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 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. 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 much physical control.
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 done. If you
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
Camp Digital 2017 slides Hi. If you came to my session at Camp Digital yesterday, thanks. Feel free to let me know what you thought, good and not-so-good. Yesterday was the only time I will be doing that session. I am making the slides from the session available for all. Not sure how much
May 2017 Bradford CoderDojo I wrote back in January about Bradford CoderDojo returning. Since the start of the year we have run a dojo every month, generously hosted at the Innovation Centre and supported by the mentors who give their time up. Every month so far we have had all 30 places taken, and
Is your minimum viable product viable? I am back at work after a couple of great days back helping with Leeds GovJam. (Check Leeds GovJam on Twitter.) On the opening night I raised the most pertinent question for me: >What is the problem you are solving? Know, don't assume. The teams embraced this
Accidental slogans I am at Leeds GovJam, helping run things. There are many great things about doing this. One of them is the most excellent company I get to keep helping out. It's fun to talk design with those guys and gals. I don't get much of that
The usefulness of design patterns Why would you want your teams to put work into and work with a design patterns library? Design systems are such a trend right now. So hot right now. Design systems are not new though. I am taking a little time out tonight to remind myself why we do design
Butlins wifi and not stating the terms of your transaction We are staying at Skegness Butlins. I've got stuff to do while we are here. That stuff is on a computer. I'll need to send stuff. I will need to access the wifi. Using my iPhone I connect to the wifi. I need to choose an
Public Design WY number 1 is done It's now two months since I wrote about getting Public Design WY going. The first meet-up is now done. Yay! My thanks to Leanne Buchan and Lisa Jeffery for stepping up to lead a session each. Leanne talked with us about designing a city's culture strategy.
stickers Design, Make, Learn and 'digital socialism' stickers A couple of new stickers I have had printed. The first carries a Design-Make-Learn loop. These were designed a couple of weeks back during my sabbatical. We had drawn a diagram to explain the lean design loop, and just wrapped the words round a circle. Time in Illustrator: 15 minutes.
Public Design WY number 1 is go A few weeks back I wrote about trying out Public Design WY. We are looking to organise a get-together in West Yorkshire about design and designing for the public. Originally the plan was to hold it on Wednesday 29 March. Due to a few things (work, holidays, Article 50, general
