Hello, and welcome back — 2 weeks after my last week notes, exactly as planned! Lets see if I can keep on track this time (but if not, that is also okay).
It’s been a good, quite busy, two weeks with lots on my mind and lots happening. So lets get stuck in:
System mapping
Circles, all the circles, but finally making some sense
Since my last weeknotes, I’ve got much more stuck into my project and have caught up from my time off. This project is part of a much larger program of work, all of which are dealing with a pretty hard deadline of Autumn. Due to this fast pace of work, there is this growing elephant in the room that myself and a few colleagues are really feeling. How to get the department to think about the program we’re delivering a service… rather than a series of separate products.
So this week, I’ve been trying to find a way to communicate that yes, we are building a product for one set of core users, but that product sits within a much broader service that has an entirely different set of users. And they have to be thought about, when we build each single product.
The stakeholder map helped me communicate the two competing groups of users. The stakeholder map on the left shows from the perspective of the product, whereas on the right shows the stakeholder map for the service. You’ll notice that the users considered quite far removed to the service, become the real important and core users from a service perspective. And the Ecosystem map helped me to communicate how so many of the service users are interconnected, and again, although we’re building a product for a particular set of users (those in the grey center circle), all of the others users are massively integral and are part of so much interdependency.
These helped facilitate a really great conversation with the Product Owner, and I’m hoping this conversation can continue!
New L&D budget
Where do I want to focus my development, where and how do I spend my budget..
In July our £1000 Learning and Development budget refreshed, and I’ve been thinking this week about how I would like to make use of the budget. Right now, there are 3 key areas I’d like to focus my development on:
- Confidence — Both self confidence in my own abilities, and also continue my development in public speaking
- Systems Thinking — I did a course on systems thinking last year, which was super interesting and I’d like to continue some work in this space. Systems Thinking is definitely a theme I’ve come across more and more in project work and while speaking to other Service Designers, and feels like a valuable space to keep developing in.
- Visual Story Telling / Illustration — I’d like to focus this year on communicating in a more visual way. Although I have my illustration business, and really enjoy drawing. Day to day, I don’t naturally communicate or note take very visually. Things like, I’d love to have a notebook full of doodles and visuals, rather than words. This is somewhat inspired by Kathryn Grace’s weeknotes — Always nicely balanced with words and visuals.
In this last year, I’ve also acknowledged and recognised what works well for me and what doesn’t when it comes to using my budget. For example, I’m not a strong reader, and find it hard to put time aside to read, so this isn’t the most valuable use of my budget or time. Whereas I love going on courses and learn a huge amount in a short space of time, but have to ensure I have time to reflect after and I digest my learnings properly.
So for the next few weeks I’ll be thinking about my budget and looking into options for where and how to spend it. Any suggestions, I’m all ears! Would love to hear some recommendations of things you’ve all been enjoying.
Beyond Sticky Notes
Speaking of learning and developing
I recently picked up a copy of KA’s Beyond Sticky Notes and co-design bundle. Which I am VERY excited to get stuck into. I always loved the co-design workshops I facilitated during my time at university, but it’s something I’ve not done lots of at dxw. So would love to spend some more time developing my skills and thinking about how I can better bring co-design in projects at dxw. I think, no matter what we’re building, co-design is so important, and more of it can always be done.
I’ve heard such great things about not only KA’s book, but also the Models of Care cards and I can’t wait to start working my way through them. I’ve recently finished the Trauma Informed Design course by Rachael Dietkus, so designing with care and considering trauma and empathy has been very much on my mind recently. So reading through these is very timely.
(I’m also very excited to stick these stickers on everything I own. Infact, I already have one on my notebook. The parcel wasn’t even open 30 seconds before I jazzed up my book with a Care-Ful Design sticker!)
Blog post about 1 year
This week dxw also published a blogpost I wrote on my first year at dxw and my journey to my recent promotion. I won’t go into it here, but have added a link to the blogpost just above, so give it a read if you’d like. It’s only a 4–5 minute read, so not too long. And hey, you’ve made it this far down my weeknotes so… you might as well ;)
I’ve got lots more I could take about this week, but I’ll leave it there with 4 stories from this fortnight for you. I hope you all have a lovely weekend, and look after yourselves.
