Weeknotes S04 E01

An architect’s model of Woolwich from the New London Model in Coal Drop’s Yard, Kings Cross

It’s been a while since I last wrote any weeknotes. Picking them up again after some thoughtful chats this week with my manager Lingjing about sharing work, being open and inviting feedback. Expect scrappiness.

What happened this week?

• Product designer Jenny and I have been working to better understand some of the things a new Royal Greenwich intranet could help staff do (everything from ‘book annual leave’ to ‘reset my password’). At the same time, we’re grouping these tasks into ‘goals’ (the broader reasons staff have for doing these things, such as ‘take time off’ or ‘fix a technical issue’). Moving between the small details and the big picture is helping us quickly get a lot of information into a draft structure we can test with staff. It’s also making me realise I need to do some reading up on the finer points of good information architecture.
• I helped the intranet team present our approach to problem framing at our weekly product team meeting. We had lots to share — I think we’re proud of how we brought together a lot of research into clear, easy to understand problems— but working on this brought home that we haven’t really used problem statements in the best way. They became a static output of our research, rather than a tool we could use during it to shape our work and help others get involved and give us feedback. Next time, I think we’d like to be braver and get our initial thoughts out into the open much faster.
• The content design team did a collaborative edit on one of the team’s current rolling job ads (open continuously, applications reviewed every two weeks). This was fun, starting off very politely and becoming gradually more ruthless until we were slashing through words left right and centre. We cut the ad by a third and, by running it through a gender decoder tool, found we’d shifted the language in it from ‘masculine coded’ to ‘strongly feminine coded’. A good team effort.
• I started work on some new learning and development goals, having passed my probation a whole two months ago. The three areas I most want to improve in are collaborating better with others, being confident and flexible in how I use design and research approaches, and helping others use and grow their skills using coaching and mentoring. All of these are big topics and I need to give more thought to how I can develop in them.

Lessons learnt

• I think my biggest lesson from the last few weeks has been that it’s OK for projects to shift in their approaches, based on feedback, ideas from new voices and things you learn along the way. You don’t have to choose one approach from one place and stick to it rigidly. You can take great methods and ideas from elsewhere and adapt them to where you are. Which in our case is usually Woolwich, as you can see on the model in the picture above.
• Linked to this, I also learnt that strong relationships where people feel able to give each other straight-up feedback are incredibly important. I’d like to build more of those in this role. In a very big organisation like a borough council this can feel like a struggle, but I’m hoping the winding down of COVID restrictions will help me start to get out and about more.

What I read

A lot of tweets, articles and news reports about the horrible situation in Ukraine.

I found this article helpful, especially its links to independent media outlets and refugee services to support. Hoping hard for a better tomorrow.

How to donate in the Ukraine crisis — Vox