Hello, and welcome to the hottest week known to anyone in the UK, ever. I’d never realised how much the heat can melt your brain , until this week 🤯 It’s the end of a long, and pretty stressful week — so I’ll do my best to recap what’s happened and strings some words together..
✨Highlights✨
Summer staff party
Last week we have our dxw summer party, and boy was it good to catch up in person again! dxw has expanded quite a lot recently, with lots of new recruits — So it was both great to catch up with those I’ve met a few times before, but also a chance to meet many new faces!
During the staff party I had a great chat with Jenny, our Marketing and Communications Manager, who gave me some praise on my weeknotes and my writing style. Which was lovely! She said these feel like a conversation between friends and that it’s nice to see what’s happening both inside and outside of work. Which was great to hear. Writing isn’t my natural strong suit, but I’ve really enjoyed pushing myself to write these every other week. So, hi Jenny if you’re reading these👋
Camping fun
Straight after arriving back in Norwich from our summer party, I went camping in some of the beautiful Norfolk countryside. I’ve really enjoyed getting out and about in the countryside more this year, and camping was a lovely bit of much needed downtime. I’ve found since working in digital, and being on a laptop 8 hours everyday, I’ve really increasingly valued time disconnecting from tech and just being in the outdoors, with no signal, no tv, no social media.
We camped on a site with a lovely lake behind us, which was beautiful — until I get hissed at and chanced by Geese… Who knew geese were so terrifying?! I also got shocking sunburnt! Pls learn from my mistake here and make sure to wear suncream, even if it doesn’t seem that sunny out!
Receiving great feedback
I’ve received some really lovely, and nice feedback this week about pieces of work I’ve been doing or recently completed. I’ve not been feeling my best or most valuable on my project at times this last two weeks (which I talk about in the challenges section below!) but I’ve played back my eco system, stakeholder mapping, and some research synthesis with our client this week and they’ve all been really well received — which is great!
I think as a SDer, whose role isn’t always as clearly defined as other disciplines, and you might float around between different things, you can end up feeling like you’re not adding much to the project? But getting the feedback that your thinking and unpicking of problems has helped the team is really great!
🤦🏻♀️Challenges🤦🏻♀️
Adulting is hard
It’s been two weeks of just crappy adult life challenges. Lots of things going wrong in our house, two weeks full of workers coming in to repair things, lots of calls to the council and to my landlord etc. All while trying to balance getting stuck into a meaty project. It’s been less than ideal! I’m praying next week is better, with hopefully nothing going wrong. It’s been pretty draining, exhausting and stressful.
Betas are also hard
I felt this on my last project, and I’ve felt this on my current project. I’m not 100% sure yet whether it’s a challenge of getting up to speed on work that happened before we joined the project? Or just that betas are hard and I’m yet to feel confident in my role as a Service Designer on Betas? I suppose, as I type this…actually they are two separate challenges.
- When joining a project at Beta stage, is it really challenging, and exhausting, getting up to speed on what work has (or hasn’t been done) been done before we pick up the project. And you often find gaps in the previous work, that you don’t have time properly address now!
- As a Service Designer, I naturally question things and pick things apart.. and there isn’t as much room for that at Beta. Deadlines are tight, you’re delivering an MVP, that has already been decided before you join. This can make identifying my role and value I can add to a to the project a little harder. It’s hard not to feel lost and unsure where to focus, or even a little deflated that you can’t do what you want with the project.
This project in general is a challenge. An exciting challenge. But a challenge none the less. So add in the teething problems I experience with Beta’s makes it even more challenging.
🤔Learnings🤔
Sticking to the MVP takes active effort
Our project has a super tight initially deadline, but, with lots of scope to develop and improve after initial launch. But that means we have a strict MVP and delivery plan.
One thing I’ve found hard this week is thinking of lots of really valuable ways to improve the service and user experience, but having to remind myself that they’re not possible for MVP. I just wanna make things better, and easier and the best they can be :( I very much understand the purpose of a MVP, but I’ve learnt this week that I need to actively think about focusing just on the MVP (for now!), otherwise it’s easy to get carried away😅
Shouting about the elephant in the room IS valuable
One thing I’d mentioned in my previous weeknotes was that this program of work that my project sits within, due to deadlines, is very focused on the design of the digital products, rather than the service. Which, was a service designer has been tricky to swallow. As I see SO much potential for service improvement.
BUT, these last two weeks I’ve be talking lots about that issue — needing to fix and considerer the service before slotting digital products into it. And although, there isn’t much scope to focus on that now, these conversations have been well received and people have said they’re glad to hear they’re happening🥳
So, note to self(and others), even if it feels like a difficult, and maybe even a pointless conversation — have it. If nothing else, to get people thinking about the bigger picture.
Laptops (nor brains) do well in 40°C….
I’m not quite sure what’s been running at a slower pace this week.. my mac or my brain. I’ve been working from home all of this week, during the heatwave. And my office space has been consistently 30–32°C all day… that is not an okay temperature to be working in ahha. And as a result, my laptop has been super super laggy, and I’ve ended everyday with a brain that feels like soup. The cooler temperature of 23°C in my office today has has been very welcome hah
That it for the week folks. I’m off to dog sit for a friend tomorrow and…….. Look as some potential kittens to adopt on Sunday. EKKKKK. Stay tuned!
Have a great weekend all!
