Back to articles

Irregular week notes s01e00 - the pilot

I enjoy reading peoples week notes. I first saw them crop up when Matt Jukes and Simon Wilson started sharing them.

It is a great way of being open about what you are doing and tracking your own progress.

I’m not sure I’d generally have enough to talk or the discipline to write them. I thought I’d go with a different perspective and do regular irregular week notes.

Monday to Thursday

I tend to work in two-week cycles (this will not surprise anyone who is a developer working in government).

This week has been focusing around finishing a refactor of a service. I wouldn’t normally refactor a whole project in a short space of times as the risk involved is high.

The main two goals of the refactoring was;

Cross Government Design meeting #18 poster

Friday

One of the best parts of my job is that I am able to attend cross Government design meetings. This was the 18th meeting, it is great to be able to catch up with other people working in different locations/departments.

The day was broken into four parts;

  1. Head of design from each department Updates
  2. Talks from Ben and Charles (see links below for slide deck)
  3. Workshop of what is preventing/helping create a ‘Design Culture’
  4. External speakers from Jonny Burch talking about design culture at Deliveroo. Nicolas Roope was talking about well, most things.

Charles’s 3 minute lighting talk well great. Well delivered with a great reminder about why it is users and not customers. Also that Government has goals, not business needs.

I also enjoyed hearing about Deliveroo and design culture. It is a refreshing reminder that common themes happen in all product based teams.

Some slide highlights;

be deliberate with your language 3 things for building a user centred design community customer (noun) - a person who buys good or a service Business (noun) - the activity of buying and selling good and services

Links to presentations from the day:

“Building a user centred design community” - Ben Holliday

”Semantics mean something” - Reynolds-Talbot