Blessed Routine

Ahh blessed routine.
By the third day at Birlasoft, Ted, Anil, and I had settled into a comfortable groove.
Ted and I would spend an hour or more in the gym at 6am, meet Anil at breakfast, and then head to the office. Our lead-footed driver ?? always made the 1km trip an adventure.
After arriving, we would sign in with Security. A ritual as carefully choreographed as a dance by Bill T. Jones or Twyla Tharp. First we would sign in for our badges. First name, Last Name, Company, Purpose of visit, Time of entry. Then we would sign in our laptops. Make, Model, ID number (we've decided that the Dell number is unmanageable, so we use the Rap serial number on the bottom of our machines.
Through the gauntlet we head upstairs. The man who is apparently paid to open doors for us springs to life and races ahead of us up the stairs. We all think this is ridiculous. We can open doors for ourselves, but to protest would be rude. So we smile and say thank you.
After about 20 minutes of checking e-mail and getting ready for the day ahead, we call in the entire team for Event and Education training. We stick to a pretty strict routine. We discuss the topic at hand for about 20 or thirty minutes, then there's usually a question that allows us to extemporize on association management and how Magic works. That lasts about 20 minutes.
As we continue the discussion we are peppered with questions about how the system should handle potential error conditions ("what should happen if a person registers for a class twice?" for example). Those questions enable us to get to the heart of the matter and to explain how we see the product working at the programmatic level. Because Ted is such an excellent teacher and facilitator, the team feels free to point out issues with our design and we make quick corrections on the fly. This exceptionally interesting back and forth takes us to lunch.
Lunch takes an hour and then it is back to work.
The remainder of the afternoon is spent reviewing screens from the Accounting manager. Like Event and Education training, this also has a routine.
First we bring in the three or four people who worked on a specific screen or set of screens. Once their seated, we offer a pile of praise for the application, which is richly deserved, and then we proceed to tear it apart at an almost microscopic level. It really must feel like being nibbled to death by ducks.
We let no stray pixel, or un-centered button go unnoticed. If there is too much space between one border and a field label and too little between another, we speak up. People base their confidence in an application based on how it looks. If it looks right, it probably performs right. If it looks thrown together, well, it's hard to have confidence.
Once we have the UI issues out of the way, we review the workflow of the screen and verify that it is logical and intuitive. We point out problems. We offer praise. We spend many hours in this endeavor. The team responds well to this work, they ask excellent questions and never get defensive when we point out things we'd like to improve upon.
Through this effort, we've found many issues and the team is working hard to resolve them before we leave in a week or so.
After three or four hours we call it a day and head back to the hotel for dinner and a good night's sleep, so we can be ready for the next exciting day.