Weeknotes E31
Hi, I’m Colin a product manager working at the Department of Health and Social Care. Each week I’m going to keep a running update of the work I’ve done & things I’ve learned along the way.
My current priority:
Supporting the Healthy Start private beta and a helping hand in the Healthy Start vitamins discovery
Some interesting and shareable things that happened this week. Other more mundane things also happened…
Discussions on how we are going to build our application journey
I dislike duplication and love re-use. We are very lucky to have the design system. It helps us build consistent and accessible pages for Government services. We can also piggyback on work such as Home Office Forms which also helps teams build Government forms in a quick, scalable way. We’ve been working through different approaches to see which most enable the team.
Over the week we had a A+ spike, well researched and with a reasoned recommendation. Sensible, thoughtful and documented appropriately. Looks like for all the benefits of Home Office forms the dependency on another organisation presents a bit too much risk. It’s a great project. I’d love to see it supported and maintained more so all of Government teams could use it!
Supplier collaboration and next steps
We got positive news from suppliers about taking part in the trial we suggested. This means the team can do more testing to see how everything fits together and be more certain on what we need out of a card service partner before taking it forward to a full procurement process.
It’s been a fascinating journey working out how to mash all bits of work together and get a card provider to work with us over the last few months. Had some great help along the way but lots of it is open and flexible with no clear path to follow. Thus far we keep laying the path as we progress which seems to work well.
I don’t know if it is warranted but I have taken some joy in that when we speak to people about our work they tend to be enthusiastic and willing to come along for the ride. It feels positive and rewarding.
Going to Responsible Tech
I got a ticket for the Doteveryone’s Responsible Tech conference. Don’t tend to sign up to that many conference events type things as would like to pick the ones that seem most valuable. This one is 100% up there. Big fan of Doteveryone and their work so should be a blast.
Dharmesh left the building
Sad to see a great colleague go but I know he will prosper in a new environment. Also means when I need help from Education colleagues I have two allies to rely on ;)
Blog stats
This week was a firebreak week. I still did mostly my job and not as many side hustles as I wanted too but I did finish at least one firebreak task and got some good feedback. I went through blogging stats for 2018 and created a little awards ceremony for our next show and tell. I think it’s important to reflect on what we write, who its for, how it’s being received and also support and encourage people to do more.
Blog post reaction
Irony of the week a blog post I penned got picked up on Twitter for both praise and critique, almost certainly guaranteeing me a high spot in the 2019 blogging awards for most visited blog.
Some reflections off the top of my head…
- there is a cost for openness and transparency. You can’t expect only praise and support, you have to face all sorts of alternative opinions
- being open isn’t necessarily easy. Listening and being constructive with criticism isn’t simple and it would be dishonest to say its a piece of cake. I passionately believe its valuable and care about feedback, especially things that challenge my own opinion or can make my work better
- there is much to learn in how people perceive your work, especially if people log on Twitter and only see a barrage of negativity of a heap of positivity
- hypothesis: not everyone reads what they share
- in the effort to continually improve I need to consider how other audiences could react rather than just the intended audience & also maybe not release blog posts on a Friday
- I remain committed to being open and I want Government & the Civil Service to be transparent with the public - that means me sharing my work plays a part. I hope for better civil discourse and accountability. Blogging is one small step towards that.
- it takes great courage to stand up and voice an alternative opinion to a norm or a crowd. I remain thankful people wanted to offer some support otherwise I might of felt a bit more lonelier swimming in the feedback than I ended up being.
Review of Healthy Start vitamin design
Before joining the team working on healthy start, an agency was commissioned to review the branding on Healthy Start vitamins. I hadn’t gotten round to looking through their work until now but really happy I did. We’ve got a discovery team investigating all things vitamins and this can weave into their work but things I’ve picked out that remain relevant to the broader scheme are that the branding…
- lacks impact (lots of white and pale colours)
- doesn’t look appealing
- doesn’t visually communicate health or wellbeing (stick figures don’t look particularly healthy) Some interesting things they’ve picked up on that may become relevant later down the line when revamping the current service.
What I’ve been reading
- Beautiful and fascinating article on flight paths and how political strife diverts journeys.
- Article on who should reap the benefits of employees who automate their work?
- An interesting review of home devices. I don’t own one or have any desire to own one.
- Excellent post about data legibility from doteveryone gang. Love the seams and scars idea. This selection of design patterns for data sharing is also a beautiful thing to behold.
- Long-read about those finding their voice via new technologies.
- Long read on our obsession with protein and how it hampers our overall nutrition. Cool fact; “Like many other animals, humans have what biologists call a “dominant appetite” for protein. The biological drive for protein is so strong that a cricket who feels short of protein will resort to cannibalism.”
- In the wake of the Gatwick drone palava here is an article about a booming anti-drone market. Not sure demand is keeping pace with supply.
- Tencent working on spotting Parkinson’s from the current 30 min check-up to 3 minutes.