Since this is the students and schools forum, let me break it down:
Main Entry: 1usu·al
Pronunciation: 'yü-zh&-w&l, -zh&l; 'yüzh-w&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin usualis, from Latin usus use
1 : accordant with usage, custom, or habit, but not a rule : NORMAL
2 : commonly or ordinarily used but not allways
3 : found in ordinary practice or in the ordinary course of events : ORDINARY
Since I started school, my life is a mess. I feel like I am moving backwards.
Wow, you’ve all given me a reason to think that life will get better at some point. I am 33 and left a job (career) to go to school to be an IDer. I actualy miss working for a living. This unstructured student life BLOWS! I was beggining to wonder if anyone actualy does this for a living. Now I know.
Thanks, keep those schedules coming!
Pete
6am: Wake up, feed the cat, do some excercises
6:30: Make coffee + breakfast to bring to work, get dressed, drive 30 min
7:30: Eat, surf internet, answer personal e-mails
8:30: Start sketching, occasional 1 hr meeting (1-3 x’s per week), possible
customer visit, mostly just sketch though.
12:00: Lunch time, 30 min in cafeteria, or go out for Mexican, 1hr with
co-workers
12:30: Surf the net for something more design related and inspiring
12:45: Sketch, or meeting or customer visit, or joke around with other
designers, talk about projects, get input on my output, give my
opinions & ideas on their projects, play music, go fire up the french
press, sketch some more, possible refinements, talk to project
managers, check to see if Metropolis or ID mag or Innovation came
today, read one of those for a bit, jump on the net
2:30 Go outside for 10 minutes if it’s nice, get some water (gotta flush out
that coffee!)
2:45 Sketch, send e-mails to bike buddies about riding tonight, sketch
4:00 drive home, make a toasted PB&J (every day!), feed the cat, check
e- mails, go for ride 1-3 hrs
7:30 Recovery drink, shower, check e-mails, make dinner, surf net while
eating, wrench bikes if they need it, clean up the house a bit
9:30 Watch TV if I’m feeling brain dead, or read in bed
10:30 Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep…
This is during training for the bike…in the offseason replace the riding with going to bars and doing generally more interesting and social things. I should mention that I work corporate, and it’s pretty laid back. Flex time helps with training so I can get out at 4, and in the winter I can go in as late as 9:30. That’s plenty of leeway for a dude like me.
800 sit at desk, go over notes from previous day, work.
1200 go home for lunch, walk dog.
100 work
500 gather other designers for daily dart game
530 go home
545 walk dog or if my wife is home first, i start making dinner
630 eat
730 goto gym m,w,f, goto dog park t,th,s.
830 check email, watch movie
1100 goto bed
friday nights, i usually meet up with some friends and go driving. saturdays i do my hobby (car). sunday i spend with the wife: goto beach, go for a cruise, biking, hiking.
i miss owning a house. i have difficulty filling my time on the weekends, so i fiddle with the cars.
Busy days I’m up at 6, first of all walk the dog, then 1 hour chanting (I’m a buddhist), usually at my desk by 9.
Break for lunch at 1, if needs be, water the plants.
Work until 4pm, then take the dog out, have an early dinner then work through until 11, chant half and hour then bed.
But my days are all completely different to this usually. I have three days of meetings next week, so I’ll be travelling around London and the surrounding area.
7:00am - wake up
8:00am - arrive at work
8:00-9:00am - email, meetings, catch up
9:00-12:00- populate call-out sheets, roadmaps
12-1:00pm - lunch with co-workers
1:00-5:15- alter photoshop images, collect trend info, fill out tools
5:15pm - leave work
5:30-9:00pm - cook dinner/zone out alone on “beach”
9:00-9:30pm - try to think of ideas
9:45pm- go to bed
You know what would make this real interesting? If people could post their work environment (in house, consultancy, free lance) and their job level (junior design, senior design, design director). Even though this thread is really really old this is interesting stuff, but (at least where I am interning) the schedule of an intern is a lot different than a senior designer is a lot different than the design director. For the thread my schedule is:
7:00 wake up and shower
8:15ish get to work
8:30 fire up computer (its old) email (like 2) chat with interns check le tour
9:15 sketch(what ever ID stuff is going on)and watch/listen to tour
12:00 lunch
1:00 meeting
2:00 sketch and look up inspiration
4:00 organize mass of sketching from the day sort good to refine tomorrow
5:00 go home
6:00 get home and hang out/ride bike/video games/internet
7:00 meet up with friends in cambridge for dinner
11:00 sleep
6:45 Wake up, eat, watch news, check for email from East Coast
7:15 go for a run with the dog
8:00 Take care of the 3 S’s
8:30 go to work, check emails, schedules, meetings, calm developers down, sketch, render, get the team together, work on strat planning for the season, get on the phone with East coast groups, techpacks, revisions, product reviews, performance reviews, meet with the innovation kitchen, doodle, check core77, start laying out inspirations for next season, plan travel.
