2023/06/15

Its been a busy week, but in a good way! I’ve actually really enjoyed the variety and manageable sense of urgency that its given me. This week I:

• Took more action to try and increase my understanding of software delivery management, sitting in on a ‘Velocity 101′ conversation with our delivery manager
• Chatted to Miro about how (if at all) they measure and track how much data we store with them as an organisation. I learned that currently there is no concept of ‘file size’ for a Miro board that they were able to share. I can’t be the first person to ask… I’ve asked them to have a look into it
• Put the finishing touches to a blog post about our progress on digital sustainability at Co-op. I even got access to the blog and hit the button to publish it!
• Spotted something funny with the blog stats whilst I was in there that showed food store colleagues using a blog post to find the login page for a web based tool they needed. I’m working on whether we need to change something for that!
• Did a bunch of storyboarding and concept mockups for some exploratory pieces of work. It’s reminded me that its a fun challenge pulling these together at short notice, but also that I’m 100% not a proper UX/Interaction designer – trying to wrap my head around how some of the actual design files I’ve been stealing from are organised has been painful at times. Auto layout in Figma anyone?
• Travelled up to Manchester for our internal Digital Technology and Data conference, presenting alongside a colleague about digital sustainability. The session wasn’t rammed…but we were on day three in the afternoon and competing with the excellent Co-opoly creation from some of my colleagues too. We still had valuable conversations and people took concrete actions away with them, which was the aim
• Wrapped up a 10 day long work experience placement I’d organised within the team. Isobel joined us with a background in design and experience working in a Co-op store – which is a super interesting combination and something I think I’d be keen to do more of. Combining it with the conference made it even easier to make sure a range of interesing things were happening too.
• Sat in on a great design review session for another colleague app that we’re looking to improve. Lots of good discussion about business operational needs, store colleague needs and engineering feasibility.
• Sat on a (thankfully air-conditioned) train, making yet more tweaks to storyboards to try and communicate something that confuses customers (and very much still confuses me too!)

Long read this week – the complete guide to measuring lostness. A approach to UX metrics I’d not come across before, but could maybe prove useful if you’re trying to prove how a products usability has trended over time, or chnaged based on an update.