, or personal time. The day officially begins at 0800 hours. It is Friday 14th August 2048. Vitaxband automatically clocks me to work based on my location. I have to be in my designated room at exactly 0800 hours. My work space is a small 8 square meter private room with a full size sliding door that cannot be locked. All rooms are the same size and spread out throughout the floor. These rooms have a desk, plethora of in-wall-drawers, fold-down toilet bowl and a futon.
Our current design team consists of 5 designers, or as they are more often referred at management by the new moutful of a title, Soluctionalysists. Solution, action and analysis. We communicate through the ZEN touch screen, but even I’ve been at Block One for 50 days, I still don’t have a clue how half of my colleagues look or sound like. All conference calls only allow the usage of randomly assigned animal emoticons, and voice is scrambled to sound like a computer voice. I work with Elephant, Salmon, Giraffe and Frog on a daily basis — Frog is senior, a moderator, but no-one knows the real age or experience of any of our peers. I know there are 10 or more other designers in the building as well, but where exactly that I’m not certain.
Today our day is divided into hands-on ideation and problem definition in the morning, and UR (User Reality) work in the afternoon. The tasks vary depending on the project, but brainstorming and collaboration tend to be always in the mornings. Every morning begins with a Call-Up (previously know as Stand-Up). Where each of us share updates on the process, project and what will be worked on. Sprints are managed by Project Aid AI, which listens in whether the sprint is on schedule, everyone is busy with a certain task and reports the progress back to management. It appears the main thing they want to see is that everyone is busy with at least something. Our Call-Up happens through a conference call with each participant having their own turn and with a round of questions, if any.
We work in 14 day sprints and follow Lean UX principles to obtain feedback as often as possible to work on improvements on different features of the ZEN. We start by creating a problem statement and a set of assumptions. It bothers me that it is not possible for us to meet face-to-face with engineers or data-scientists to brainstorm and discuss these ideas. I hope management would listen to our arguments on how having a diverse team could result in even more improved solutions. However, I’ve learned to adapt to the policy of working in isolation with a somewhat human-connection through the ZEN system. Our brainstorming sessions, much like Call-Ups, take place in a form of a live call where we can write on the screen in a shared virtual ideation board, which can be seen by anyone in real-time.
User data is directly available to analyze from the ZEN (as everyone residing in the zone is in the system). We utilize this raw data with insights from user behavior to form the basis of our assumptions and the problem statement. At the current sprint, we are looking at improving the adoption rate of idle time position tracking on the Vitaxband. We have to take into account the potential negative consequences around this feature and prioritize assumptions based on these scenarios. Block One allows the residents to disable tracking of their location during idle time to adhere to privacy policies. This has pros and cons. If the user has disabled tracking, in case of an critical emergency, the ZEN is not able to provide assistance and direct the user to the nearest evacuation center — one of the red office buildings, the Bubbles. This creates an organizational problem on how to properly allocate the correct amount of people based on their position in relation to the nearest Bubble. There are no bad ideas — all ideas are worth considering as they may lead to new unexpected directions, but narrowed down based on our criteria. After a brainstorming session we came up with the following hypothesis:
We believe that overriding the disabled state in case of a high emergency is essential for the residents of the zone. This will help to minimize the risk of casualties and improve the allocation of resources. We have demonstrated this when we can measure a positive tracking of users to 100%.
We cannot settle for anything less than 100% — there are lives at stake here. Enabling tracking alone is not sufficient. The user needs to be notified as well about the situation without causing mass hysteria. Imagine a scary alarm going on every with single residents wearable devices? More investigation on the interaction and notification will be continued after lunch. At 1120 hours I do a few pushups and start preparing for lunch. The ZENEYE is present in the room — but everyone knows there is really no-one listening or watching. Hopefully.
1130
1130 hours on the dot marks the time for lunch. We are not allowed to leave the room or contact other colleagues. The only time one can leave the room is to remove garbage or destroy physical documents through the Central Rinsing & Abandonment Pipe, which is located at the center of the floor and runs through the whole building. Lunch is not considered break-time, but rather integral part of a daily routine to stay energized and work efficiently, though it could be argued whether such an arrangement is more counterproductive than an enhancement — but this what the management wants and there is no saying otherwise.
There are no meeting rooms or kitchen area. Food is delivered to each room with a delivery robot, slid inside through a service hole on the door, and the tray is later collected for re-use the next day. Lunch time is strictly 30 minutes only. Every meal is a vegetarian lunch set and one bag of barley tea. I spilled my tea and made a massive mess on the floor. I had to wipe it with paper and now have to visit the pipe to dispose the mess.
I make my way out of the room towards the center of the building and my eyes catch a glimpse of a woman in her mid-thirties wearing a t-shirt that writes “You are just my type”. I recognize it is written in Comic Sans and I immediately think to myself “This MUST be one of my colleagues — a fellow designer”. She appears to be heading the same direction. All kind of ideas start to come to my mind. Should I try to make contact? What if I’m wrong? It can’t be. Could someone not related to design wear a Comic Sans font pun on their body? I decide to greet her when we both reach the pipe.
“Hilo”. Geez, I’m off to great start.
“Hi”. She smiled a bit and could tell I was anxious. Why would I be nervous. I’m not sure. Perhaps it was the excitement of possibly getting to know a fellow designer. I decided I should be quick and direct. I only had a couple minutes left and not being in my room at the end of lunch would have severe consequences — anything from downgrading to expulsion. I proceeded:
“Are you a designer?”
“Yes. I’m Fox. Meet me at the North East Station One at 1700 hours.”
“OK. I’m Hare, Where shou..”. She had already walked away and I’m not sure if she had time to catch my name.
I hurried back and was in my room at 1158 hours — Just in time to continue work and before the midday virtual head count.
1200
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.
- 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.
One has to adventure into the wild lands if needing to travel across zones and sometimes it is even more safe to just travel to Earth than to take your chances with the outsiders of the Wild Mars. These outsider are said to be outcasts, or previous resident who were expelled from the zone, or simply decided to live with their own rules. There is always a battle for oxygen and protective gear outside the dome, which makes it highly dangerous.
However, we are a group of curious designers always learning new things, and now wanting to know how people live on the outside.
“Midnight at idle time, we plan to sneak out to the Wild Mars.”
“Are you in?”
2345
Let’s go.
Could stories help introduce design concepts and principles? Will design change in the future? What is design?