12:30 get some friends together, grab lunch, take a walk
1:30 back to the above
6:30 go home, grab dinner with the wife, maybe some friends, have a drink, play wii, hang out
9:30 throw down some sketches on freelance, or competitions, or for fun
10:30 read (usually some kind of Phillip K Dick wannabie novel)
11:15 sleepytime
5:15 wake up, eat
6:00 ride (bicycle) in to work
6:40 arrive at work, clean up
7:00 start work: Quick revisions, Quick concepts
8:30 meet w/ sales, production staff, R&D
10:00 hit snack truck for muffin
10:15 longer time consuming concepts
12:00 lunch
12:45 any number of sketching, modeling, researching, problem solving activities that vary on a daily basis
4:30 ride home
6:00 Dinner with the wife
7:00 work on personal projects, random house maintenance, gathering with friends usually a beer or three is involved in all three
10:30 sleepy time
7:30> Start the with day with some breakfast+shower+change
8:15> Walk to bus Stop
8:45> Arrive at Office + Start-Up Computer + Chit Chat with work mates
9:00> Check emails + attend to projects phone calls, replies etc…
10:00> Work in current project
12:30> LUNCH time + some info. update online + check work emails/ reply
1:30> Carry on working on projects
4:30> Scooby Snack time + check work emails/ reply
4:45> Carry on working on projects
7:30> Last email check/reply and then shutdown office.
8:00> Leave office (depends on deadlines frequently 9pm to midnight)
8:30> Run over to the Gym
9:30> Leave Gym + pick up some dinner on the way to the Bus Stop
10:00> Shower off + watch the news
11:00> Hit the sack…ready for the next day.
Throw in some China trips to out factory are once a week also…totally wipes out a day.
Not much time for socialising on weekdays…party like mad on Fridays & Saturdays.!! and Sundays are for movies and food shopping…chilling out.
Also take alot of weekend vacations with friends to rebalance myself…to thailand…singapore…taiwan…shanghai…tokyo…osaka…work hard…partyhard!!
Most of the exercise I get is from standing and walking all day from one laboratory table to another. I derive more benefit and entertainment from this than some of my friends and competitors get from playing games like golf.
my schedule varies a lot since starting my own consultancy. day to day can be totally different, depending what im workin on. If its nice out, and have no immediate deadlines, i might even take the day off and go for a walk around downtown or to the park.
one of the great things about working for myself, is im really in control of my time and can arrange my day to be the most productive. im not a morning person, so wake up late, but dont take much time for breaks/eating and can work late when im more creative.
heres an example complied from a typical day the last week or so.
09.00 wake up,shower, dress (im really not a morning person- one good reason to work for yourself!)
09.20 go out for a coffee and bagel with cream cheese
09.40 back to the loft/studio to check emails, make overseas calls to follow up with clients
10.30 project management- check upcoming deadlines, confirm meetings, etc.
11.00 make calls/emails to prospective new clients
12.00 creative work- sketching, design, graphics, depending on what projects are on
the go.
13.00 lunch- sandwich at home, eat while surfing core, blogs and core forums
13.30 make calls to west coast clients and contacts, or plan travel, organize business records, invoicing, etc.
14.00 work on new proposal or strategic plan or creative work
16.00 client meeting at my loft/studio
18.00 dinner- eat while again surfing for random good stuff, trends, etc.
