Weeknotes: Sunday 9 February 2025

A flowering succulent — it looks like it’s from another planet.

A fast and furious week, but happy with how things are progressing. Here’s what I’ve been working on and thinking about:

• On Monday, Liam and I ran a session with the senior leadership team — and typically, my brain decided that I wouldn’t sleep the night before. The workshop was to get us thinking more specifically about who our website users actually are, who we are as an organisation, and to start shaping a draft website proposition statement. It went well, we got good feedback, and loads of useful information. Now comes the hard part: making sense of it and putting it to good use -something useful for everyone across the organisation.
• A curveball meeting with the fire service — they’re our first partner in the service patterns pilot. We thought it was an internal catch-up or maybe a small group — we didn’t know we’d be meeting their entire senior leadership team. Liam had to do most of the heavy lifting on this one (and this time, he was the one running on no sleep), but he handled it brilliantly.
• Side note: Liam published his first weeknotes!
• As part of the service patterns work, we’re hopefully organising a co-design day in person with members of the design communities of practice. This workstream is exciting, and we’re trying to make sure that we connect it to different teams and services across the organisation. How does it link to communities of practice? To training and skills? There’s a lot to explore.
• Attended an internal UCD session, where we shared our colleagues’ strengths on sticky notes. I was really flattered by what people wrote about me (thank you all!). I usually can’t take compliments seriously. My knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss them. But it actually felt quite nice this time. Probably because they highlighted things I actually aspire to be. A repeated theme seems to be that I’m challenging — not as in ‘difficult to work with’ but that I ‘challenge views and ideas’, I double checked!
• Being agenda-aware versus agenda-free: just like bias, I don’t think it’s possible to be completely free from agenda. I understand it’s important for researchers to set theirs aside as much as possible to stay as objective as possible. But as a designer in the Welsh public sector, having an agenda is important as long as you’re aware and transparent about it. I definitely have an agenda or two, and I try to be open about them. In fact, if you’ve been reading my weeknotes, they’re all in there.
• Another interesting discussion was about the skills of a UCD practitioner. Everyone highlighted things like communicating and influencing, supporting decision-making, and advocacy. These are often called ‘soft skills’ even though they’re the hardest to learn and put into practice.
• I’ve had this note lying around for a while: “The psychology needs to be receptive to the idea, otherwise it gets ignored.” Not sure where I got that wording from, but it ties back to something I’ve mentioned before: some things can’t be rushed and you can just let them play out. We all go through our own learning journeys, and certain things need time.
• Unofficially met the new service designer joining our team. Excited to get to know him better — he seems like a great guy. I told him not to stress when he starts, since the team has worked together for a while now and we have a lot of shared understanding and things we take for granted. His response? He’ll be asking lots of questions, which makes me like him even more. I really appreciate people who ask questions to genuinely understand.
• Side note: Disguised as curiosity or interest, questions can sometimes be used as tools of dominance and control.
• I’ve been drafting our next newsletter. It’s about trust and the systems we create to minimise the need for it, all while scaling coordination and cooperation as societies grow. Think hierarchies, rules and processes, or money. But what happens when those systems break down and trust collapses?
• Watched a documentary called Witches. Once again, Nia tricked me — I thought we were watching a documentary on the historical portrayal of the witch, only to find myself watching one on postnatal depression and psychosis. Still a fascinating film (and important topic), just not what I expected: don’t let the trailer fool you!
• I’ve got my tickets for Camp Digital in Manchester this July! If you’re attending, it’d be great to say hi!

Check my previous weeknotes.