A weeknote, starting Monday 8 January 2024
Photo of an exhibit in the Accidentally Wes Anderson exhibition in London
I travelled to London at the end of this week for two things which made me really happy. One was a workshop exploring more aspects of the Public Design Review. It was great to be in a room with so many experts and able to make a contribution to the upcoming report. I won’t share any spoilers but being involved is really stretching my thinking about what it means to be in a design leadership position in the public sector.
The other thing was being able to get to the Accidentally Wes Anderson exhibition. Look at my happy little face. I love the aesthetics in the photos and they are a source of inspiration for my illustrations, as shown in last week’s weeknote. I got back to my hotel room and added colour to this work in progress picture of the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory in St Paul, Minnesota, another one from the AWA collection…
Making sure we do enough research with the right people is so important, so Challenging “Best Practices” for CX/UX Qualitative Sample Sizes by Debbie Levitt is a good reminder to check in on our thinking about what constitutes good practice. I enjoyed a good conversation with someone in my team this week about a survey they are developing, which has potential for increasing our future pool of participants with more accessibility needs.
And on the topic of research and generating insights Whither UX research? by Peter Merholz touches on something bubbling in the background for me in recent months – how to bring together insights from across the organisation which are generated in different teams but help provide a rounded view of how a service is performing for users. It made me think of some kind of federated model rather than attempting to bring all the teams into one structure which is suggested in the article. It took me to this piece on building information models which made me reflect on conversations we’ve had about bringing together views of end to end customer journeys with insight from various sources – contact centre, user research, feedback surveys, performance analytics, front line colleagues – which all exist in different teams. Maybe this metaphor might work as a way to bring it to life for people. One to ponder a bit more.
Great to see Alex Lee sharing some more of how he works in Are prototypes enough when sharing design work?
Why you can’t stop eating ultra-processed foods podcast episode from Rangan Chaterjee and Chris Van Tullekan has me checking all food labels and trying to make healthier choices…
And finally, I enjoyed a restorative Saturday catching up with my best friends at the frankly ridiculous Grimsby Town 5–5 Notts County match at Blundell Park.
Full weeknote archive – All the notes in one list.
