Simon Wilson

Leeds gov design meet number 1

We're going to hold a meet-up in Leeds for people designing government things, whether they are products or services or whatever you want to call them. When? It will be on Monday 19 February, from 3pm until 5pm. Where? This will confirmed this week, but it will be

“The prototype”

It’s a phrase that can mean one thing to one person, another thing to another person. “The prototype.” _The_ prototype. A singular thing. Strange that, to me, given “prototype” can mean so many things to so many people. In a session last week the DWP Digital user research and

DWP Digital Leeds design notes, number 1

UR and design sessions in Leeds We’ve a growing user research (UR) and design community at DWP Digital in Leeds. (Sidenote: I get a bit torn about calling it the “UCD team”. It simultaneously values design as a function – good – but also has the knock-on effects of coming across

Antennas up. Receive and send.

You’re in an agile team. You’ve a product owner, a delivery manager, a user researcher, a content designer, an interaction designer, a front-end dev, a sort of full stack dev, the back-end dev. Usually there’s a few more back-end devs than just the one. You’re all

Looking ahead to service jams in Leeds during 2018

Hello (going left to right) from Lisa, Emma, Marie, and me!  We’re looking ahead to what we do for the service jams in Leeds over the next 12 months. Already there’s the Global Service Jam sneaking up on us in two months, starting after work

2018 Bradford CoderDojos

The first Bradford CoderDojo of 2018 is on Saturday 27 January. Basically, we give our time to help your kids make stuff with computers so those kids can help other kids make stuff with computers. And maybe help parents too. It's free. Come along! You can book a

New year, new eyes on your work

December is rarely a steady month, usually a slow one for some, or a too-frantic one for others. Whether you’re starting the new year as a new you or an old you, take a little time out for a design review of some work you did in the closing

Work goals for the first quarter of 2018

I’ve been in my new role in the new place (DWP) for a month and a half now. Lots to take in. Just before Christmas I re-read something I wrote in September 2016, on my problem with digital transformation. The post was response to something similar I’d written

Designing with real enough data

At DWP a lot of people searches seem to be based around an individual’s National Insurance Number (usually called a “NINO” within the government). A screen like this is not uncommon:  On the services and digital products we work on at DWP Digital we need to

Talking in education offer

I’ve written before about looking sideways, getting out of your bubble to see how others do things. There’s a flip side to that. Over the past few years* I have always had time to help educate and have conversations about design and digital, from sessions — talks, lectures, and

Getting out of the way

Last Thursday I attended an excellent (and by that I mean “productive”) session in London around design principles in digital health and care services, led by work happening out of NHS Digital. On the train back to Leeds I opened up Trello and looked down a list I had written

The strategy is...

I was chatting to someone the other day about how to get work done, processes, and all that stuff. It’s easy to lose countless minutes – maybe hours – waxing lyrical about it at the expense of getting stuff done. But our point was just-enough process is important: The spine to

Chlamydia primary care design sprint, days one and two

Since the start of September it’s been foot full down with our discovery into NHS chlamydia primary care services. We’ve been - as Eliot Hill’s excellent posters put it - exploring the problem space so we can then move on to testing options with hypotheses. We’ve

Broadacre 2017

I was at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York a couple of months back. There was (and still is until the end of September 2017) an excellent Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition on. Wright was a designer who embraced so much. I highly recommend you read up further

The map is a living thing

!Screen grab from Twin Peaks showing Hawk and Truman looking at a map Episode eleven of the new series of Twin Peaks, Hawk tells Truman: >This map is very old but it is always current. It’s a living thing. One for all the product people out there.

Air lines

When I was a lot younger, back in the early to late ‘80s, I used to travel abroad a lot with my mum, dad, and sisters. My dad worked abroad, we went to live wherever he was. In about 1986 my mum got me a little book that had an

Making a simple dashboard for our discovery

I am currently working on a chlamydia discovery at NHS Digital. We’re looking to understand the needs of people who: 1. could get chlamydia 2. have chlamydia 3. have had chlamydia 4. are effected by people who have chlamydia –and how we can link them to NHS services that

A sense of doing something

In New York the other day I spotted a sign for wheelchair access to a school. !New wheelchair symbol I love it showing people in wheelchairs _doing something_ from the icon, even if it only seems to represent physical movement. I appreciate that not everyone in a wheelchair has as

Weeknotes s02e04

For week commencing Monday 24 July Prelude After weeks 1 and 2 and week 3 this is the last week of a limited four week run of weeknotes from my experiences on the NHS.UK “beta” programme. Thank you for reading so far. Primary care finders I started the week

Weeknotes s02e03

For week commencing Monday 17 July Prelude It’s Friday night. I’m frazzled. But still enough juice in the tank to pick through my notes to bring you some weeknotes from NHSbetaland. Primary care finders Wednesday we had an “inception session” for primary care finders. (“Inception session” may give

Public Design WY number 3 is done

It’s only a month since we were saying thanks and goodbye to Public Design WY #2. And now it’s time to wrap up Public Design WY #3. Held in the awesome DHEZ / Digital Catapult Centre Yorkshire space in Bradford, it was personally a great moment to hold a

The shed has become a workshop

Getting a shed was the best idea. It is currently my standards-principles-elements-patterns workshop.  We are short of wall space at work – and short of time during the working day to get this stuff done. Standards-principles-elements-patterns help us make consistently designed services. We need these to decent, and

Weeknotes s02e01 and s02e02

For weeks commencing Monday 3 July and Monday 10 July (So these are probably fortnightnotes, but let’s just roll with it, yeah?) Prelude My last open week notes were back at the beginning of March, ending off a period of about 18 weeks of weeknotes around the NHS.UK

It's only words: the carelessness of a supermarket’s self service checkout user interface

The self service checkouts at my local Sainsbury’s recently got a refreshed user interface. Oooo, a new thing to play with. Oooo, how have they improved? Oooo, a new thing to pull part. Just so we’re clear from the start: In England since late 2015, large shops have

Public Design WY number 2 is done

After the first Public Design WY, the only way forward was a second! Unfortunately Sophie Dennis had to postpone her session on adventures in policy land, but we were still able to entertain and be entertained by Phil Sherry. Phil works with HMRC, and trekked down from Newcastle to talk