Weeknotes E48
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, assisting the formation of NHSX & working with mental health teams
Some interesting and shareable things that happened this week. Other more mundane things also happened…
Recruitment
I’ve been helping out recruiting this week. We did it on a very tight timescale. Had a day to go through lots of applications and sift, while juggling other work. Always worthwhile though and I see it as a privilege to be on job panels. Exciting to help find a new colleague and hopefully make someone happy in finding a new role. Good selection, high quality.
User research in Kennington
I had a full day out the office visiting a wonderful children’s centre to conduct research. Myself, user researcher and content designer chatted to Healthy Start users/potential users, often with their kids rolling around the floor while we spoke.
Some reflections:
- love love love being out and hearing from users
- love love love being confronted with real life context. Seeing people try to apply for a scheme on a phone while caring for a young child.
- i like when research ends up supplying you with even more interesting questions to uncover
- it’s nice to just spend time with colleagues between sessions and taking the time to explore topics
- scheme has been amazingly lucky with wonderful people in children’s centres or other settings that help us find users. People really care about the scheme and making it better and willing to help to do that. I am so appreciative of those who give their time to help us.
NHSX x Mental Health highlights
Exciting chats and meeting some wonderful folk. I’m learning and plans are forming. Stuff happened, such as:
- spent a couple of hours hearing about work to improve access to psychological therapies in London. Good little gathering.
- chatting with a prof about a potential blog post about mental health + digital/tech
- compiled lots of the stated ambitions in the long term plan about mental health
- prioritisation chats. Including t-shirt sizes.
- a wonderful chat with a colleague about Local Health and Care Records.
- managed to invite myself to go see the work of one of the LCHRE’s up in Manchester.
- some stimulating chats about mental health/digital delivery/support/research.
Non-attendance
I was supposed to be at events to do with a cross-gov Interdepartmental Talent Partnership scheme. One on Monday and another on Tuesday. They were both to do with networking. Which I do find a little off putting.
That being said I’ve been given an opportunity to do some progression and I was not there. Which is bad. I would support everyone to value and prioritise self-development opportunities when offered. I find it hard, mostly because of other work commitments but I need to get better and not make being busy an excuse. I’ve missed my 10% time that I block in my calendar every single week, after May I’m going to change this.
Healthy Start retailer research
We have another opportunity to go speak with retailers via the very helpful Association of convenience stores. I couldn’t stop myself from signing the team up. This time I’ve been thinking about how might we do some more co-design workshops with them. Get more input into the design of the future service. To that end I planned the session, did some work to get all the materials in order and then prepped two fantastic colleagues to go to Leicester and run it (I will be interviewing the day the event takes place). Roughly will include:
- ‘show the thing’ intro slides (video of most recent application prototype and slides about potential use of pre-paid cards)
- a how might we question underpinned by quant and qual data which relates to retailers
- a variant of crazy 8’s
- sprinkled in with some liberating structures 1-2-4-all type sharing and co-creation
Updates how it went soon.
What I’ve been reading
- BBC’s inside UK food banks + 1 pantry
- Article on how we badly we measure value and suggestion that Government could act as VC investors.
- Enjoyed this article about figuring out how soon “new” tech might arrive. TL;DR demonstrable experience matters.
- A model for radical acceptance.
- Fax machines in the American healthcare system. Strong opinion included; “I think if we want to kill the fax, we need to schedule a funeral”.
- Experience of a designer turned product manager.
- Interesting long read on the fragile libido of young people. Also delves into current dating culture.
- Human rights watch encryption game!