The Design of Us

One

Bhanu

I worked in UX. UX had always been, and still was, my techy passion. Most people had no idea what in the world UX stood for, much less what it was (user experience, BTW). It was simple, really. To put it humbly, I was the all-powerful bridge connecting creativity to technology, functionality to experience. Ever used an app or website and didn't find yourself frustrated with navigation or have any negative experience, then you, my friend, experienced good UX design and had an entire dauntless team to thank for the smallest clicks and details that made your browsing exploits so flawless that you didn't even realize you were having them.

That, of course, was oversimplifying. A great deal went into the tiniest things down to color specs. Tons of meetings and research and late nights went into every thought. Today was no different.

It was six in the morning, and even the sun hadn't peeked through the rain clouds on this Pacific Northwestern day. I'd buzzed around getting coffee and waffles in my elegant, flowing cardigan, feeling very much like a princess. Granted, one who was isolated in a tower but not-so-secretly enjoyed it. I spoke of . . . remote work. When else could a girl feel like a princess in baggy pajamas and no bra?

Fret not, I had donned a bra and shimmied into a meeting blouse to look the part, brushing my hair into a low ponytail as coffee cooled, and patted on light makeup while munching on waffles. I wasn't typically a breakfast person, but there was something about waffles that I couldn't shake off. So bad was my waffle addiction that I'd splurged on one of those heavy-duty waffle makers that made four perfect squares at a time. And yes, I was eating all four this morning. A few blueberries in the mix, smothered in butter, a dollop of whipped cream, and I was the happiest person in the world.

Odd-hour meetings were part of UX. Although my company was based in Seattle, we worked with clients from around the globe. Thus why hybrid work worked so well. No one was going to make me fight Seattle traffic and battle to the death for parking spots for this meeting.

Worldwide clients paid pretty pennies for us to collaborate with them on their next big tech designs. Typically, websites and apps. When I say websites, I don't mean WordPress. I mean industry giants with complex coding and hundreds of call-to-action buttons leading to a million user interfaces to push product and make sure their company rose above intense competition.

UX was cutthroat.

I prepped my slides for my segment, making sure the presentation was ready to go, and went over the hurdles clients were sure to toss out. They had a lot to say and seemed particular for no valid reason. Mainly because they didn't know what they wanted or what worked best.

Like, sir, why would you insist on that ugly shade when color theory clearly explained why it wouldn't work? It didn't fit the mood, the atmosphere, or the purpose of the app, and created horrendous legibility issues. And testing showed that 85 percent of users were either disturbed or distracted by said ugly color.

These were typical annoyances a UX team almost always had to deal with.

I sat down at my sprawling desk-made too small by all the items on it-with an oomph, careful not to spill coffee, and shoved another bite of waffle into my mouth. I'd love to say that I was extra careful with my desktop and laptop out, plus a tablet and phone because we were techy-techy, but nah. I enjoyed waffles with butter and sans syrup, so there was at least that. Less sugary, sticky mess to attract ants.

A hefty sigh left my lips. All screens up. Slide deck prepped and loaded. Virtual platform on. A few large squares showed the bright-eyed faces of coworkers blinking back at me as we prepared to go live. Those squares quickly multiplied as others joined.

My role as senior lead UX researcher meant I 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 on screen, but I was too busy enjoying this fine cup of cinnamon coffee to care. Sunny 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.

I messaged my team in the private chat and then opened up a chat with the PM (project manager). 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? It was always a shot in the dark as to what their mood would be. The men on our teams never seemed this stressed, which had me wondering if guys had it easier. What a dumb question. Of course they did. 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 master's 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 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, and I'd learned a great deal from her. 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 meeting over to Bhanu."

Damnit, Carol.

My name is Bhanu. Pronounced "Bon-oooh." 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'd 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-oooh or Bane-oooh. Yet here we were.

Behind some of those many on-screen 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 spiel. 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 my 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 client 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 (user interface) leads would go into next.

One of the hardest things for clients to grasp was how agile UX was. We worked in a constantly revolving 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, UI patterns for consistency, among a hundred other tasks, and then actually code the damn 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 designing 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: Bhanu! You have permission to jump back in!

Aha! Back in the ring to reiterate, once again, after the clients had nearly dismantled Juanita.

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 Juanita, handed the presentation over to the lead dev.

"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. Damnit, 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.

But he wasn't worth my calm this morning. I was too chill to respond, which probably disappointed whoever had betted on today's pool of Bhanu vs. 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 abode. 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, 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 purchased 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 had thanked everyone. She disappeared, 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 on-screen 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 code.

Back at the office, when we occasionally had to meet in person, I'd often walk into his section of the floor, a large room 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.