Life in London
Whilst The Bang was set up as a fully remote UX design agency, London is home to a quarter of our team including me.
My little slice of it is Kentish town… I’m biased, but I’ll argue it’s the best area, much to the disagreement of some of the other team members.
Good morning
My day begins with the whole team at 9am on Around. It’s the perfect time for us to have that first (or third) coffee of the day, finish up breakfast, catch up on what occurred last night, and warm us up for the working day. We’ve nicknamed it The Bang Cast, somedays I will just sit and listen to the chat, much like a podcast. The topics we cover range from inclusivity, accessibility, design theory right through to the latest ear worms the world has forced on us and all manner of cultural news.
Where the work happens
Where I’m working though, changes on a daily basis. Sometimes it’s at home, and sometimes I’m kicking about in one of the the next cafe’s on my never-ending google maps list, although there’s a few kentish town local spots that have a grip on me. Sometimes I take advantage of The Bang’s long list of perks and fly out to Austria and do a working for a week from there. That’s the beauty of being a remote user experience agency, London cafe’s aren’t the only places I can work. As long as I have my laptop and access to the rest of the team I can set up wherever and get grafting. Common spots for me include, trains, friends places, airports and many various countries.
The Bang also sorts us all out with co-working passes, sometimes it’s just nice to be in a new spot, but often us London based designers will get together to collaborate in real life.
My focus in design
My main day to day role is currently is focussed on Design Systems. We know what it takes to deliver continuous improvements to our client’s products and a key way of doing that is through well maintained design systems using the latest greatest techniques available. So my day is often split between producing flows and prototyping user experience designs, and building/maintaining the base design systems we use across all our projects.
Sometimes I’m facilitating a range of workshops, most of them are done online using Around & Figma. This means we get the maximum amount of time actually saving problems, everyones opinion is heard equally, all the effort is recorded without taking extra effort.
A lot of other ux design agencies have an obsession with whiteboards. Stay with me. They’ll have a load of people in a room sticking sticky notes, drawing boxes and arrows all over whiteboards for hours - it makes for a classic user experience design agency photo opportunity, realistically our way of operating is definitely more effective. Don’t get me wrong, we love meeting up to work with each other, just when it’s relevant.
The late show
On an evening, I’m a frequent attender of design meet-ups, and if you happen to work for a ux agency, London is the place to be for them. There’s usually something happening most weeks, where I can I’m looking to improve my own knowledge, but then bring it back to the team. A favourite, the figma meet-ups. It’s chock full of other designers, engineers, product owners from loads of the the best ux companies London has to offer. Proud to say The Bang is right up there, we bagged the ‘Best Product Design Studio UK’ at this years Netty Awards.
Get in touch
If you’re looking to work with a user experience agency that delivers exceptional products, you should get in touch with Bert to talk about how The Bang can make it happen for you. Or, f you’re looking to join our amazing team, check out the open roles we've got going. Caoimhe, our wonderful Head of People will pick it up. We’re always looking for new talent.
