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.