We quickly establish a joke between us, they search my bag, and I urge them to do so. It is a job that gives the end of the day some finality - office theft will eventually be stamped out. I often leave the building trying to imagine the scenario if they actually caught someone with a shiny plump Microsoft mouse in their purse, or a windows 95 CD in their Discman. What is the polite but appropriate action that would follow such a discovery. The corporate thief would likely have their security passes taken from them in the public space of the atrium before being asked to accompany them to the back room, the air would be suffocating in seriousness as the 'back room door' clunks quietly shut behind them and the lights shudder on.

As I approach my office I start to remember the people who work there with me. I remember where I sit. I remember the blue-weave chair on wheels with dark grey moulded armrests. I remember the projects I will be working on today. I have a choice, the same one everyday, I can walk away - try and remember what I used to do before, or I can bravely stride in, slap my pass face down on the dark red eye of the entry turnstile, wait for its whiny beep - and begin my day.

Each day I pass the positive human sculptures in the atrium, and dimly feel upset. I take the stairs slowly, I think about the back room with its lights now off, and about the security guards below me. There are four thick wooden doors before the square donut space of the second floor. Each one swings with a sweeping hiss over the blue carpet. My desk is one quarter of a circle, partitions rise up from table level to form a peak in the centre. The remaining three quarters of table are used by the rest of the design team. Beyond my monitor I can see the side of my colleagues head, she is burbling gently away, you would think she is on the phone but she is talking to herself, leaving pauses that are presumably being filled by another inner voice. She notices me and bursts out a morning greeting, there is a silent wake in her monologue, and then smoothly it returns, her head bobbing in front of her screen. I type my password into the empty lozenge and watch my screen pepper with icons.

My screen background is a deep blue, I can see a reflection of the door to the photocopy room. Behind it are my icons, I have set these up over my time here. They are arranged in pools of similar function. The internet icons form a rough circle in the top left, graphics software are heaped bottom right, short cuts are in two straight horizontal lines top right. There is a clear area bottom left, and I can see the photocopier room clearly in it as the door swings open and shut. The photocopier room is hot and small and dangerously intimate when there is more than one person in it.

To navigate my day smoothly and quickly I segment it into tasks that I tick off once accomplished. I am about to settle into the first of these, a time to collect, read, and respond to my email. Once I have double clicked my mail server icon I am asked to choose my name from a list of thousands of other employees. Once chosen I can browse a window containing my fresh unread email of the day. I receive many circulars, some from the gym, to remind me of vacancies in team sports activities that are coming up, as well as reminders about my personal health check-ups, social committees ask whether I shall be attending the forthcoming cinema trip, and Network managers inform me that many servers will be shut down over the weekend for testing. Today I skip over these hoping for something more direct, more one to one. I have a brightly coloured warning that my 'Innate' time sheets are arriving a little late each week, which is slowing down processing. At the bottom is a bright pink emboldened sentence that reads:

"REMEMBER THREE STRIKES AND YOU'RE OUT !!!"

My most recent mail is from my colleague who sits next to me, it was sent five minutes ago. She alerts me that there is a need for two new buttons. One is required to represent a 'personal file'; it should allude to the classic motif of a file, but, should bring something new to it, something of the individual. The other is for a 'help' section, this button should make use of the question mark, but in a softer, friendlier way. A way that the user will be comfortable with - they should not feel undermined by their lack of knowledge, in short, an 'invitation' to get to know the system. At such an early stage in the design process I am often left undecided as to which software I will use to draft my initial proposals. This is probably the beginning of my second segment, a slow paced drive towards lunch time. I'm starting to put together a few ideas for these buttons. I fetch a cup of water from the dispenser. As I slowly pass the photocopy room I feel the rapid suction of air as its door is pulled inward followed by the hot dusty perfume air that blasts out as it swings shut on its automatic hydraulic closer. Maybe if I fatten up the question mark, make it look plump and a bit less know-it-all. And then if I put the whole thing in a circle. Maybe an outline or a blurred shadow.

There is a tiredness that I have experienced in the office that I have never experienced elsewhere. Eyes softened to slush, I become horribly aware that I am slipping from my chair. My elbows can no longer grip the slow grey curve of the armrests. I am shrinking into a tiny kernel, frantically trying to shake free of the lure of sleep. Deadness seems to fall away from me in a wonderfully comfortable drift. This is the time in the day when I will slide out into the lobby, up the elevator, to the canteen where I can find a cake that will put an end to this weary.

In the canteen the tables are again round, and the chairs are single curved slopes. From my position with my cake I can see a view of the city. I look to the spot in the horizon where my house is and eat my gateau. There is a lady here who serves cakes and tea, she tells me she is not allowed to read at work, sometimes she will sit for hours, staring at the cakes before a customer comes and asks for her assistance. She has an elasticated ankle support under her tights that disappears into her small flat shoe. As I return in the lift to my floor I peer into its gold mirrors, the light is brown on my skin, I think once more about the slick cream in my cake as the brakes tighten at the second floor. As I pad back to my chair, I wonder why I feel jealous of the lady who serves the cakes. I stretch my legs under the desk and hold the bin with my feet, I think it is perhaps because her complaints seem real, her frustration genuine.

