Category: Weeknotes

I had some time off over Christmas, and I saw a flurry of posts from people talking about their work year. At the time, I didn’t really feel like writing a review of my previous year.

There’d been so much going on, I just wanted to clear my head and spend some time with my family.

But I’ve been back at work for a couple of weeks now, and it seems like a good time to reflect on 2019 and look at what the future holds.

Strap yourselves in – it’s been quite a ride.

January to July

In January last year, I’d just moved into a new role – Senior Content Designer for the DWP Design System team. But as quickly as it started, for various reasons the team was placed on hold.

Not one to sit on my hands, when Simon Wilson reached out to see if I fancied helping him out on a service he’d just joined, I bit his hand off.

This was actually the service I’d recently left, but a change in direction for the service and the opportunity to work with Si on a daily basis meant I was going to learn a lot, and have a bit of fun at the same time.

I expected a challenge, but it was hard. And I mean really hard.

I can’t and won’t go into details, but we were essentially trying to design a new service with users (staff, citizens and 3rd parties) at the heart, but from within what was traditionally a delivery-focussed digital development team.

Most of the team weren’t really used to working with so many designers. They had already built some digital products for the previous incarnation of the service and for other similar services without any real design input.

There were multiple stakeholder engagement challenges, team relationships and trust needed either re-building or building from scratch.

As well as trying to land the message that we were designing a service and not just a digital product, there were conflicting views on what we should and shouldn’t build – whether we were to use some of what we already had or if we should have been ‘building’ anything at all.

There were weeks when it seemed like the designers and user researchers were having a competition as to who could fry their brains the most.

I’ve written about some of the qualities and attributes you need to work as a Content Designer here – thick skin and patience are a couple that spring to mind. But 2019 really tested my patience and resolve.

But you know what? We did a good job. We did the right things. We made the right calls. And we rebuilt some trust in, and knowledge of the design process, too.

We had a laugh, too. If my 2019 work year was turned into a movie, it’d be an action thriller starring Nic Cage. Or Nick Cave, depending on who you speak to.

August

I crawled into the last week of July desperate for a break and some rest, but August was glorious.

I left the office on 1 August, deleted Slack from my phone and the next day I pointed our car towards France, and drove.

4 nights in eastern France, 7 nights in Switzerland, 3 nights in the Loire valley and a final 7 days in south Brittany.

It was so nice to spend so much time with my young family and my batteries were well and truly topped up.

I was so active and ate so healthily I actually lost weight on holiday. Absolute scenes.

I came back feeling great.

September to November

I dived straight in to sharing my thoughts when I returned to work and even started to write week notes.

I’d given everything I had before my holiday to make sure we’d done the right thing for our users and I kept up my enthusiasm for a good few days. But it soon became clear that I needed a clean break. It seemed like the right time.

I’d been made aware there was an opportunity to help support the Content Designers in our Health Digital Transformation Service a little bit more, so I asked to do that for a couple of days each week.

Everyone involved in helping me do that was so supportive, and I was so grateful for the opportunity to dip my toe into something new.

In the time I had, I put a few things in place to help the team communicate a little better over multiple sites, and made some recommendations on how best to structure the team in the future.

I did this for a couple of months, and had been talking about an opportunity to spend more time there. But then I got the great news that our Design System team had been given the green light again.

Having waited for this role for 10 months, I now had a dilemma. Deep down, I know my strengths lie in operations – fixing the basics, introducing tools and processes to make things better for other people, and looking at things a little more strategically than you get chance to in a service team. But I also enjoyed supporting the great team in Health.

When it came to it, I knew I had to take up the Design System role – it was more ‘me’. So at the end of November I moved back into the team.

December

You wait a while for a new role, then much like buses, 2 turn up at the same time.

Mel Cannon, our Head of Content Design, had been speaking to the community for a few months about creating a couple of new Lead Content Designer roles within the team. These roles would sit on the design senior leadership team and support Mel with some of our strategic and operational work.

It seemed like a good fit, so I went for it.

I only went and got one.

I’d spent some of the final weeks of December helping to plan our winter DWP Content Design community meet-up. I’d also been planning a day dedicated to kicking off some strategic planning around some of the key challenges that our Content Designers face in their daily work.

