Not carrying a Union Jack on this packaging, sorry.

Project stuff

Project MT was steady away this week then had some reprioritisation. Which is fine, but not so straightforward if that needs some of your time and you’ve only two days a week planned/budgeted for the project and you’ve used them by that point aaarrggghhh. I had some spare time in my week, and got on with what was needed half because I don’t like doing a bad job and half I am in a team that seeks the counsel of the service designer. Kit published the council’s digital strategy this week and introduced it with an A1 blog post. …

It got quite cold towards the end of the week, eh. I am being literal here.

Projects

I spent the most time on Project MT (I think a few people know I am working with/for Pilot Works, Placecube and Kit at the Royal Borough of Greenwich council), doing service design work for two days overall. We ended the week having a chat about a couple of journeys and sometimes how we name things shapes our perception of the journey. The journey work we have done is actually good, in that we’ve tested it, got some feedback, done some changes, feel confident it’s in a solid enough shape (as much as you can be in the land of Always Learning). It’s how we frame it to everyone else causing the issues. We were calling the journeys “logged in” and “logged out”. We took a step back and considered the situations you’d be in for those journeys. So we reframed them. We design with what we know at the time, hey. And someone might say “You’ve just renamed it!” But naming things is hard: You give things a name and that tends to stick. Renaming makes the journeys more self explanatory to all. …

Here’s a method I have used for the last 15 years to help me get on with my working day.

I do this out of habit at the start of the working day. I have had roles in the past where things can change overnight so I found too much planning the night before could be wasted.

I currently have the 4 calendars I am a member of viewable simultaneously through the calendar app on my MacBook. I open that for reference. Every session with other people can be found in one of those calendars.

I write out the working hours of the day on a piece of paper, one hour per day, from whenever I start down to whenever I plan to end. I used to do this on a fresh page in my notebook, with the day and date at the top of the page. …

Several days back it was Ryan Gosling’s birthday, the cue for design people on Twitters to reshare the Papyrus Saturday Night Live (SNL) sketch from a couple of years back.

As a sketch it is a good laugh, and there’s a few really great moments — Gosling in a conversation asks what the font is and is told the Avatar logo looks tribal yet futuristic — but scrolling through Twittter for a moment it felt like a no disrespect to the likes of Grimsby for typefaces and fonts, Papyrus being the fall guy, the butt of this popular joke (at least on Design Twitter™). Papyrus very rarely gets even the slightest public respect. Snark is all too easier compared to some positive feedback. …

Four Seasons Total Landscaping, LOL!

Projects

It was project MT for the first three days of the week. The service design side is going along fine, there’s an understanding of what the structure is and could be, there’s abstract possibilities for service improvements, but there’s a reliance on a few things shifting for change. Realising something better is taking a bit of knitting and re-knitting. It’s the usual though. 30–40% of what you design isn’t seen by the team but helps them fill in gaps and make decisions; 80 to 90% of what you design isn’t seen publicly. It’s getting there. I’m down to two days a week from next week and that floaty dipping in and out feeling I don’t like is starting to set in. Nature of the role here though innit. Documenting some of this work to be shareable is on the radar in the coming weeks. …

Patterns for these notes:

• I’ve been doing them monthly since early last year
• I’d start by telling you where I was up to with my running numbers, coming into the month and leaving the month
• There’s a little commentary about some things that happened, tough stuff and rewarding stuff
• I wind up things looking head to the next month

First up this is a note for three months not for one month, but more why on that shortly.

My last run note was for July. Coming into August I had run 1138km so far in 2020, past halfway to my goal to run 2000km over the year. I’d come back from a bad injury earlier in the year and over June and July ran 420km, to help me make up for lost time. …

A very busy, at times hectic week. In a way a perfect week for some reflection. And, no, I’m not going to mention The Other Thing going on.

It’s the first week for a long time (like maybe 6 years) where I’ve been split over two clients in normal working hours. Reminded me of my agency time more. I had a slight pang for those days, seeing the same crew every day, working on different things together. A big part of me misses that, at least the solidity of working with people you know. We don’t talk about that enough as a confidence builder. A lot of the gov work I’ve been on people come and go, come and go. …

Two days off this week, three days working. Funny how we use the word “off”. How work focused are our lives, eh.

Two days not doing work

Two days off for the kids’ half term and My Birthday. I am now 45 years old and in these times of Stay At Home I was whistled back to my 40th, spending the day at the Barbican and going to Leicester Square to watch Spectre. The new Bond film was due to be released this week, and yeah so I’ve been enjoying the Craig era Bond films. I just felt a little meh about the wider world.

I spent my birthday painting my son’s room, having filled in holes and smoothed them over the day before. IT FEELS LIKE A WORK METAHPOR but I am not going there. …