Hello, and welcome to the final month of the year. Crazy. What a year eh, I’ve had so many personal highlights, but in a year disappointingly similar to 2020.
This week I stumbled across Kathryn Grace’s weeknotes — I really enjoyed the format and structure, particularly enjoyed the idea of taking them away from digital. I’m not sure I can be as concise with my weeknotes as Kathryn is, but I definitely like this way of breaking things down into themes, so this week I’m going to try structuring into themes too. I’ll also round it off with what I’m reading, listening too and what I’m thinking about (Inspired by Beth’s weeknotes). Let me know what you think of this structure 😃
Work
Our project work is really rolling now, and we’re making some really great progress — and a good few user stories ahead of where we’d expected to be at the end of this sprint. Which is great! This piece of work is very up against the clock, so we’ve all felt that concern of ensuring we deliver the best possible MVP within the timeframe, so it’s exciting to see us ahead of where we’d expected.
This week John, our Principle Researcher, joined the project, which is really exciting! Recruitment for user research and testing with users has been one of the more challenging parts of this work so far, so it’s great to have an extra person onboard to help us action plan our way forward. I’ve also never worked with John on a project, so am excited to work alongside him for the rest of this work.
Me and Imran wrote and published a blogpost about our new stickers — It’s the last time I’ll talk about them now, I promise. Give it a read if you fancy it (and haven’t heard me ramble on about them enough yet)
I mentioned briefly in my last weeknotes about the dxw advent calendar, and the Design Community taking ownership of one of the days. Well, we’ve had some video clips uploaded and I’ve spent the morning editing the first bunch together along with the music. Fair to say, I’m very excited for the final outcome! I particularly enjoyed putting together some little title pages, using the dxw shapes (with the addition of a wreath) for some bunting.
Meetings
It’s been a busy two weeks of facilitation for me, including two workshop sessions on goals, measuring success and KPIs with client side policy analysts and with UKCPQ.
I left my first workshop feeling a little deflated, and that I’d not done a great job — I felt like I wasn’t asking the right follow up questions, wasn’t probing enough and wasn’t exploring certain things as much as I could have. Thankfully we often record the sessions, so I spent some time going back over the recording and looking for where I missed opportunities, where I was maybe missing the context and knowledge I’d needed to be able to probe further, and was able to structure some more prep for the second one — which went loads better!
We also had our first show and tell this week, as we came to the end of Sprint 1. I really enjoy show and tells (still get oddly nervous?), but I think they’re a great way of communicating with clients and stakeholders. Often people who aren’t so closely linked to the work drop in and offer some great feedback and insight from an outside perspective, which is always useful!
People
Last week we also had our dxw end of year party in London, and a few of us went out for lunch together beforehand. It was really, really nice to meet so many of the dxw team in person, after 9 months working for dxw! I’m really hoping that I can get into London or Leeds more often moving forward and start seeing folk more frequently. Maybe even just once a month!
I’ve had some more great catch ups over the last two weeks, one with Dawn who is joining our project soon so we had a good catch up and Q&A about the project. Don, another Associate Service Designer at dxw had asked for a catch up to go over the personal development template I’d made myself and am currently working from, as he was hoping to make use of it too! — which is very kind and nice to hear, wasn’t expecting others to like it enough to use, but apparently it’s been really useful 😄
Don also then gave me a little shout out in our Appreciation slack channel, which was really sweet and unexpected. I love this channel, so nice to be able to share recognition for others for the whole of dxw to see and celerbate!
Beyond the role
I’ve now started, and have had two of my Samaritans volunteer training — and am really enjoying it. It’s definitely pushing me out of my comfort zone and tests my confidence in front of others (lots of role-play skills testing activities during calls) but I know this will get easier as I become more comfortable around others in my training group.
I can definitely see how lots of what I learn will be useful and transferable skills that will help me not only personally but also with my role as a Service Designer. In the first session we went over the Samaritans Listening Wheel, and it really got me reflecting on how I listen to and communicate with participants in workshop/research interviews. When I had my second workshop on goals and KPIs, I brought a copy of this wheel with me, and tried to make sure I was using these listening skills throughout, and I did actually really notice a difference!
I’m really excited to see what I learn from this training and how I can transfer that into my practice.
What I’m reading — Women & Power: A Manifesto by Professor Mary Beard
What I’m listening to — Nothing as the Ideal by All Them Witches (In particular, Rats In Ruin on repeat..)
What I’m thinking about — What an earth are Data Schemas… A huge part of our project right now is to understand the use, need and structure of the data being put into and pulled from the service. This is an area I am not well experienced or knowledgeable on, so am doing lots of reading and thinking about what this means and how I can help unpick those needs.
That’s it for this week, hope you all have a great two weeks. And I will see you Christmas Eve — The last notes of the year 🤯