I’d have been gutted not to be able to continue that work, so I’m really pleased to say from 24 February I’ll move into a new role as ContentOps and Community Lead.

Looking further into 2020

What does ContentOps and Community Lead actually mean? Good question.

I’ll be writing a lot more on here about my work, so in my first few days I’ll write a post exploring in more detail what ContentOps is, what it actually means for DWP Digital and how I’ll be supporting our amazing community to do their best work.

In the meantime, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks helping to put some building blocks in place for the Design System team and I’ll be writing about that soon.

That work does cross over into ContentOps in some ways, but it needs and deserves more than just me dipping in and out, so we’re hoping to advertise the soon-to-be vacant Senior Content Designer role on the Design System team in the next few weeks – I’ll share the vacancy as and when it arrives.

Thank you

There’s no way I would’ve got through 2019 intact let alone ending it on such a high, without the help and support of my family, friends and colleagues.

I won’t run the risk of leaving someone off or embarrassing anyone by naming people, but you know who you are. So many brilliant, talented dedicated public servants I’m so lucky to have worked with.

Our work here can be so rewarding, but we’re honest in saying it’s also really hard. Don’t let this put you off – if you love a challenge and want to join us, I’d love to talk to you more about what we do and what I’ll be doing soon to help support our Content Designers.

2019 was a pretty wild ride. I’m hoping 2020 is just as exciting and challenging.

I’m definitely ready for it.

I’ve been at DWP Digital for almost 18 months now, but haven’t felt comfortable about blogging about my work.

That’s mainly because I’ve been finding my feet, I didn’t think I had the time and I’ve not been sure about how much I can actually say.

But now the time is right. I can talk about the approaches I’m taking to my work, without going into too many of the sensitive details of the subject matter.

And I’m making the time to do it. Starting right now.

Tuesday

This was my first day back in the office after almost 4 weeks of not being here. A 3 week holiday and a hot and sunny bank holiday were just what the Dr ordered.

I felt refreshed, re-energised and ready to take on new challenges.

It started as the usual day back from a holiday – checking emails and Slack. There was a daily stand up with some of the team dialled in remotely from Harrogate and I handed out biscuits from France and talked a lot about my holiday adventures.

The team have been busy since I’ve been away, and the pilot service I’m working on is progressing well. But there was one email thread which did initially deflate me. Something I’d been working on for a good few months with our helpful and knowledgable embedded policy SME, had been pulled from use at the last minute. I’d finished the first version of it just before I went on leave and it felt like it was in a good place, and was looking forward to iterating it based on user-research.

But some key people hadn’t seen it, and confirmation of their views on the direction of it hadn’t found their way to me. I do understand the concerns with it, and I do share some of them myself. But there’s that thing about work done with the information you have at the time, and it was a hard piece of work. I’d needed to balance minimum policy and legal requirements, with the basic principles of content design – keep it simple, using plain English.

I did find it was a little frustrating that I wasn’t there to explain my design decisions in more detail, and work with the senior stakeholders and the team to find a solution together.

There were some positives to take away, though. The content team rallied around and dealt with it quickly and professionally, and there’s now an opportunity to make sure our assurance processes include all of the right people at the right time. It’s also nice to know for future reference that senior stakeholders really do want to make our content as user-centred and friendly as possible.

I went home happy.

Wednesday

Ceremonies day. The day started with review and retro. It was great to see the work everyone has been putting in to ensure the service is truly user-centred.

During one playback, it was clear that there’s still work to do to make sure the research, thinking, and ideas exploration parts of the design process are valued, and that designers and developers are working together as closely as possible. A product that had previously been deployed to users as an MVP had been iterated by our developers in a couple of days without any design input.

It was done with best intentions – they wanted to make it more user-friendly, which is great to hear. They’d put a lot of effort in and were pleased with what they’d done. But it means the designers are now playing catch up, and some changes that were required following some previous user-research hadn’t been captured.

It’s nobody’s fault – annual leave and a couple of team changes meant it’d fallen through the gaps. These things happen. It’s not a disaster by any means, but it’s a reminder that like in any relationship, the bond between design and development needs constant attention.

Retro was really positive – it’s good to hear so many people enjoying their work.

Show and tell was really enjoyable – it was brilliant to hear an overview from our fantastic user researcher, Jo, and some of our front line staff about the findings from the pilot so far. Everyone is doing such a good job.

