Weeknotes, Friday 23 August 2024
It’s been a while but going to give weeknotes another go. Here’s what’s been happening this week.
Nerding out on forms
I had the massive privilege recently to attend a full day forms training course from Crocstar, with the one and only Caroline Jarrett. It was an eye opener. At first it was all easy enough, looking at badly designed forms and going ‘yeah that’s obviously bad’. Then, when it was time to write the simplest of questions, the levels of complexity and just how hard it is to create a good form became apparent.
Anyway, forms have been on my mind ever since and this week I’ve been trying to put some basic guidance together for our forms at Essex County Council. It’s hard to get generic advice together, as each form really needs it’s own user research and context taken into account, but hopefully we can get a few things baked into the product, like not using placeholder text or asterisks for example.
Bluesky got good
On a related note, it’s been really great to see lots of public sector digital folks heading over to Bluesky. It means that when I posed a question about the forms guidance above, a ton of super smart people, several of whom have written books on the subject that are on my desk right now, came back with their insights and advice.
Lulling about
In terms of actual content design projects, a lot of things I’m working on are in ‘waiting to hear back’ or ‘people are enjoying some well earned holiday’ stage. Which is fine as it’s given space to think and plan ahead.
Distractions
Listening
After attending a lovely but loud heavy metal music festival called Bloodstock, I need to chill out a bit. Have enjoyed:
You Hear Yes by Destroy Boys, Mannequin Pussy, Scowl (single)
A Firmer Hand by Hamish Hawk (album)
Champion by Pom Poko (album)
Watching
Love is Blind UK was as addictive and silly as you’d expect.
We finally watched the newer musical version of Mean Girls, which was fun. As a millennials we of course prefer the original, how cliché of us.
