A hectic hectic month. A amazing, fun, inspiring, and exhausting month.
Hi, I return. This month, I have been here there and everywhere.
- York for 3 days, for my brother 30th
- Manchester for 2 days, for client work
- Leeds for 1 day, as a stop over for client work
- Barcelona for 7 days, to attend the wonderful Service Design Days conference
- Edinburgh for 2 days, to attend and speak at SD in Gov.
On top of that, this month I’ve been to two gigs, 1 wedding and done 4 Samaritans shifts.
As I’m sure you can imagine, I am exhausted. But having said that, it’s been such an incredible month. In these week notes I’ll talk about some of my experiences and learnings this month, how client work is going, and an honest reflection of how I’m feeling mentally and emotionally right now.
Service Design Days (and a short holiday) — Barcelona
Some much needed sun, inspiring talks, and a beautiful city.
On the 16th and 17th, I traveled to Barcelona to attend the Service Design Days Conference. Marianne, dxw Service Design Lead joined too, which was fab! We both bought our partners along to Barcelona with us, and chose to stay a few days longer for a little holiday after the conference too — which was lovely!
The conference:
This years theme was “Shifting the paradigm — tackle short-termism and create value for the long run”
And boy oh boy, what a jam packed two days! 8:30am — 6pm both days. I made it to 12 talks/masterclasses across those two days, with topics on future thinking, designing in the age of crisis, and systems thinking. Some of those talks really stood out to me:
- Josina Vink’s talk called ‘A critical look at shaping social structures’. They explored looking at service design processes from a different angle — that it;s as much about shaping social structures as it is ‘designing services’, and the importance of shifting assumptions we might have about design processes.
- Heidi Ettanen talked about ‘Scaling design without losing creativity’, and explaining how she combines her love and passion for dance with her Design Operations role at H&M. The talk was super engaging and fun, using a piece of music as a tool to communicate how you can visualise design thinking, to ‘non-designers’
- The final lecture of the weekend was by Kristel Van Ael, who gave a super interesting, and practically very useful talk on ‘Systemic design, key concept to design differently’. I’ve become increasingly interested in system thinking and systemic design, and how important this approach is in the type of work I often find myself on in client work. Not only did I leave this talk with lots of fresh ideas and understanding of systemic design, I also left with a pretty hefty list of readings and research to dive into — which I’m never mad at!
The holiday:
As I mentioned, I booked some time off following this conference to have a little break. This was my first time abroad since I was travelling pre-pandemic, so wanted to make the most of it! My partner has flown out with me, so we made the most of the 3 days we had in such a beautiful city! We walked a lot, explored so much of the city, ate delicious food, saw the city from above on the castle, and went to the 3rd best cocktail bar in the world.
SD in Gov — Edinburgh
First time public speaking at a conference
When I first joined dxw, one of my main goals for personal/professional development was to do more public speaking, and get better at it. I’ve done lots of talking at dxw; Show and tells with clients, running workshops, dxw show and tells. Earlier this year I also did a talk at an online conference for Ladies That UX Belfast. But, earlier this week, I spoke for the first time ever at a conference. AHHH. It was all slightly last minute, I was in Barcelona the week before and was stacked with client work, so pulled some bits together and soon found myself stood over 70 people in Edinburgh.
I joined the stage with two other dxw-ers, and we gave a talk on things we’d learnt from designing for civil servants. I talked more specifically about the impacts our work might have on civil servants, the positive and the negative. Combining the work I do day to day, with my passion for advocating mental health, emotional literacy and empathy.
Although I got incredibly nervous half way through my part of the presentation, I really loved it. And we had an amazing, inspiring and engaging Q&A at the end of the session which was fab!
It was an amazing experience and I’m so thankful to have been asked to speak on behalf of dxw. I’m already looking forward to my next opportunity to do something similar.
How about my client work..
Busy, busy, lots of catching up
We’ve reached such an exciting point with our project right now. We’re a few weeks away from Private Beta, so are doing lots of prioritisation exercises to think about what we want to focus on finishing before the Private and then public beta, and what we put away to one side ready for further iteration and optimisation after beta of our MVP.
Alongside this I’m working a few bits of work to help with future work on this service. Looking at and discovering the needs of existing legacy systems, helping to communicate the complexity of all those legacy artefacts, and what our roadmap for change is. So that’s been fun.
There is lots of internal change happening within our team this week, a new delivery lead and a new product manager, so things have been a little slower and more bitty this week as people on and offboard. But this has been good too, it’s given us chance to slow down and take stock before moving forward.
How am I doing?
ehhhhhh. Been and up and down one.
It’s been so lovely having some time off at Service Design Days, taking some holiday too in York and in Barcelona, and going to SD in Gov. But it’s made this month particularly exhausting and tough physically, but also mentally.
With my annual leave and other commitments this month, I’ve only been on project work a max of 3 days a week. This has meant I’ve felt like I’m constantly playing catch up and like I’m falling behind. I’m also just physically exhausted, it’s been a month of lots of travel.
Edinburgh for example — Because I had existing commitments to client work, I had to do the 7 hour travel to Edinburgh on Tuesday afternoon. We presented on Wednesday afternoon, and at 5:30pm I took the 7 hour train home so I was back home for client work on Thursday. I got into bed at 1am😭 My flight back from Barcelona was delayed, and then the M11 was closed, so it took us so long to get home and I got into bed at 2:30am, to start work at 8am.
It’s been a month on non-stop moving, and doing. Client work is getting increasingly full on and intense too so the combination of both has most definitely caused a bit of burn out. Fair to say, I am excited to have a weekend of doing almost (I have a Samaritans shift on Saturday) nothing and taking it easy. Giving myself some room to breathe.
So many exciting things have happened this month, and I’m feeling very grateful for this and all the opportunities I’ve had. I have lots more to share, but don’t have the time, or the energy right now 😅
Thank you for reading! I’ll catch you soon for hopefully some very exciting client work updates!🙌
