Isha, Unscripted, page 27
The entire team wasn’t required to join, seeing that the leads would present, but was always encouraged to sit back and listen and learn.
The overall dynamics of a UX team included a PM (project manager) to oversee everything and be the main source of contact between the team, our clients, and bosses. The rest of the team was broken down into research, design, UI (user interface), content, and coding, with each team managed by a lead.
I was a senior lead UX researcher. I was the one who oversaw mind maps, extensive user studies, field tests, and more to make sure every aspect, every click and tap, every color, typography, size, responsive design, et cetera, was at its quality best.
As lead, I worked with the leads of other subteams, which made me Mama Duck who pushed and protected her vast army of researcher ducklings while often butting heads with extremely particular designers and particularly overworked devs (coding developers).
But that was because we were passionate. And we made beautiful, thrilling designs.
I glanced up to see our lead dev hop onto the screen, but I was too busy enjoying this fine cup of cinnamon coffee to care. His eyes skimmed across his screen, a little wrinkle in between his brows as he focused, and then a smile cracked his uptightness. Probably looking at cat videos. He looked like a cat guy. An annoying cat guy.
Snapping out of it, I messaged my team in the private chat and then opened up a chat with the PM. Gabrielle declared all was a go.
My heart did a shimmy in my chest. No matter how many times I presented, which was at least once a week, it was a little unnerving when it came to presenting directly to overtly opinionated clients. Would they slash our research down to the nub, or would they let us do what they were paying us to do? Hmm, it was always a shot in the dark as to what their mood would be. The guys never seemed this stressed, which had me wondering if guys had it easier. What a dumb question. Of course they did. Our clients probably respected male leads and took their word as gold. After all, what did I, a woman who’d worked in the field for over five years with a masters in UX theory, possibly know about some damn buttons?
Carol, the big boss overseeing multiple teams on various projects, started the show and handed it off to Gabrielle. She smiled, flashing dimples, and essentially looked like a doppelgänger of Gabrielle Union. She also had a slightly deeper voice and made these wild facial expressions that promised nobody wanted to argue with her. She was, hands down, the best PM ever. A shield against the higher-ups for us and a moderator between leads at times. She was a well-oiled organizing machine, and ever so eloquent.
Carol dinged me. I was up next.
“Thanks so much, Gabrielle,” Carol said with an accent, for some reason, rolling the R. It was funny until she announced, “And now let’s hand the floor over to Bhanu.”
Damn it, Carol.
My name is Bhanu. Pronounced Bon-ooh. It was almost always expected to have to correct someone on the pronunciation, to the point where it had become standard. But Carol—granted she wasn’t my direct boss nor did she have a lot to do with me personally—and I had been working together at this company for years, and half the time she still said my name wrong.
She reminded me of an old classmate, Cathryn, who had once complained, “Ugh. I’m so sick of people misspelling my name.”
“Try having people mispronounce your name,” I countered.
She’d looked at me with big gray eyes and said, “Well, your name is a little hard.”
“Bitch, it’s two syllables.”
Just kidding. I hadn’t said that, but I was thinking it. I thought a lot of things that didn’t actually come out of my mouth for fear of being labeled hostile, unlikable, et cetera. It came with the territory of being a woman, and even more so as a woman of color.
These days, with people being a little more considerate and “woke,” many were prompted to ask for pronunciation, so they didn’t butcher my name. Carol had asked more than once.
My name wasn’t Ban-ooh or Bane-ooh. Yet, here we were.
Behind some of those many squares were a few coworkers snickering at my immediate roll of the eyes.
Oh, Carol. This shouldn’t still be a thing, ya know, the lack of respect to say a name correctly.
“Thanks, Cairo,” I muttered.
She gave a confused look but there was no time. I dove right into my presentation. In between segments, I checked my image in the little box at the corner of my screen to make sure my blouse hadn’t wandered down the front to expose this sexy sports bra. The fact that I even had on a bra was about the best anyone could expect from me, if we were going to be honest.
I adjusted my pajamas at the waist, tapping my feet in fuzzy, pink pirate socks underneath a throw blanket.
I offered a few visuals as I spoke. A couple of graphs, but not too many, otherwise I’d lose the clients’ attention. They could try to argue against data science, but look, numbers didn’t lie. They couldn’t keep saying they needed, for some unknown reason, a big-ass header on the landing page. God, we get it, you love your logo.
During our last meeting, we’d presented low-fidelity wireframes, which were basics. Boxes and lorem ipsum fillers for later text. This time, we had a prototype, which the UX design and UI leads would go into next.
One of the hardest things for clients to grasp was how agile UX was. We worked in a constantly rotating circle. They couldn’t just say they wanted this app and bam! We’d have a working high-fi prototype fully designed within weeks. No. We had to start with research, conduct testing, create storyboards and site maps, create and adhere to UI design patterns for consistency, among a hundred other items, and then actually code the thing. And then we did it all over again, testing each element until we nailed the best version.
