Weeknotes: 2–13 July

I’ve been encouraged to start weeknotes by my colleague and mentor Chris Taylor. So I’ll start by shamelessly stealing the format from him. Also, you get two for the price of one, because I forgot to press send last week.

Things that happened this fortnight

Mapping and researching decision making

My main project is a discovery exploring how user centred teams can help decision makers make better decisions.

Our team has lots of knowledge and evidence uncovered through user research. Sometimes decision makers ask for this information when making decisions. We think we might be able to help them, possibly by providing this information in a more useful way.

When I joined the project, there was a fairly defined idea what this might look like. We’ve now taken a step back so we can better understand how decisions are made. This feels like a good thing. It means we’re not building a thing until we better understand what’s happening now — including who our users are, and their pain points and needs.

Last week we started creating journey maps based on some recent decision making and the work leading up to it. We did this to start to pick out gaps in our knowledge; guide our first round of research, and learn where we might have the biggest impact.

This week we’ve been running research sessions then analysing them. A service designer has also rejoined the team, so we’ve spent some time going back over our original definition of done and problem statement.

As we’ve stepped back, and done some research, it feels like the problem is bigger and more undefined than ever. So next week we’re revisiting some of our original definitions, to make sure we’re clear on what we’re trying to do.

Joining dots

Last Wednesday evening I did something I love doing — introducing people to each other.

After the Derby Global Service Jam in March, I’ve met up every so often with a group of service designers in Derby. We’ve each had individual lightbulb moments with human centred design (‘Oh, that thing I’ve been trying to do has a name! And there’s a bunch of tools to go with it!’). We’re working on how to find others locally who’ve had - or could have - those moments, and bring them together.

We had a speaker-based meetup in mid June and Wednesday was the follow up. I invited an old contact who’s led some great human centred design work, hoping she’d be interested in getting involved. She shared her story from some of her recent projects, and thoroughly inspired us to dream big. We’d not really set a clear purpose as a group, and she was a great help as we decided how to move things along.

We’ve decided not to focus exclusively on bringing designers together. We think there’s an opportunity to share our small group’s skills and knowledge with people who might not think they’re designers, and start working on some local problems together. The idea is that the group could grow organically as we start making things and putting them out there. We‘re now going to find some groups and see if they have some needs we can tackle together.

I left with the sparkly feeling I get when an interesting mix of people get together, and it feels like something exciting’s about to happen.

What I’ve learned this fortnight

Always be unlearning

7 months into this new world, I’m still unlearning a huge amount from my old one.

Some of this is letting go of processes and mindsets from old jobs. Some is going from a smallish third sector organisation to an enormous government department. Some comes with the (highly recommended) ego-bashing shift from well-established, specialist middle manager to total newbie intern.

Unlearning is hard, but so, so necessary. And I owe a great debt to my old boss and coach Sally Cater, who’s done — and continues to do — so much to help me with this.

Other stuff

On the theme of unlearning, I’ve started playing 5 a side netball with British Netball’s back to netball — a weekly league for people who haven’t played since school.

Even me typing that sentence is bizarre. I generally hate exercise, and have some very unfond PE memories to exorcise (sorry). But a friend convinced me it’d be harmless, and she was right.

It’s a LOT of fun. Teams are very mixed ability, there’s zero pressure, and the refs and coaches are extremely patient. The time flies and I forget I’ve been running round until the whistle goes, and I suddenly realise I’m exhausted and on a serious endorphin high.

It’s also making me deeply resent the way I was taught PE — which mostly consisted of being shouted at to “try harder”, or being ignored because I was neither desperately bad, or exceptional, at any of it. Now I’ve picked netball up again, in a safe environment, I’m really enjoying it. We’re also getting noticeably better each week. Something something coaching works better than control something something…

More next week.