Monthnote
As we enter the pre-election period, I’m mindful of keeping work-stuff out of weeknotes at least until July. The entire month of May has been jam-packed with travel, illness, blissful days of doing nothing in Hong Kong, running, falling off routine and then back again.
Life, as of late
Overdue catchups
Seeing 90% of features to sign off 🚀
One Firm One Day (supporting a social enterprise based in Scotland)
My first big girl promotion! ⭐️
Budapest for a weekend
Life as a designer
Since I can’t touch on work, here’s a generic update for now. My first days back have been a mental juggle between catching up and trying to slide myself back in the week-by-week planning. The design team hasn’t been this small in a while, but our 2:1 UX to content ratio has been an efficient trio for dividing and conquering flows of all sizes. We used to split work according to internal/external, which had its pros and cons:
Pros: clear responsibilities, less planning needed to align on tasks, less time spent on each other’s meetings
Cons: disadvantageously siloed, less transparency, less context for the inevitable handovers
As designers, we’re constantly designing how we do it as much as what we do. This makes being organised a ridiculously handy skill to have (and one that I truly believe anyone can harness).
Life as a student
There’s not been much dissertation work going this month as I’ve been preoccupied with getting my module assignments over the line. We went over a design sprint in March, during which we were tasked to design a healthy ageing programme from the lens of frailty. This meant speaking to actual users, pulling our own insights, seeing concepts from 0 to life — some of the things I missed doing since becoming an actual designer (the irony).
Reading
Consortia and Coalitions: embarking on collaborative journeys, Bill Bannear
The new zeitgeist: relationships and emergence, Bill Beannear
How to organise yourself — Part I, Jared Spool
Six definitions of love, Steph Ango
How to become a Senior Designer — from an ex-Google, Meta Designer, Yu Tong Xue
Dark patterns versus behavioural nudges in UX, Andrew Tipp
Public sector capacity matters, but what is it?, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
“Mindsets” approach as a tool for identifying patterns of user behavior, Anna Zhila
Discomfort is a Strategic Advantage, Luke Wroblewski
Could Omotenashi (おもてなし) be the Service Design of the future?, Rebekka Bush
How design is governance, Amber Case
“At a fundamental level, all design is governance. We encounter inconveniences like this coffee shop every day, both offline and in the apps we use. But it’s not enough to say it’s the result of bad design. It’s also a result of governance decisions made on behalf of the customers during the design process.”
See [variety: law of experience]