Data science was hard to argue against, but then I turned the presentation over to Juanita, the UX design lead, and that was when the clients essentially forgot everything I’d just said.
“What about offering more options in purchasing?” one asked.
I bit my lip, wishing Juanita could tag me back in so I could pull up the journey maps and storyboard slide showing how users moved through their app. I’d spent forever drawing these! These weren’t little stick figures with thought bubbles wondering how does one even open an app.
I retrieved my calm.
Gabrielle messaged me and aha! Back in the ring to reiterate, once again, after the clients nearly dismantled Juanita. She was an amazing lead and held on. It wasn’t her fault they were being hardheaded and dismissive.
I delved deeper into algorithms and pinpointed a few design suggestions that had particularly strong feedback. I then answered a few questions and, without thinking to hand it back to Carol, handed the presentation over to the lead dev, Sunny.
“Thanks, Bane,” he said, and jumped right into his overarching structural gameplay for the code team, going through an actual functioning prototype.
I glared at the screen and blinked. Damn it, Sunny. Could we go one day without this?
My name was definitely not Bane. As in the bane of his existence . . . or even Bane from Batman. As hot as a Tom Hardy Bane had been, I just didn’t think that was a compliment in any way.
Anyway, he wasn’t worth my calm this morning. I was too chill to respond, which probably disappointed whoever had bet on today’s pool of Bhanu versus Sunny. He went through his segment, talking way more than he needed to. Sheesh, most devs in this business were known introverts, but here he was, loving the sound of his own voice. It was deep and gritty, more like Denzel Washington than a nerdy coder—ahem—but yeah, whatever, not my thing.
I lowered the volume and muted myself, wrapping my fingers around my warm cup.
The rain was a constant drizzle outside my Tacoma apartment, per usual for this time of year. The fireplace was going and added a nice, cozy warmth to the one-bedroom place. I sat in the converted office corner of the living room, where the watery streams running down a frostbitten window had me feeling all sorts of ways.
Working remotely worked for me. A single woman, no kids, somewhat introverted, and approximately one year away from being a cranky old hag yelling at kids to get off her lawn. There was no traffic, no rushing in and out of the rain, no wearing uncomfortable clothes because they were “presentable” (what did sweatpants ever do to anyone except love them?), no starting fights when someone touched my lunch in the fridge, no being forced to sign cards for people I barely knew or being coerced to chip in for coffee when they never bought the kind I liked, and best of all? I could mute anyone I wanted. It was essentially a superpower.
My thoughts drifted during Sunny-and-his-Denzel-voice’s segment. Then our client-facing portion ended once Carol thanked everyone. She disappeared with them, leaving Gabrielle in a breakout room with one lead at a time.
“Bane. Bane? BAAAANNNNEEEE,” Sunny said dramatically, reminiscent of how movie heroes cried out in vengeful declaration against their archnemesis.
Ugh. Unmute.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Can we get the results of the CTA buttons ASAP? It may only take a day for you to get research done and about ten seconds to design, but adjusting any detail in code can cost us a week.”
“I’m aware of that,” I replied, swirling my coffee. He wasn’t going to get to me today, no sir.
“Are you, though?” he asked, chin on his knuckles, elbow on a chair arm as he swiveled back and forth. Oh, that familiar, dry look, like he loathed talking to me.
The number of black squares onscreen had diminished, leaving a handful of people still on camera, all team, all muted. Except Sunny. Because he loved his Denzel voice.
His hair was disheveled, like he’d just popped out of bed to make it to this meeting. I’d like to say that was a side effect of remote work, but he always looked like that. Devs were like little workaholics stuck to their many, many windows glowing with a billion lines of basic.
Back when we were in-office, I’d often walk into his section of the floor, a large area with cubicles and glass-walled meeting rooms covered in Post-its and scribblings, to find Sunny typing away while studying three gigantic computer screens filled with a dozen windows in alternating coding languages for various pages of any given project. My soul sort of died a little every time I saw it. While I understood basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and could yes, in fact, create working, responsive prototypes from thin air, that stuff wasn’t easy or quick.
Too many lines. Too many numbers and phrases and a hundred generational variants for one simple thing. Lord, I’d rather be working in a cubicle again. Spare me a slow death.
I wondered if he had as many computers set up at home. Probably. And right now, he was glaring right at the virtual box my head was in. I smirked, imagining his bottled-up load of loathing and no Bhanu in person to unleash it upon.
Sarah, one of my researchers, unmuted herself to chime in, “Sorry about that! It’s my fault. I’m uploading to the system now. Results are pretty solid, and I think the design team will lean toward keeping CTA buttons as is. Good news, right?” she added nervously.
