Weeknotes 09

4-8th June 2018

Monday

Started the week by finishing off. Wrote up and shared a prototype. Demonstrating what to show users who cannot save a choice.

Chased up human resources team on an issue for a junior designer.

Talked with the Thunderbird Product owner, Ruth. Position on a potential service. Interesting product. But in my mind, obsolete on go live. Solving a real problem, in the wrong place.

More “Making it hard work to do something simple” than “Do the hard work to make it simple”.

Tuesday

Further work on leaflets and forms. How they sit within the content strategy for the site.

Little bit of chat about design roadmaps with a colleague. Made me think about method. Wrote up some notes.

Talk with product owner about the NHS number service.

Wrote down some stuff I had been filtering through my mind about consent. Tried to categorise some patterns of capturing consent. And some related components.

Sticky notes arranged on a worktop. Grouping types of consent by being implicit or explicit. As well as patterns used to inform, rather than capture consent. — First go. Patterns to inform. Patterns to capture consent.

Sticknotes arranged in groups to express how patterns are active and passive. — Passive and active patterns. And some examples of how those things are expressed and captured.

Needless to say. Lots of clean up and work through. But better out of the mind than in.

Wednesday

Verified cookie and analytics solution in live.

Worked with a programme business analyst to explain some dashboards. Talked through the numbers on the service.

Walked the same BA through a concept prototype. Explained the hypothesis behind it. Risks and costs attached.

Content strategy meeting with the programme and content designer. A good hour thrashing out the next three months. Concerns to test. Ideas to explore and things we need to have a clear answer to by October.

Got a massive thank you for my intervention with the last minute request before live. Feels nice to be thanked for being yourself and standing up for what you believe in.

Sketched up a “hypotheses mapping” process. Method to generate one. Improve it. Categorise it. And choose what to work on next.

Notebook full of writing. — Writing to teach helps you learn. It’s how I always try to write. Always helps me find clarity.

Thursday

Said farewell to a colleague going off on maternity leave. Added benefit of catching up with a colleague I hadn’t seen in a while. What he’s currently working on.

Caught an issue with one of the live error screens. Consequence of having to de-prioritise some work before go live.

Weekly design huddle.

Walked through the NHS referral service design. Future design concepts. Talked about product roadmaps. Getting good user centred design at the heart of them.

Cheeky pint with the designers from the huddle afterwards to end the day.

Friday

Triaged the error screen problem and offered two solutions. Immediate fix and an ideal long-term solution.

Quick meeting with the service owner.

Had a meeting with the new Thunderbird product owner. Caught up on the roadmap for two potential services she will be handling.

Spent a little time solving an NHS number-related keyboard on mobiles issue. Got a solution working across all devices. Some issues remain. Started writing up a blog post about it.

Packaged up a release for the NHSUK team. Surfaced a few issues. Planned next couple of releases with the programme team.