Nikki LeeInterview
Product manager, product strategist (18F)
Adapted from Nikki Lee's interview on Uses This, published 22 August 2017. The kit is drawn from their answers and each reason is an excerpt, lightly edited. Shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full interview ↗
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Thunderbolt Display+ 37 others
We also have a bunch of Thunderbolt displays in our office.
In my personal life, I spend most of my time on my Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga.
The pen that came with this computer isn't great, so I scavenged a pen from an old X220T -- it's a better size for my hands and actually has an eraser on it.
Of course, there's no integrated storage for it, so I also acquired a Surface Pen Loop and stuck it on the side of my laptop.
I also have a desktop (a Dell XPS 8500), which I mostly use for gaming and listening to music.
My main phone is my Google Pixel, which I have been really impressed with.
At work I use a Kinesis Freestyle2 keyboard and the most normal looking ergonomic mouse that was in the GSA catalog.
My desktop is where my Denon AH-D7000s live, because it has an actual dedicated sound card.
When I'm lounging on the couch, I'll grab my SteelSeries Siberia V3 headphones.
I almost always have my Denon AH-C50MASR earbuds with me when I leave the house.
I also keep a pair of Windows branded Skullcandy Hesh 2 Wireless Headphones in my locker at work.
Most video calls happen on my laptops, which have integrated webcams, but I also have a Lifecam Cinema on my desktop, just in case.
Xbox Elite Wireless Controller
I snagged an Xbox Elite controller as a goodbye to Microsoft.
I also have a handful of standard Xbox One controllers for co-op gaming sessions with friends.
Pretty all of my gaming is on my PC, but I also have a New Nintendo 3DS XL, which is particularly great for travel.
Communication
My job is all about communication, so I spend most of my time in Slack and the G Suite.
We've also gotten in the habit of publishing plain language writeups of our research on Medium.
Productivity
Every now and then I'll download something into Microsoft Word or PowerPoint to share with a client.
Task management mostly happens in Trello, although my experience is that people are pretty bad at checking task boards regularly unless the team has a strict stand up process.
Browser
Notes
Plumbago is great for sketching out concepts, outlining essays, and thinking through things.
Coding & Development
All of our code goes on GitHub.
I don't usually write code at work, but I occasionally have reason to crack open Sublime Text.
Design
I haven't found an art program that I really love yet, but Autodesk SketchBook is all right.
Media
I pretty much always have Google Play Music running in the background while I work.
I get all the images for my essays on Flickr (searching across Creative Commons licensed images, of course).
Other
I also spend a fair amount of time whiteboarding and sticky noting in Mural.
We've also used Saturate for qualitative coding, which makes it really easy to divide work across many coders.
Our data collection usually depends on survey tools (our latest project used Google Forms) or custom built software.
When I'm coding, I generally use Sublime Text (I even paid for a license!) and LiveReload.
Almost all of my PC games are managed via Steam.