19.00 creative work again
21.00 browse online, magazine, outline new potential creative projects and concepts
22.00 relax, watch tv or go out for a pint
midnight- sleep
I am also very curious to know what sort of position you have, if you work for yourself, in a corporate world or…? I have a friend working for a small-ish studio and he has a HUGE workload and crazy sleepless schedule… i’m starting to understand why!
i’ll be starting school in october and this is all a bit intimidating really.
I think the one thing you can get out of doing this project is an understanding of how the ID profession is extreemly diverse. In school you can see how your classmates work in ways that fit them best; some get up early and work all day in order to have time in the evening, some work ‘second shift’ and prefer to work late in the night, some flutter in and out at all hours as they feel inspired, some don’t ever leave the studio, and some work from home and come in only for presentations.
This all translates well to speak about the mixture of work envirnments there are out there for designers. Corporate, consulting, freelance, academia, and a mixture of any/all of them. Even within those environments there are Industrial Designers who specialize in areas like prototyping, strategy, research, CAD, management, blue-sky ideas vs. production-track products, marketing/POP, etc.
As a Design Research nerd, I strongly encourage you to use techniques that can get you the information you need without risking the mis-direction you may get from forcing qualitative data into quatitative findings. Start by doing qualitative (interviewing, ethnography, etc.) research with your classmates. Can you find groups of people who share traits like I outlined above? You can make names for the groups like “9-5ers”, “second-shifters”, “studio-junkies”, “studio-avoiders”, etc. Then take the information you are getting on this tread and try to see if you see any similarites. After you get some ideas from this qualitative research you can try to write a survey to prove/disprove your hypothesis if that’s what is required of your class. Just make sure you don’t ask leading questions and try to get an equal yet diverse group of participants. I would be happy to answer any design research technique questions you may have! Good luck! - Corin
0300 - Wake up to a babbling 8 mos old. Change a shitty diaper.
0305 - collapse back on my pillow
0600 - Wake up to a screaming 8 mos old. Change a shitty diaper.
0605 - Make a big ass pot of coffee while 8 mos old gnaws on my ankles.
0615 - Pour big ass cup of coffee…double cream. Drink until eyes begin to open.
0620 - Turn on Tour de France
0630 - Surf Core77, blog, check email, check Google Newsfeeds
0700 - Stuff breakfast into a screaming 8 mos old mouth.
0710 - feed sleepy 3.5 year old
0715 - watch Tour de France while eating cereal while 3.5 year old asks where rain comes from and 8 mos old gnaws on ankle
0730 - Pour big ass cup of coffee for wife and another for me. We both take double cream.
0830 - Some insanely fit person from Columbia wins today’s leg of Tour de France
0831 - start documentation on SW drawing for quotation while 8 mos old gnaws on my ankle and listening to 3.5 year old asks her Mom why cat’s have fur
0930 - go to bank deposit cheques (hopefully) and pay income tax remittances
1000 - drive to office
1030 - pour a coffee and plan rest of day
1030 - 1200 Put out fires, design, pro/e, blah blah blah
1200 - go to Subway
1215 - eat lunch at desk while surfing web
1230 - 1500 - Design surf, fiddle, prototype a possible light pipe scenario
1500 - 1515 - Get a coffee, stretch, walk, clear brain
1515 - 1700 Design, surf, fiddle, put out fires, smash possible light pipe prototype to bits out of frustration
1700 - 1730 Drive home
1730 - Make dinner
1800 - Eat dinner answering 3.5 year old’s questions about where poop comes from
1900 - 1930 - Bath 3.5 year old, read her a few pages from Calvin and Hobbes anthlology, stumble downstairs and tag my wife so she can finish the bed time routine
1930 - 2000 - Water garden while carrying 8 mos old who gnaws on my shoulder
2000 - hand 8 mos old to wife so she can feed him…hopefully to sleep
2005 - (maybe go for a run if I can shake this cold) scoop a bowl of ice cream and eat while doing more work, surfing, sketching…something
2300 - stumble upstairs to go to bed…but probably have cat attached to my ankle b/c I forgot to feed her.
2301 - fall asleep before hitting pillow
0300 - start again
