Week 59 – 20/10/2019

Up and down week. Been a bit ill which is annoying. Made some progress on getting design more embedded in my workplace which is pleasing.

Been working on defining what I mean when I talk about design. Not had chance to publish anything yet but then an opportunity presented itself on Monday. A director sent an email round with some UI changes based on some patterns he had seen on a wine buying site. They were sensible suggestions but we seem to be doing a lot of design based on opinions and what good looks like on other sites and that is just not sustainable. I wrote a long reply listing out the options of how we could continue doing design and how I think we should move towards for doing design ‘properly’. Airquotes added because I am not sure if my vision of what properly is is proper enough and I laid that out in the email, I am not expert but I know what expertise could give us.

I have a decent grasp on the whole Lean UX/Design Thinking type processes are but I have not got a great set of experience in actually having done them week in and week out for years. I think I am a frsutrated designer really and if I could just learn a few workshopping methods and how to do good mapping I could pass myself of as a designer. Anyway my email was very well received by the directors and I have got my thoughts and goals published and that is a good start.

I am drawn to making changes but should I just go with the flow and just get on with things as they are? OIt does not feel right to do so but am I just being lazy and looking to make change for changes sake? I am pretty sure the changes I am trying to make will allows us to design better things but who knows.

Had a great conversation with Cam Spilman and Urška Ti?ar from local service design agency Paper. I am looking for some advice on introducing design into an org and it was great to go back and forth on the challenges and experiences they had in doing just that thing. Cam is very generous with his time and knowledge and that means a lot to me. Hopefully be able to work with them again very soon.

Watched Luc Besson do his ‘Woman who is a mysterious assassin spy type thing’ again in Anna. It is very bad. I switched it off. It is especially bad when put alongside Killing Eve. It is especially bad when put against La Femma Nikita which he also made but that was 30 years ago and people can get a bit tired and just phone it in.

No running as I have been a bit under the weather. Still well enough to go to the pub and stuff my face mind you. I will run in the morning…probably.

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