I scowled. No team member of mine should be groveling at the feet of anyone. That was what I was here for. No. Not to grovel! But to erect barriers around my team so they could work without feeling the weight of others’ demands.
“Thank you, Sarah,” Sunny said at the same time I said, “You don’t have to apologize.”
Sarah opened her mouth but didn’t respond.
Without missing a beat, Sunny added, “She’s right. You don’t need to apologize. It’s the lead’s job to make sure these things are on time.”
“Thanks, Sunny,” I replied bluntly, and then said in one breath, “And it’s the lead’s job to discuss this in private with fellow leads, which is the very job description of a lead, and not try to inflate an already gigantic ego that’s about ready to burst and splatter brain matter on our screens in some severely traumatic yet I-warned-you sort of way.” I blinked. “Or did you bet in today’s pool?”
His face dropped. His swiveling came to a dead stop.
“Oh. Didn’t think I knew about the office pool of Bhanu versus Sunny? You guys shouldn’t be betting during work and on coworkers. But lucky for you, I’m a chill pill today.” I toasted him with the coffee mug my sister had given me, making sure the decorative side faced the screen so he knew without a doubt that, just as the writing said: i took a dna test, and i’m 100% that bad bitch.
Besides, I also placed a bet on today’s pool. I believed I’d just won thirty bucks.
“The research is live on real-time for the design team to look at and make their final decision.” I glanced at the time on the upper right corner of my screen, adding, “And with an hour to spare on its deadline, nonetheless. I’ll be moving that Trello card to complete. Mmkay? Thanks. Hit me up if anyone has questions. Have a great day, teams!”
I went dark mode and muted myself but watched Sunny’s look of exasperation.
After Gabrielle spoke privately with each lead in a breakout room, she spoke with all of us together.
“Are you still going on vacation?” she asked.
“Yes,” Sunny and I said simultaneously.
She, and the other leads, eyed us like there was some naughty gossip to be had. Ugh. There wasn’t. Trust me, never would I in a million years hook up with the Denzel-voice grump.
I immediately piped up, “I’m still going to visit my sister, but will be working.”
Gabrielle frowned. “That’s not what a vacation is. Or proper work-life balance.”
“I’m sure I’ll get bored. My sister’s working and it’s not like we have a super-fun agenda planned. Literally going to be sitting at a resort all week.”
She sighed dreamily. “Must be nice.”
“I guess.” I didn’t really feel like putting on “real clothes,” much less leaving the apartment. In fact, with grocery delivery and food delivery and even alcohol delivery, I could go a month without stepping foot outside. “I didn’t know you approved two leads to leave at the same time.”
“We’re in a good place with the project. Junior researchers and devs can handle it for a few days.”
“Well, I’ll be—”
“Enjoying the beach,” Gabrielle said pointedly. “I better not see you logged on or working.” Then she said to Sunny, “You, either.”
“Ah . . .” he started, looking both perplexed and anxious. “Sure,” he conceded.
“Wow. For people going on vacation, you two sure seem to be dragging your feet.”
I shrugged. I couldn’t speak for Sunny—what with a name that surely indicated his cheery disposition—but I knew that I just wasn’t in the mood for a vacation. Was there such a thing? Apparently so.
As soon as we finished our meeting, I logged off the chat, double-checked that my camera and mic were off, slid the cover over my camera, and went to the bedroom to change. Ah. Sweet T-shirt of mine. Even though I’d worn a blouse for an entire two hours, there was nothing better than getting back into pajamas.
I packed in between small meetings with my team and checking off work items. Hmm. What to pack? Tech was always a given. I needed my laptop, phone, tablet, and chargers. Undies and socks, sure. Toiletries, purse, wallet. Um . . . clothes? I wondered how many pajama bottoms I’d have to pack for a week away, seeing that my sister didn’t think a weekend getaway was enough.
Speaking of that little sneak, my phone lit up with a text from her.
Diya: You better get your frumpy ass to the airport on time. Don’t try to ditch me. And for the love of all that is holy, please get out of sweatpants. Better trim up down there, because I expect to see you in a bikini by the pool. See you tomorrow! Love you!
Ah. To be blessed by such sweetness.
Photo © Sajni Patel
Sajni Patel is an award-winning author of women’s fiction and young adult books drawing on her experiences growing up in Texas, an inexplicable knack for romance and comedy, and the recently resurfaced dark side of fantastical things. Her works have appeared on numerous Best of the Year and Must Read lists, including in Cosmopolitan, O, The Oprah Magazine, Teen Vogue, Apple Books, AudioFile, Tribeza, Austin Woman, NBC, Insider Reviews, PopSugar, BuzzFeed, and many others.
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Sajni Patel, Isha, Unscripted
