Top 3 take-aways from a digital year…

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been working on digital projects for a year and, as my maternity leave fast approaches, I feel now is a suitable time to reflect and share my top three learnings:

1. Ask for feedback. Pestering my (very) patient colleagues for their thoughts has been crucial and has let me know when changes needed to be made to pieces of work and how they can be further developed. A truly finished product seems to be a complete myth in the digital-sphere and to keep making improvements is seen as a good thing! I have found that colleagues are generally quite happy to share their feedback as long as it can be done quickly, informally and at a time that suits them.

2. Ask why… a lot. By working on digital projects over the past year, I have started to become more confident with questioning. Why is that? Why does the data not match my prediction? Why would you pick up that leaflet? It felt awkward at first but now I have grown used to feeling comfortable asking why. I have found that it is a great way to start unpicking a problem and an even better way gain insights.

3. And finally…if it wasn’t already, Google is your new best friend. It was so helpful to find short blogs, free webinars and handy tutorials from those with experience. The digital world is fast moving and full of technical jargon and phrases that I never knew existed- wireframe anyone? It’s ok not to know what everything means right away and quickly searching acronyms during a meeting…I promise!

I have really enjoyed the opportunity to get involved in a number of digital projects, processes and sprint and have found out so much about how digital tools, techniques and thinking can develop and improve a service in a relatively short space of time.