Weeknotes for User Centred Design in the Regions 17/3/22
‘The centre has more money than God and still doesn’t get it right. We get scraps and you ruffle our hair and say “You’re welcome.”’ — [person I spoke to in one of the regions]
This week has been a busy week (mostly outside of work). My daughter and wife both got covid (they are both absolutely fine) but I’ve felt that I haven’t been at my best in meetings this week. I’ve found a couple of meetings difficult and got frustrated but I think that’s just because I’m tired. That’s a reflection on me not on the people I’ve been in meetings with :-)
Side note: my daughter (6) gave me a makeover earlier in the week and I forgot how much I LOVE having nail varnish on. I’ve been itching my face a lot in meetings to ‘accidentally’ show them off haha
What have I been up to
Regions
I was so excited that I was going to be getting out to see some people in the regions this week — but unfortunately with covid in the house I’ve kept away and done things remotely. Booooooo!
I spent an online day with Connected Nottinghamshire to understand a little more about their work and what support might be useful for them in the future. We pretty much went through a micro design sprint during the session which was fun. The output of which was a prototyped google site starting to articulate how they work, what things they use to aid that and what they are looking to improve on.
This will be iterated and tested to see if it’s useful but it was fun to make something with people during the day.
We want to test
1.if having a publicly articulated version of how they work brings better conversations with other orgs in the area.
2. If something like this helps other regions start to articulate their methods and where they would like to improve
Something about making it live with them felt like we were all training each other on this stuff but it wasn’t real training. If you see what I mean.
In another workshop I facilitated this week with one of the regions I got some feedback on some of the problems people have with the centre. I’m going to include them because I think it’s important to be open about this.
Please note, ‘The Centre’ in this context is an amorphous blob in the middle that includes any national body but no one person or team.
‘NHS App doesn’t do different languages — how can we say others need to do UCD when this isn’t accessible.’
‘Things are thrust upon us from the centre. How are we meant to do User Centred Design with that?’
Then there was an example of how things might start out well but can descend because programmes fall down decision makers priorities (within Trusts, ICS’s etc) Which can look something like this:
What am I thinking about
Diffuse design vs specialist design. If there’s a continuum of design from ‘what (if anything) can everyone do’ — ‘You need a PHD in that discipline’ what does that look like…. Or is there even a consensus on it.
I think this get’s conflated with a different debate of what’s worse ‘bad design vs no design’.
Anyway, lots to think about and go round in circles for a while whilst I listen to people cleverer than me to figure some of this out.
A bad story and a good story
Bad:
Council person: ‘We did all the stuff recommended for User Centred Design. Everything you can imagine, we did. And we created this amazing Brokerage system to unblock beds in hospitals. Basically, if the local social care provider can’t take a person then this system allows other providers to bid to take that person. It’s worked so well, everyone loves it. However, I can’t afford to sustain it so I’m in the process of selling it to a provider so they can update it and sell it back to me (and everywhere else) and make a huge profit on our IP.’
Good:
My old colleagues in Thrive by Design have been releasing a lot of the Inclusive Digital Transformation work that I was involved in last year. (Have a look at their twitter @TweetsByThrive). It’s great to see the evolution of the things they’ve released from the sketches I was involved in to actual real life useful things.
If you are still here, thank you for reading and let me know what you would like to hear more/less of in future.
Stay safe
Pete
:-)