Its been a while hey? Three weeks in fact.
I’m wrapping up this week having finished my first ‘engagement’ at the new job. I’m also getting ready for a week off, including a few days away in Bath without the kids.
I’m not necessarily a big one for celebrating, but feels like a good time to reflect at the very least. Its been 5 months. Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about over that time.
- I’ve primarily operated in a design and research bubble for most of my career to date, and been considered a ‘generalist’ (I think) within those roles. My current role was based on the premise of being much more of a specialist within broader generalists. Whilst I was at Co-op my eyes were increasingly opened to the futility of doing great design without the foundations of modern software development/DevOps etc being in place. The new role has further supported that view. It doesn’t matter how good your user research insight or design work is if you can only ship changes every 6 months.
- If you’re a design leader finding yourself frustrated with your organisations ability to build, measure, learn / iterate / be customer centred [insert other design/product framework here] then my suggestion would be find the people trying to introduce modern software engineering principles within your org and be their supporter. Use your voice to champion change here and your ability to deliver value as a design team will massively increase.
- This relates to one of my ‘goals’ at PD – “Build credibility for how to position and talk about design research by understanding how wider org operates.” I’ve had a growing realisation that most of my contacts in this role will not be looking for ‘design’ support. I need to continually improve my ability to articulate the role of design in the complex workings of a large org to achieve the outcomes they’re after.
- As a counterpoint to the above, my other goal has been to “Make the case for design research as a strategic approach“. Whilst I want to be able to talk more broadly, I also want to make sure that design research ways of working are getting the shout out they deserve. Hopefully by introducing them in the right way, to the right people, increasingly people will see that they provide value in different ways to just developing new products and services. If that’s of interest, we’ve been blogging about it:
- One of the niches I’ve found myself in over the past few months has been ‘holding the spreadsheet’ – on reflection ts probably because I talked about doing similar in my interview. I don’t think this has any deep and meaningful message to it aside from to suggest that if you’re a designer maybe struggling with a lack of or incomplete data, the best way out of that is to build a spreadsheet and start roadshowing it. Spin up a few calculations based on your hunches and go find people who might have better data. I’m frequently surprised how powerful a tool it is – you’re often putting data to things other people have thought about before. Its also a handy way of figuring out what impact stuff has at scale.
- If you are a designer thinking about spinning up a spreadsheet, don’t leave your other skills at the door. I’m not saying it has to be colourful, but the only thing better than accurate data, is data that its possible to interpret without needing it explained. Consider the layout and structure of what you’re presenting, help it tell its own narrative, or include a narrative if that’s better.
- Frankly I still feel incredibly fortunate to have landed in this role – its definitely stretching me in new ways (which was what I hoped) and I’m really valuing learning a lot from new colleagues (also a thing I hoped). It is doing mostly remote (which is pretty important to me these days) and its giving me exposure to pretty senior level conversation, done in slightly different ways than you might expect. All of it means I think I’m growing, whilst not being thrown in the deep end on my own.
- There’s probably a bunch of other stuff I’ve forgotten…but I’ll leave it there.
Long read this week is this great little article my dad just sent me on Whatsapp: RollerCoaster Tycoon at 25: ‘It’s mind-blowing how it inspired me’.
I can relate so hard to the quotes and descriptions that they’ve included. Whilst I didn’t go on to become a roller coaster or theme park designer, I’m convinced it had a massive formative impact on me having some kind of understanding of planning, design, strategy and business etc. I spent many hours on RCT2 before 3 came along and our computer wasn’t new enough to run it, before mostly transitioning to Football manager in the teenage years. Yes I was a massive nerd as a kid, still am mostly.
alistairuff 
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