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I work as a user experience architect designing software that works intuitively and effectively. Along with user interface design, functional design plays a really important role in creating an engaging user experience. On the concrete level, we create wireframes, prototypes, use cases and user interface descriptions based on research and client workshops.
Lately, I’ve worked as a team lead and as a project manager. This entails creating and updating work plans, coaching team members, completing reviews, participating in management meetings and making sure that we can deliver what we promised.
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I come in really early, at 7, because then I have a few hours to read my e-mail and to create a plan for the day before the office fills up. When my team members come in, I make sure they know what the priorities are. I try to find a moment time to talk to each person to see what’s on their mind.
We work in teams, so there are a lot of meetings. Sometimes the meetings are about defects and problems found in testing. If there is some re-design needed, we try to find the best way to fix the problem with the functional and/or technical architect.
Between meetings I check the progress of testing, set priorities, help team members with their problems and execute or prepare for tests of my own.
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Spending time with my family and friends gives me energy. We spend time at our cottage away from the city doing things I never do at home – gardening, chopping wood, going to the sauna and listening to the silence.
I don’t have a car for environmental reasons and I use my bike a lot for transportation especially from home to work. I also take different kinds of exercise classes from Zumba to Pilates. If I’m too busy to workout at the gym, I walk, run or do Nordic walking. One of my favorite ways of working out: “reality TV exercise.” I invented myself: I allow myself to watch bad TV programs like America’s Next Top Model but only if I use the stationary bicycle at the same time or do push-ups.
I also love the theater, poems and literature. They help me see the other sides of the world besides consulting.
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Try different things. Before joining Accenture, I thought that consulting wasn’t for me because I had an idea that the industry was about high-status and “type A” personalities.
Try different roles – when I first joined, I only wanted to work with user interface design. To get to work abroad in Copenhagen, I later accepted a role in functional testing and it opened a completely new world to me. Follow your heart. If something doesn’t feel right in the long run, then you probably should stop doing it.