Weeknotes for User Centred Design in the Regions 10/3/22
“Pete, we are working in the open and you’ve gone a little quiet on what you’ve been up to. How are you going to share things?’ — Simon Dixon in my 1:1
He’s not wrong. I’ve been here just on 2 months now and when I started I was putting loads of stuff on slack and other channels. I worried that it was getting too much for everyone so went completely the opposite — silence.
Perhaps there is a more structured approach to updating people with what is going on in the work I’m involved in……… so here’s my attempt at weeknotes.
Not the good type that Matt and Kathryn do, more the lets-try-this-and-see-what-mess-we-get-into type.
So here we go.
What have I been up to?
My time has been split 50/50 on
- Spending time talking with the regions to see what support could look like
- Being involved with the professionalism work that’s going on across a couple of suppliers.
Professionalism
It took me a bit of time to find my feet with this as there’s a lot going on across a bunch of different teams/suppliers all with briefs that could overlap if they aren’t pulled together. It feels, lately, like we all have a more common understanding of the asks and the activities that people are on with and we have a good structure now on stakeholder meetings, activities and show and tells.
Regions work
There’s a couple of things I’m working on to test approaches of support.
1)Putting a bunch of curated resources (training slides etc) on NHS Futures through our friends at Thrive by Design. We are testing
- If an open place like futures works for people
- If the slide decks we have work for a wider audience
- If it sparks conversations amongst people (not through the centre)
2) A Chief Nursing Information Officer with UCD skills in the South West. We are testing
- If a person with medical expertise, trained up in UCD, can be a good bridge between two different communities
- If hybrid roles are effective in advocating for UCD and actually doing some of the doing
- How this might spread through professional networks outside of UCD roles. In this instance the CNIO network
3) Working in Nottingham to help them articulate their approach and see if it maps to some of the broader principles of UCD. Hopefully they can then spread the word a little more in their region
4) Running a 1 day design sprint with the Patient Portal team in the NW (I’m particularly excited about this as it’s spending time in the Poverty Truth Commission with real people). If you are interested in this approach you can find the structure here (nhsx colleagues for now). I’ve got the equally awesome Laura and Uma coming with me on the day so I’ll be blaming them if it doesn’t go well (hehe).
Things I’m thinking about
The big thing on my mind at the moment is…. Something I’ve unfortunately titled ‘Bottom Up Design.’ I’m hopeful to make a compelling enough case to see if we can take design into community orgs (like community centres, homeless shelters, libraries etc). I’d like to support growing designers from those communities. Reasons for this are
- I believe design should be done where people are and if this works I’d like these places to be the ‘go to’ places for that regio
- We have enough sway to genuinely change the face of our (UCD) sector. I think this might be a way to be more inclusive and help get more diverse voices into the disciplines. (Noting I identify as a white-middleaged-heterosexual-reasonably affluent -male *sighs*. All services work for me already. We need other voices)
- I don’t think there’s enough design professionals out there for the amount of work that we want to do…. Maybe some of these wonderful people will come and be direct colleagues with us.
A good thing
A couple of years ago I worked at Good Things Foundation and looked after the Widening Digital Participation programme (which was all about digital inclusion in health). Anyway, the work was referenced in a meeting I wasn’t in — which means it wasn’t just put on a shelf to gather dust and maybe some people are reading it. That felt good,
This is my first attempt at weeknotes. Let me know if it’s useful, how it could be better etc :-) And also if you have any questions, agree/disagree with anything I’ve said :-)
Stay safe
Pete