Just before lunch I am interrupted by a midrange roundly 'bing', an indicator that I have new mail. It is my colleague asking me to continue with the cancer section I was working on yesterday.

My tray is brown plastic with a slightly granular surface and a smooth curved lip. I serve myself some vegetables and select a piece of fish from the hot plate. At the till I hand the man my ID card, which he swipes through a thin dark gash in his beige box. An LCD window perched on one leg tells me I have 1.54 remaining.

Choosing a chair is a very crucial decision and could alter my whole lunch hour and may even affect my ability to eat at all. If I sit at an empty table and a member of my team comes softly across the blue carpet towards me, they may well feel compelled to join me; my safer bet would be to sit at the last remaining seat at a table with a team who I don't recognise. This way I can eat and listen. At this particular table I soon realise that I am surrounded by 'Legal', a team that keeps the company 'out of trouble'. "You're not covered," spurts out a man to my right, his yellow tie whipping around. The table is full of laughter and shaking: "But you should have heard his wife, she phones me back after he's slammed the phone down, I ended up feeling sorry for him". I wonder if my smirk gives me away.

Skin cancer - in Al Quanta Medium 14pt for the initial title. This text forms part of a header banner that will introduce the topics for this section. The image that I have decided would look best in the background is an aerial view of a sun-baked desert, the ground is red and cracked. This after-lunch segment is the longest and most testing, it comprises mostly of work. Yesterday I ordered the desert image from the online stock library that we use, today I am waiting for them to send my authorisation number so that I can download it. I have been advised that this image may need some cheering up before it will get past branding. The words 'Skin cancer' are shimmering blue and floating, right aligned over the ruined desert. In the left I have put a brilliant yellow sunflower, just this simple token pleasantly deforms the banner's meaning. The subtitle 'Protect your skin all year round' sits under the main title in mud red 11pt Al Quanta Medium.

The tradition that has evolved with images on this site is that they should fade at the edges forming a soft vignette. On this page are three images, one for each of the forms of skin cancer; squamous cell carcinoma, basal cell, and malignant melanoma. Coloration is an important issue with these images and I am reluctant to reduce their 24-bitness. I have tried but the dithering made the conditions itchier and grainier. While softening and bleaching their edges, I have to decide where the focus is in each image. The raised and glowing splatters of tissue need a healthy field of skin to sit in for the sake of context. But because of my constraint in pixel size I have to weigh up the need for detail in the cancerous nodules against the urge to zoom right back, to see the taut curve of the chin.

While reading the accompanying text I notice how it states that there are only two types of skin cancer: malignant and non-malignant melanomas. This contradicts a conversation that I had earlier in the week with a copy writer from upstairs. I ask my colleague what is the correct way to question the validity of this material. She informs me that we have a medical team in the basement that is supposed to check all material before it goes live. I copy and paste the text into an email for the medical team, but I'm informed by my colleague that it is best not to pester them right now and maybe I should wait to the end of the week, and maybe find some corroborative evidence that this text is wrong - I open my browser and type 'skin cancer' into my search engine. There is a wealth of evidence to indicate that there are in fact three main types of skin cancer, some of which I collect together and add to the email I am sending downstairs.

At the bottom of my page are three mud red buttons. The buttons are one half circular, one half pinched into an arrow. Each one is punctured with a white circle with a number in its centre: 1,2,3. These buttons lead to, what we refer to as, the content. As we are a health insurance company it is important that the content is what the customer needs. The content should not be scary or sickly and should be able to be summed up with the umbrella phrase 'Positive health'. Each arrow points to a piece of text that is the title of its sub-area of content.

The last area of content is the 'leader', it is the part where the customer finds out about the product that underpins the section. In this case we would like to sell screening services. This means that the text and imagery must tread the thin line between alarmism and the authoritative tone of a government health pamphlet. As yet the content is unready to be placed into the template we use for content screens. I can go no further with skin cancer today.

The last part of my day is a return to my new buttons. This time I make my focus the 'personal file'. Is it possible to make a folder-like icon seem in any way 'personal'? I consider its folder shape, the base unit in a metaphor of efficient office filing in a time where computers had not streamlined everything down into this little rectangular motif. Is this a place where you might keep details of yourself that you would like to earmark as personal? The place where you could store the seething interior monologue that separates you from the blue carpets and quartered circular desks, a place where you could dump your irrational hatred for what you are doing with your life for later inspection?

As the day comes to an end there is a perceptible jangling of time, their-time is about to become my-time. I become very awake, and begin to make great show of saving all my current files in the correct destinations. I become talkative and friendly, and as I throw my bag over my shoulder, I almost shout out my goodbyes. Downstairs the guards ask to see in my rucksack and I laugh. I urge them to have a good look - please, find something, please. And then I go home.

Justin Spooner