“Month” notes: March 2020

Just finished reading about “week notes”, here and here. It looks like a really helpful productivity and project retrospective tool, so I figured I’d give it a shot. The examples I’ve seen are based on weeks, but this is my first time and March recently ended so I’m going to write my first “week” note for an entire month. Please forgive if there are any inaccuracies, or if it’s super long. 🙂

A note: If for some reason you’re not aware of current events, March 2020 has been one of the most volatile periods of time since WWII, or the civil movements of the 1960s. For most people, anywhere in the world, there’s been a lot going on. These are my small notes, on the work I’ve been doing, in my own little corner of the world.

Context

I am currently engaged on an e-commerce redesign and platforming project for a retail client. The client and internal teams are based in NYC and NJ, with a tech team in India. I work closely with an experience associate manager, a visual design lead, two visual designers, and project manager. I work semi-closely with the client (product) team. And the executive director of experience remains involved, here and there.

Work

• Created wireframe desktop layout options for account profile dashboards in Sketch
• Followed e-commerce project’s shift from wireframes to workflows – we got ahead of the requirements
• Created workflows to map potential e-commerce interactions for  requirements for track order and favorites lists
• Created workflows that mapped product requirements, for reset password as a guest/non-credentialed user and from account profile
• Created workflows to map proposed account profile functionality, including update address, communication preferences, and expired cards/payment methods
• Attended a product requirements meeting
• Attended at least 2 product meetings to discuss requirements for profile pages
• Discussed workflows on track order and favorites with a tech lead, before presenting to the client
• Presented workflows on track order and favorites to client
• Attended an informal session with the visual design team on their progress on a design system
• Prepped with 2 others for a client presentation on wireframes and visual design of requirements
• Revisited the requirements for account profile requirements, to make sure they were reflected in the wireframes
• Uploaded screenshot examples of account profile pages for e-commerce sites for desktop and mobile, to help the design teams make decisions on the UI
• Attended a global experience townhall (on Zoom)
• Had a virtual check-in with the larger experience teams
• Attended daily morning check-ins with the internal project team
• Finally got Acrobat Pro installed on my work computer
• Had several collaborative sessions with colleagues using InVision’s Freehand
• Attended an online presentation of an internal collaborative tool
• Checked out a website on design system repositories

Personal

• Finished reading My Life in France by Julia Child, The Outsider by Stephen King, Becoming by Michelle Obama, and Normal People by Sally Rooney.
• Signed up for SkillShare (again) and started a short course on Creating Design Systems. Finished a short course on Graphic Design Basics: Core Principles for Visual Design.
• Awarded myself a gift certificate for Amazon Prime
• It was my birthday
• Lived for a week with no heat, hot water, or stove
• Started finalizing my taxes for 2019
• Took my cat to the vet (she’s fine)
• Started some new doodles
• Began auditing a course on creative writing

I think this is a good practice. Let’s see where it goes.

Image credit: Old, Bearded Man Writing, Rembrandt van Rijn (school of), c. 1640 – c. 1650, pen and brown ink; framing line in brown ink, h 88mm × w 80mm – View on Rijksmuseum.nl