Weeknote #1
Taking the plunge (again!)
I haven’t written a weeknote in a while so I thought why not take the plunge and post it in Twitter! We work in an industry and organisation that encourages to try something new and to think different, think ‘outside the box.’ Weeknotes are something we have spoken about as a team and is another important step in our commitment to working in the open with more transparency, keeping the organisation informed of what we are working on and how we have changed the way we work with our approach to Service Design. I’ve always said to my team I won’t ask for anything that I’m not prepared to do myself so here it is!
Over the last few weeks I have read some great weeknotes and sketches from my team and others within Dorset Council and I’m very lucky to be working with such talented people which seems very common in Dorset council, quite often I meet very inspiring individuals with fantastic knowledge of the service they provide, this makes my job easier.
My biggest focus this week was to complete my final assignment of 2020 and complete my first year of uni, I never imagined I would be doing an apprenticeship at 40 years old but I’ve enjoyed it and learnt so much that I am able to bring into my role. I hadn’t written an assignment in 20 years and I’ve found that to be a skill in itself and have found myself really interested in business ethics which I have recently studied.
I’m always happy to mentor colleagues who have an interest in service design and I admire their enthusiasm, this week I have been working with a colleague on improving the end to end service for sports club membership, with clubs opening up again this week, many find important for their mental health and wellbeing, we have an opportunity to create a new normal and improve the user experience and save the authority money at the same time.
I spend a lot of time bouncing between projects within my team, providing support and mentoring where it’s needed and I’m seeing some great examples of user centred design, we have come a long way and have a clear focus on understanding the problem before diving into solutions which is great to see.
I attended a GDS talk this week (thanks for the heads up Neil) on how to grow design capability, I like the idea of fellow professionals just getting together for a chat and sharing experiences.
Finally I have been editing some webinars I have created around changing to a Digital mindset, this was a little challenging running these off one screen and had to start recording 10 mins before the meeting started so I could get set up ready for the session to begin so I am currently just editing out me staring out a window waiting for attendees, I managed to improve this as the sessions went on which goes to show we are always learning.
James
