What time is it? It’s weeknotes time, time for reflection.

Yep, the kids are still on a High School Musical thing. So they’re all stuck on my head.

Anyway, time to get my head in the game.

Spent today at Fonmon Castle, a lovely rural stately home with wonderful views of Cardiff (Rhoose) Airport and Aberthaw Power station. The vale is one of those weird places, chock full of ancient history, nice beaches and heavy industries…

Aside from that outside work we’ve been going hard on the Olympics, gymnastics specifically. My wife was a competitive trampolinist (I think that’s the right word) so I could see her sneaking glances to see how Bryony Page was getting on today. A Gold medal is pretty unheard of for Britain on the trampoline so good news. Aimee didn’t even bring up that she’d competed alongside and beaten Bryony way back when…but I can tell she wonders what might have been. No matter what I will do, I will never be able to do a half-in half-out triple somersault.

Having got some feedback and supervisors into a collaborative Google doc after a few attempts, I’ve started updating my draft final thesis thing on service prototyping. Because it’s been so long since I did a lit review I’ve got some gaps to fill. Thankfully I’ve actually read some recent stuff (Good services, the service organisation, full stack service design, the materials of service design etc). I am rapidly realising that I’m going to need to re-read to be able to critique/comment on how they relate to and influence my own work though.

Work was mostly user research interviews. Some emotionally tough conversations as expected. Had client reps on a few calls too, from policy, delivery and up to director level. The buy-in is great, and thankfully participants are happy to share. It’s difficult but they want to be heard. A couple of sessions I’ve had to completely bin off the things (prototypes) I was planning to share and just let them be heard. For some it’s the first time they’ve felt heard, and that matters more than our research questions sometimes.

Also got the sketchbook out to work on some posters. Aside from enjoying that, I really enjoyed a little design crit with the small design trio on this piece of work. I forget how much I miss conversations like this – I’ve not ‘designed’ interfaces, posters etc professionally for a long time. It’s always side quests either inside or outside of work mostly. It gives me joy to do it, but it is also a reminder that it’s probably not where I bring most value!

Anyway. The other posters (and stickers) are still a thing. They’re even on the homepage now as well!

At some point I’ll get around to properly hanging mine.