Weeknotes 2 of 2023

In which I somehow become a podcast guest?

What went well:

• A big first for me, I recorded a podcast with Kevin and Sarah, my colleagues from the #DigitalBC Livstream, as well as Ari from my team. It was easier than I thought but I’m glad I took time to prepare speaking notes rather than trying to wing it.
• I attended a really lovely event — Design Justice Co-lab — with colleagues Kevin and Marlieke and met some others from academia and the museum. We had really thoughtful conversations and I loved hearing the experiences of others. And, when I tried to rush out to catch my bus, one of the attendees offered to drive me home (Thank you Veronica!)
• I participated in a showcase that our team put together for people in various governments to learn about what we do. I ran a “design in the BC government” booth with Bahaa, Sarah and Marlieke. As part of this, I hastily put together a sticker and handout for design, which turned out really well considering I had limited time to work on them
• I took the lead on a hiring panel to bring in content designer into our area. My two reflections on this are: I’m so glad we’re finally putting some resources into content, and wow hiring panels in government are a lot of work.
• I sent a survey on the state of design to 350 people. I’m hoping to gather some evidence on our current design maturity and figure out where to focus our resources.

What I struggled with:

• MY MACBOOK DIED. Although this is a minor inconvenience on the grand scale of things, it’s been so unmooring to try to get things done without the right technology to do it. I’m also so frustrated by the lack of response from our IT group, and the fact that we don’t have loaners for these kinds of things. I’m trying to get by on an old PC laptop that was gathering dust in storage but it’s been really difficult to access email and get things done.
• I’ve been stretched thin lately, and coupled with my IT problems, I’ve been dropping balls, forgetting to send emails and replies, missing messages. If I’ve let you down on something, I’m sorry, can you send that email again??
• I’ve been trying to find time to write a followup to my post on word of mouth culture (I have thoughts!!) but just can’t find the time. Maybe next week?

Inspired by:

• I’ve really loved all the chatter around UK Gov Camp. Also feeling a lot of fomo.
• Vicky shared this Neurodiversity Design System which I love!
• I’ve been thinking a lot about this tweet and how in government, most (sometimes all) of our communication is marketing comms and broadcast messages. We need to fix this if we’re going to fix our user experience.
• I usually have more here but haven’t had as much time to dig into anything recently.

Reading, watching, listening

• I just finished Run Towards The Danger by Sarah Polley, and it was really interesting. She explores a lot of subjects from being a child actor to medical trauma to parenting to living with chronic illnesses to disgraced Canadian journalists (well, just one)
• I’m in the middle of Severance and … 😳😳😳
• The Runaround from This American Life was a great listen especially for service designers.