Weeknotes of Adrián Ortega, content designer at the Centre for Digital Public Services in Wales.

⬅️ Read my previous weeknotes

• A relatively quiet week on the meetings front, which is great because it gave me time to focus on doing the work. Especially after quite a hectic first week back after annual leave in Spain.

• I spent a couple of weeks in Spain visiting my parents. We visited Granada for my birthday and was spoiled with too much to eat and drink. Granada is such a beautiful city that I had not visited since I was a teenager, so it was great to being back.

• Last week was too hectic for weeknotes, but some highlights were:

  • attending an in-person design ops day and workshopping with my CDPS design colleagues - I really enjoyed hanging out with everyone!
  • attending the first UX Wales meetup since before the pandemic, where I met a few new people and spent some time with my colleagues
  • watching National Theatre’s Nye with Michael Sheen at the Wales Millenium Centre - brilliant show! I loved the clever use of lighting and staging, such as hospital beds and curtains to create a dream-like atmosphere. I’d also like to learn more about Aneurin Bevan and the process of setting up the NHS, as it sounds like an impossible task!
  • running a workshop with the user researchers in CDPS to discuss user research principles for a piece of content for the service manual. I believe it’s important to create spaces for people to have these conversations, and I really enjoyed listening in and getting the user researchers’ thoughts.

• This week I’ve worked a bit on the user research principles content from last week’s workshop. Hoping to have something in the next few weeks so I can bring it back to the researchers and get their thoughts.

• After giving colleagues across CDPS the opportunity to feed back on 2 pieces of content for the service manual using a Show the thing format, I’ve worked with service designer Gwenno and translator Iola to review the suggestions, edit the content, and finalise it in Welsh and English. The pieces are:

  • Introduction to user research for public services
  • Documenting and sharing what you learn about your users and their needs

• After the 2 sessions, I asked Iola how she felt about being involved in the design process as a translator as she hadn’t had experience of this way of working before. She said she found it very useful and it made the translation process easier and quicker as she had a better understanding of the information and its context. She also said that it made her feel she had a more active role in the content as a co-author, and felt more a part of the team. That comment made me really happy, and it’s been brilliant to have the chance to involve translator closer to the work. What an awesome thing!

• I went along to the User research in Wales community session this week. They discussed the insights from the in-person meetup we hosted a few weeks back, and shared the initial considerations for Welsh-language user research that I’ve been helping user researcher Gabi with.

• I attended a Content Club talk by content designer Laura Parker titled ‘Accessible numbers: presenting number clearly’ about designing for people with dyscalculia and low numeracy. Check Accessible numbers to learn more.

• I’m only a few dozen pages into Supercommunicators by Charles Duigg, but it’s helping me think more clearly about the idea that when 2 people engage with each other for the first time, they’re having 2 different conversations (or narratives) in their heads. It’s through conversing that they align to each other, gradually building empathy and understanding. That’s why I believe that creating those spaces for discussion of fairly philosophical ideas is essential.

• It also somehow reminded me of studying hermeneutics in uni and particularly Gadamer and Habermas, though I can’t quite put my finger on the connection yet!