Weeknotes, Friday 27 September

No weeknote last week, as was lucky to be at SD in Gov. Don’t feel like writing this one but don’t want to lose the habit.

This week has been a bit s*** if I’m honest, but mostly due to a leaky bedroom ceiling leading to a lack of sleep. But work’s been alright and a bit of a reprieve really, so let’s go.

Digesting SD in gov

This was a great conference, lots to think about, still processing it all and collaborating with colleagues on a longer blog, but a few bits that stood out were:

Radical Optimism from Audree Fletcher. This was one people in local gov need to hear right now. A lot about the seeds you’re planting now growing into something at a much later date, sometimes after you’ve left an organisation.

Caroline Jarrett and Vicky Teinaki’s workshop on accessible forms was awesome, and delivered in a way that you can reuse it yourself with others.

Escaping the discovery doom loop by Ian Ames and Priyanca was excellent, loads of advice for when things are too ambiguous, solutions have been decided in advance or working in complex spaces where a discovery won’t provide certainty.

Ready for some research

I’m super excited to be doing some user research next week on a school governor form I’ve been working on. This is partially an excuse to try out a test script that we can hopefully reuse, or at least include in some kind of forms playbook. Looking forward to seeing how the form questions perform and if anything trips people up.

Take note

Did some notetaking for user research sessions on another project, always enjoy this. Interesting to see a researcher probe and tease things out, while frantically trying to capture what’s going on.

Analyse this

Shared some GA4 analytics with the service owner for some care leavers content, which was previously in a PDF. Now it’s HTML, they were really happy to be able to see where people are clicking, what people are downloading. It was tricky persuading them to go from PDF to the website when we had that conversation 6 months ago, so great to be able to offer more insight now it’s on the website.

Smash that publish button

Finally hit publish today one some cost of living content that’s been milling around for a while. There were no fireworks or fanfare, but the website IA (information architecture) makes a tiny bit more sense, so that’s something, right?

Product-ive chats

Lots of meetings with product managers this week, testing and discussing new features and issues with our LocalGov Drupal sites. These felt tricky and a bit painful, but really necessary and should help unblock things and help us move forward.

Interesting stuff

Truth time, I’m only halfway through reading it but this report is fascinating: Digital Identity in the UK: A Rapid Response Study — Rachel Coldicutt OBE, September 2024 — Careful Industries

Attended a session from Christine Cawthorne AKA Crocstar on advocating for content design. There’s a recording but to access you need to sign up to their content design community. I’m a member, it’s good! (this is not an ad, promise) Crocstar Content Community — Crocstar

Distractions

Listening

Thoroughly enjoyed these albums this week:

In Waves by Jamie xx (lots of satisfying samples from old dusty records)

Talkie Talkie by Los Bitchos (instrumental grooves)

Someday, now by Katy J Pearson (well written indie)

RITUAL by Jon Hopkins (ambient sounds, basically therapy in musical form)

Watching

Mr McMahon on Netflix — About the pro wrestling magnate. Some troubling topics, please watch with caution if you do. A bit disjointed as major allegations came out after they’d filmed most of the interviews.