Weeknotes: June 3rd — 11th
My journey at Essex County Council started with the usual admin-y stuff such as getting set up on IT.
Even before starting, the team was really welcoming and ace at making sure I had everything I needed to get set up.
Meeting the team
A lot of the first week has been about meeting the team . You would expect this to be a challenge with remote working. Yet, it has been awesome having 1–2–1 chats with people. Getting to know the ins and outs of the organisation bit by bit as well as individual personalities.
The ‘All Hands’ meeting gave an insight into the bigger picture . This is the largest organisation I’ve ever worked for, so this will take some time for me to get my head around!
Technology Enabled Care
The multi-disciplinary projects will kick off in earnest next week, when a few more Content Designers jumping on board. Covid put quite a few things on pause, so it’s an exciting time to be joining as there are lots of beefy projects to be getting stuck into!
For the first week I’ve been writing up some pages for a new Technology Enabled Care initiative. It’s all about the tech that’s available for people to remain living independently with a range of care needs.
It’s been fascinating learning about the kinds of items available. Everything from digital assistants, to picture cards which can a help non-verbal person speak.
I’ve lined up a couple 90-year-olds to chat to next week to ensure I’m using their vocabulary. The User Research team kindly helped with some interview questions.
Accessibility
An organisation’s attitude towards accessibility says a lot about them. ECC has not disappointed!
This week we had a learning session with accessibility specialists Nomensa on Teams. I attended a bitesize session run by ECC’s Digital Accessibility Network . This focussed on heading styles in Word docs.
Sizzling up the sausage
Some members of the team are submitting applications to run workshops and talks at a Service Design conference.
The application content was complete, but I was asked to use my PR background to ‘put some sizzle in the sausage’. I dusted off my marketing brain, read through the submissions and attempted to come up with some provocative titles.
It was interesting to learn about the projects — hoping to see them included on the line-up of this conference!
That’s it for this week! Aiming to make this a habit so tune in next week for more Content Design related action.
