Latenotes incoming.
Usual excuses, haven’t prioritised writing these publicly for a while now.
This week and some of the last few weeks have been:
- Drafting a blog post for Public Digital on ‘User research as a strategic tool’ or something along those lines. As always I’m reminded of the value of having very experienced people like Katherine to collaborate with, and the value of excellent editors too. Easy to feel challenged or defensive when people critique writing, but it’s always better for it!
- On that note, I finally got around to sending the very very early rough draft of my Prof Doc report to my supervisors. I know it’s not finished, it’s full of holes, notes to self etc. but early(ish) feedback is the best kind to get.
- This thursday I presented some of my research back to the design team at the Satellite Applications Catapult, because one of their team (Rob Maslin) was a research participant for me. It was a nice break from client work and helped show me that I have a decent narrative to the work, that other designers can follow. You can take a look at the deck if you want, drop me a note if you’re interested to hear more.
- A big topic of conversation at work is the ‘Truth gap’ that so often exists within organisations (pretty sure there’s another blog post in the works on that too). One of the things we’ve been thinking about is the power of stories to close the gap between people ‘on the ground’ and leadership. I’ve been working with some of our partners embedded in engineering teams to take the stories we’re collecting and present them simply for use in presentations etc. Basically it’s user research but within engineering and design teams.
- I was also reflecting that the truth gaps doesn’t just exist between levels of leadership and employees. It also exists between people involved in different parts of the process (especially if the process specifically keeps them apart). This means that even for people ‘on the ground’ they have very different expectations about what happens before or after they do their work. I drew a picture of it as well…
- Alongside this we’ve proposed a cross-functional workshop that’s mostly been described as ‘brave’ in the current context. I’m going to be doing my best to steer it away from two sides pitching their ideas and frustrations at each other, but instead a collaborative session where we can all explore a better option together.
- Friday afternoon finished with a trip to the skatepark for a 7th birthday party. The kids were excited, as was I to have a legitimate reason to include this in my weeknotes…
Feels good to have finally got some weeknotes out in the public realm.
An interesting read from this week was: Developing a set of principles for the design and delivery of greener services.
Enjoy!
alistairuff 
Leave a comment