We finished off with sprint planning. A solid 2 weeks to follow, with some tickets to pick up on some letters I need to work on, and some planned user research to focus on content. Top stuff.

Thursday

A bit of a bitty day.

After stand up I had a catch up over coffee with a couple of people about a project I’ve been waiting to hear news on, which was followed by our weekly (and always good natured) ‘Town Hall’ meeting. This gives an opportunity to hear what our 3 feature teams and wider support teams have been up to. It’s also an opportunity to greet new starters and get the lowdown from our leaders on what’s happening at a strategic level.

Smashed out another 550 metres (20 lengths) in the pool over lunch, but had my first experience of pool rage. Someone in the fast lane wasn’t stopping for anyone. We all want a good swim, but there’s no need to be so rude. 700m the day before and 550m on Tuesday – I’m enjoying this breaking up my day and giving me time to relax and think.

In the afternoon had a good session with the design team (Jo, Mikey and Sam in the room, and Izzy dialled in through Slack). We agreed a way to tackle some fixes to the work the developers had shown us on Wednesday, and planned some more user research on it which we’d love to get them involved in. We also had a laugh – a really good laugh, and this is really important in a team. Certainly for me.

I ended the day with a positive chat with Dan, our senior leader, who’s kindly given me an opportunity to spend a couple of days each week working in the DWP health transformation team. I’m pleased I’ll be able to give the people I line manage more of my time, as well as a development opportunity for myself.

Left a bit earlier than usual to take my eldest to his swimming lesson. He’s just moved up groups, but didn’t look out of place. He’s lightning quick!

Friday

Over to Harrogate to see how the team are getting on over there. It’s been over a month since I last visited, and I’d forgotten how relaxing the scenic train journey is through Lower Wharfedale.

The pilot service here is in full swing now. It was great to see a physical board has been set up by the team here, to track the progress of people who are taking part in the pilot service. There’s also a great new ‘learnings board’ with cards full of information of things we can learn from to iterate the service.

Had a call after lunch to talk about the discussion guide for the research we’re doing next week in Pontefract. We’re testing a letter and an information booklet. Jo has done a brilliant job preparing for it – never underestimate the value of a great user researcher. Looking forward to a meaty day of learning.

In summary

It’s been a decent few days back. A few things to chew over, but looking forward to a full week next week, starting with a visit to our Manchester hub to spend a day with our wonderful Content Design community, user research in Pontefract on Tuesday, and a drive over to Blackpool on Wednesday to spend some time with the content designers there, learning about what they’re working on.

But now it’s the weekend and time to relax. Have a good one, whatever you’re up to.

A change is as good as a rest, so the saying goes. But I find a decent rest will do the job just as well.

I’m back in work after a relaxing 3 week break driving around Europe with the family, and I’m feeling pretty good about things.

Though I have decided to make a few changes, to follow the resting bit.

The first one was to delete Slack from my phone. I got rid of it before I went away, but I won’t be putting it back on. I’d been using it like another social media platform, and found myself absentmindedly checking it at all hours of the day. Work now starts when I arrive and leave the office – not on the train, or when I’m getting ready to leave the house, or when I’m supposed to be getting the kids ready for bed.

Work-life balance. It’s important, and I need to remember that. Always.

The other thing I’m changing, is, well, this. Blogging.

I’ve not written about my work, mainly because I wasn’t sure what I could say, but also because I thought I was too busy to do it. But it’s all about finding the time. And the time will be found, and I hope people find it useful.

My first weeknote will follow on Friday, so stay tuned.

It’s my final week at Sky next week, and I’m starting to reflect on my time here as I shuffle towards the exit door.

Sky is a remarkable company, and I can honestly say I’ve never been so well looked after as an employee in such a huge organisation.

I’ll leave next Friday with some great memories, as well as some frustrating ones. But I won’t dwell on those. Generally, it’s been brilliant.

I’m looking forward to my new challenge at DWP Digital and I’ve pulled this blog into working order so I can start blogging about my work there. I’m a big fan of the transparency being displayed across government digital and how collaborative everyone is. I’m looking forward to getting stuck in.

So you’ll hear much more from me about my adventures in Content Design soon.

But until then, there’s some admin to take care of and some leaving beers to drink next week.