These are my first week notes in a while and the first I’ve published publicly - so please be bear with me and be kind!
What I’ve done this week
Service Manual
- One of the projects I'm involved in is a service manual to support the Digital Service Standard for Wales. Currently in beta, this week we had:
- a workshop: identified and defined users and their needs - it’s based on our existing knowledge and assumptions but will be helpful to guide future research and content planning.
- a session: interaction designer Liam and I met to turn those needs into user stories. We didn’t want to run it as a workshop but opened it up to the team to pop in and out as they wanted while we discussed stuff. It worked better than expected and we had very productive conversation around user stories.
- Overall I think we all feel it was a great week, and came out of it with better alignment and a sense that we’re moving in the right direction.
Cost of Living
- Last year, I worked on a project internally referred to as 'cost of living'. It originated from previous cost of living research. Our goal was to improve the delivery of cost of living support by producing better content collaboratively, specifically for the School Essentials grant and Free School Meals. We aimed to co-designing it with local authorities, embedding the Welsh language as much as possible by working closely with translators throughout the entire process.
- Unfortunately, although I suggested some directions to take this work, it lost momentum and was put on the backburner. But after a hiatus, my colleagues (user researcher Tom Brame and interaction designer Liam Collins) and I are proposing a new direction to the wider team next week.
- It's too early to share many details, but the idea is around improving the communication and management of expectations with applicants for financial support.
- On a different note, we also agreed to go bouldering together soon.
Design Ops
- Lead user researcher at NICE, Laura Delaney got in touch recently to hear about my experiences working on the service manual and internal design operations. They’re looking to develop a service manual to support their user-centred design efforts within their organisation.
- It was great to meet her and she seemed to find it interesting and helpful, so we’ll be meeting again soon with some of her colleagues for an extended chat about it.
- Separately, we had agreed to come and talk to their content community of practice at NICE, and I’m wondering if there’s a way to connect both things.
What I’m thinking about
The civilising power of AI