At the end of every week I reflect on the previous seven days and look forwards.
These are thoughts on work, work adjacent stuff, a little bit of life which I am willing to share (in case maybe it helps someone else out there), any culture notes, running/fitness, home improvements, and looking forwards. Read some or all, it’s your choice.
Work
The continue to finish off some bits of work continues. Managing just enough making and leaving some time to focus on handing over (we’re doing handing over along with doing some making, but need some tying up time). Also, making sure we know/assure we've done what we needed to and well enough.
Had a playback from our product’s second accessibility review. We wanted it to be a deeper dig than we got but costs limited that. But we made sure some new stuff, some tricky stuff got a good look over. Surprised, pleasantly, there were no major issues. Two seems to stem from the design system we borrowed from in the first place, but we’ll feed back like the good little borrowers we are. All keeps us true.
Spent some of Wednesday afternoon in Westminster gardens talking through work. Sat on a bench in a tranquil setting, using your brain and mouth still works well.
Pulled my finger out to properly start finding something else for June onwards, albeit pulled about halfway out with everything else going on.
Work adjacent
Big theme of the week from various chats: Does government digital need a bit of soft reset? Is it here to iterate a modern veneer on top of legacy services. Is it here to make better services. Is it here to help with service transformation. What is “modern transformation”? Should teams spend a year with their heads down working out master plan for the fire? Should they start small and have more cover to make mistakes as they learn? The strategy is delivery is the strategy etc etc.
Also, sort of related: What is design? Should designers be better at getting tech concepts if they work in tech? I’ve ruminated on this before a few times, when designers for print tended to have a real understanding, sometimes love for the materials they needed to realise their designs. But even “surface design” needs to get the formats.
Reminded of Leeds Gov Design, which I ran/lead/whatever from 2018 to 2020 (and somehow forgot). We had 14 planned. One got canned because of things not dropping into place and the 14th got canned because Covid. So we did 12. That’s a good go. Anyway.
A few people talked about Couch to 5k recently. That's a programme of activities that was designed. What is design?
If you’re looking for new work if you’re contracting best question you can ask: Have you got budget allocated/awarded already and is the work happening?
Had three remote catch ups with people I’d not spoken to in ages. All good.
Is there a point for OKRs if you’re effectively delivering/cracking through a project?
General life notes
I’ve been hit by the Sonos app update, I now have two currently useless speakers in my house. Perfect is the enemy of done, iterate iterate iterate — but what if you already had a full service through your app, your users are already using git, the features and all that, are used to something working. And then you decide to launch a new app which regresses the service in their eyes? They get annoyed.
Got an email through from Bradford council to say the council tax for the house now was sorted. Kristin and I had used the Bradford council website to tell them we’d moved. But somehow we ended up with two seperate council tax bills, and maybe one said one of us lived at the other place still. Who knows. Anyway, had an interesting chat with someone at the council the week before, who gave us step by step instructions on how to use a webform. Which in itself feels an open expression of the problem in the first place. A bit of effort to get a form better makes it better for everyone — especially staff having to give run throughs of the form over the phone.
Stuart Rowson posting on LinkedIn it’s 25 years since he started at the Grimsby Telegraph reminded me it’s 25 years since I moved back to Grimsby for 6 month stint at the Tellywag — before moving back to West Yorkshire.
Duolingo, do it daily. But do I take it in? I do it at pace, it tells me I did that session fast. Sometimes I have to work to beat the timer. Is this the best way for me to learn? It doesn’t feel I am wallow in the language as much as I should, just being hammered and hammering my way through sessions (not lessons). Duolingo offers up tips for tasks outside of the app to help learn the language to seep in more but… feels like I am playing a game too much?
The throng of Northern ticket people/revenue collectors/whatever they are called at the bottom of our street most mornings. Current record: 8 on Friday.
That culture
Went to Interesting at Conway Hall on Wednesday night. It was… interesting. Saw some friends, many I last saw before Covid times.
Booked a day return to London for Saturday 25th to go to the tropic Modernist architecture exhibition at the Kensington V&A.
Running and fitness
🏃🏻♂️ 6 runs, totally 48.4 km (67.2 km for the month, 291.5 km for the year), including a weekday morning run in London and a half marathon run along the canal to Leeds, yes yes yes 👍🏼👍🏼
🚶🏻♂️ Tracked 24.8 km of walking 👍🏼👍🏼
🧗♂️ No climbs, but that was fine 👍🏼
🏋️♂️ No weights or aerobics sessions but plenty of life aerobics if that makes sense.
⚖️ Weight down to 88kg
Race/organised runs plan. I track most activities on Strava.
Home improvements
Got the keys to the new house on 27 October 2023. Four months of renovation. Moved in start of March. Lots of things left to do.
Over the last week:
- New bolts now in all the downstairs doors and new handles on them too.
Interesting links (some of them)
- Vatican reveals new rules for supernatural phenomena
- Bringing balance: The case for and against user-centred policy design
- What is 80/20 training?
- Inside the England museums averaging fewer than one visitor a day
Looking forwards
Work / work adjacent
- Two weeks at HMPPS to go.
- Try and start one of those blog posts I keep hinting at.
- Keeping popping up in community sessions (it’s good to be back) and put in some overdue catch ups with friends.
Life
- Still (still) need to plan a longer break.
- Still (still) need to try and read some of those 400-odd browser tabs in my phone.
- Final stretch of accounts / taxes.
Health and fitness goals
- Run at least 25km.
- Weight down to 87kg. 🙏🏼
- One weights/aerobic session.
Home improvement
- Fix new bolts into all the upstairs doors and put on new handles.
- Fix the sideboards on by the oven.
- Clean the backyard’s paving.
- Touch up the walls in bedroom 2.
- Hang some more pictures.
- Trim the front bushes
The full home improvement log (needs the tasks sizing and prioritising)
Diary management
Say hi if you’re going to be at any of these/are at one of these.
- Wednesday 29 May 2024
- Tuesday 4 June 2024
- Service Design Mornings (If you’re interested email Marianne: marianne@dxw.com)
- Thursday 13 June 2024
- Product for the People, Leeds
- Friday 21 June 2024 to Sunday 23 June 2024
- Dublin
- Monday 24 June 2024
- CSS, The Brude, Leeds
- Sunday 14 July
- Ilkley half marathon
- Saturday 24 August 2024
- Field Day, Victoria Park, London
- Sunday 15th September 2024
- Pudsey 10k
- Monday 28 October 2024
- Fran Lebowitz, Barbican, London