Narrowing your focus

Hi, I’m Luke and I work for Parallel Histories. We are looking to re-design our website and get some professional advice on copyright and cyber-security in the Deloitte Digital Connect project.

Here I want to collect my thoughts about the programme so far and how I used a routefinder to work out what I want to get out of the programme.

Narrowing my focus

The routefinder is a document that asks you questions. By answering them, you get closer and closer to defining what exactly you want to get out of the programme.

I found it to be a useful exercise to organise my thoughts, which are often a bit scattershot, and to come up with some clear deliverables. I think that this can be particularly difficult in the area of digital/IT issues because they touch on almost everything our organisation (and most organisations) do. For example designing a website is not just about the design element, which is enough work in itself. It is also about working out who your current audience is, who you want to reach, and what actions you would like them to take when they visit. On top of that, there is a need to build in the capacity for new, future services to be integrated. As such, it feels sometimes like the conversations around it never end.

The routefinder helped me to break out of those conversations and re-focus myself on the actual goals of the project. To work out what I want the end product to look like.

Website design, copyright and cyber security

Haing had discussions on these topics within our organisation, I think some further discussion with experts in these topics is needed to further narrow down how we can address them.

So, the topics I want advice on are clear, and it is clear that the main output from the project is going to be the result of some further conversations. However, the tangible outcome is still not fully defined.

Expert input

I think that narrowing down your aims is best done collaboratively. If you do not speak to other people, then you can narrow them in ways that do not make sense. So I think the next step for me is to talk with experts to work out how to translate our concerns into concrete goals.